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Updated: May 6, 2025
Now, we ask: Is this biogenetic maxim correct? and moreover, from the fact of the organic individuals originating through development, are we entitled to draw the conclusion that even the species must have originated through development?
From embryology in particular, as elsewhere in general, we read the “fundamental biogenetic law,” that evolution is from the general to the special, from the imperfect to the more perfect, from what is still indefinite and exuberant to the well-defined and precise, but never from the special to the special.
The results of the investigation do not correspond with the family groups drawn up according to the so-called "biogenetic principle," which principle has in fact led men of science into false paths.
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.
Any one can subscribe to these statements; in truth they contain something totally different from the "biogenetic principle"; for Haeckel has really no interest in so general a truth, but is intent only upon a proof of Descent. Hertwig continues: "In order to make our train of thought clear, let us take the egg-cell.
It is “a certain historical fact.” The proofs of it are those already mentioned. What is especially Haeckelian is the “fundamental biogenetic law,” “ontogeny resembles phylogeny,” that is to say, in development, especially in embryonic development, the individual recapitulates the history of the race.
This important fact justifies us in concluding, in accordance with the biogenetic law, that their ancestors also were phylogenetically developed from a similar stem-form. This ancient stem-form is the gastraea. The gastraea probably lived in the sea during the Laurentian period, swimming about in the water by means of its ciliary coat much as free ciliated gastrulae do to-day.
With this undeniable identity of ontogenesis, which can be demonstrated to an astounding extent, we had, in virtue of the biogenetic law, discovered the long-sought genealogical link, and definitely identified the invertebrate group that represents the nearest blood-relatives of the vertebrates.
The gastraea theory has now convinced us that all the Metazoa or multicellular animals can be traced to a common stem-form, the Gastraea. In accordance with the biogenetic law, we find solid proof of this in the fact that the two-layered embryos of all the Metazoa can be reduced to a primitive common type, the gastrula.
There then follow a series of fascinating and inspiring papers, as follows: The Sources and Direction of Psychophysical Energy, by William McDougall; Autistic Thinking by E. Bleuler; Personality and Psychosis by August Hoch; The Personal Factor in Association Reactions by Frederic Lyman Wells; A Study of the Neuropathic Inheritance by F. W. Mott; On the Etiology of Pellagra and its Relation to Psychiatry by O. Rossi; Psychic Disturbances Associated with Disorders of the Ductless Glands, by Harvey Cushing; Primitive Mechanisms of Individual Adjustment by Stewart Paton; Demenzprobleme by K. Heilbronner; The Inter-relation of the Biogenetic Psychoses by Ernest Jones; Prognostic Principles in the Biogenetic Psychoses, with Special Reference to the Katatonic Syndrome by George H. Kirby; Anatomical Borderline between the So-called Syphilitic and Metasyphilitic Disorders in the Brain and Spinal Cord by Charles B. Dunlap; and Mental Disorders and Cerebral Lesions Associated with Pernicious Anemia by Albert Moore Barrett.
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