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If we now turn to ontogeny, and find, according to our "law of the ontogenetic connection of systematically related forms," that the embryos of the anthropoid apes and man retain their resemblance for a longer time than the embryos of the highest and the lowest apes, we are forced, whether we like it or no, to recognise our descent from the order of apes.
We were thus in a position to determine precisely the position of man in this class, and so to establish his relationship to the different orders of mammals. The line of argument we followed in this explanation of the ontogenetic facts was simply a consistent application of the biogenetic law.
Each phylogenetic and each ontogenetic experience by an indirect method develops its own mechanism of adaptation in the brain; and the brain threshold is raised or lowered to stimuli by the strength and frequency of repetition of the experience.
If we had this unknown pithecoid stem-form before us, we should certainly put it in the order of the true apes in the primate system; but within this order we cannot, for the anatomic and ontogenetic reasons we have seen, separate man from the group of the anthropoid apes.
We must certainly regard it as a comparative-anatomical and ontogenetic fact of the greatest significance that in all the Craniotes, from the lowest Cyclostomes and fishes up to the apes and man, the brain develops in just the same way in the embryo. The first rudiment of it is always a simple vesicular enlargement of the fore end of the medullary tube.
In general we note that the psychophysical reaction which we come upon in the tics leads to the unearthing of various psychophysical types of reaction, this unearthing consisting of disintegration or regression or dissociation, the repressed, hidden, unconscious, phylo and ontogenetic, archaic and relatively infantile-like activities, tendencies and possibilities coming to the fore and unfolding themselves.
In accordance with this ontogenetic fact, we must regard the vascular system as one of the latest organs from the phylogenetic point of view; just as we have found the alimentary canal to be one of the earliest. In any case, the vascular system is much later than the alimentary.
This round ovum has the same characteristic form and origin as the ovum of any other mammal. From it is developed in the same manner in all the Placentals, by repeated cleavage, a multicellular blastula. This two-layered embryonic form is the ontogenetic reproduction of the extremely important phylogenetic stem-form of all the Metazoa, which we have called the Gastraea.
Thus through the innumerable symbols supplied by environment the distance ceptors drive this or that animal according to the type of brain pattern and the particular state of threshold which has been developed in that animal by its phylogenetic and ontogenetic experiences. The brain pattern depends upon his phylogeny, the state of threshold upon his ontogeny.
On this basis we postulate that throughout the history of the race nothing has been lost, but that every experience of the race and of the individual has been retained for the guidance of the individual and of the race; that for the accomplishment of this end there has been evolved through the ages a nerve mechanism of such infinite delicacy and precision that in some unknown manner it can register permanently within itself every impression received in the phylogenetic and ontogenetic experience of the individual; that each of these nerve mechanisms or brain patterns has its own connection with the external world, and that each is attuned to receive impressions of but one kind, as in the apparatus of wireless telegraphy each instrument can receive and interpret waves of a certain rate of intensity only; that thought, will, ego, personality, perception, imagination, reason, emotion, choice, memory, are to be interpreted in terms of these brain patterns; that these so-called phenomena of human life depend upon the stimuli which can secure the final common path, this in turn having been determined by the frequency and the strength of the environmental stimuli of the past and of the present.
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