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Various English embryologists had varying success with developmental theory, but as a group they had made great impact upon the development of embryology. In the course of their century, they had, in the words of one of them, "called tradition unto experiment." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London, 1859, p. 1.
And I make bold to say, that the recent discoveries of physical science notably those of embryology go only to justify that old and general belief of man.
The facts of embryology seem to point to the descent of the higher types of animals from the lower types. The embryo or fetus in its development seems to recapitulate the various stages through which the species has passed.
In turning from the embryology to the phylogeny of man from the development of the individual to that of the species we must bear in mind the direct causal connection that exists between these two main branches of the science of human evolution.
The study of fossils, as we have seen, gives little or no data concerning the early history of living machines; and it is just here that embryology has proved to be of the most value.
Like the fundamental principle of comparative anatomy in its sphere, the Law of Recapitulation, formulated as a summary description of the foregoing and similar facts, is one that holds true throughout the entire range of embryology and for every division of the animal series, however large or small.
By a number of important embryonic adaptations, the chief of which is the formation of an extensive food-yelk, the original course of the development of the vascular system has been so much falsified and curtailed in the higher Vertebrates that little or nothing now remains in their embryology of some of the principal phylogenetic features.
The theory of Evolution says that man did not come into existence all of a sudden, but is related to lower animals and to plants, either directly or indirectly. The germ of life had passed through various stages of physical form before it could appear as a man. That branch of science which is called Embryology has proved the fact that "man is the epitome of the whole creation."
Unfortunately, this trustful theory is in such flagrant contradiction to all the known facts of paleontology and embryology that it is no longer worth serious scientific consideration. But the case is no better for the much-discussed descent of the Vertebrates from the Annelids, which Dohrn afterwards maintained with great zeal.
Darwin had become, as he himself says, a veritable Croesus, "overwhelmed with his riches in facts" facts of zoology, of selective artificial breeding, of geographical distribution of animals, of embryology, of paleontology. He had massed his facts about his theory, condensed them and recondensed, until his volume of five hundred pages was an encyclopaedia in scope.
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