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Updated: May 29, 2025
It seems then that the only way a bird of to-day can become itself is to traverse the path along which its progenitors had progressed in evolution. Stating its conclusions precisely, science formulates the principle in the following words: individual development is a brief résumé of the history of the species in past times, or, more technically, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
That is, according to phylogeny and ontogeny this or that sound, this or that smell, this or that sight, through association recapitulates the experience of the species and of the individual awakens the phylogenetic and ontogenetic memory. In other words, sights, sounds, and odors are symbols which awaken phylogenetic association.
We must, therefore, consider the descent of man from other Catarrhines to be fully proved. Whatever further information on the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the living Catarrhines we may obtain in the future, it cannot possibly disturb this conclusion. Naturally, our Catarrhine ancestors must have passed through a long series of different forms before the human type was produced.
We started from the simplest facts of ontogeny, or the development of the individual from observations that we can repeat and verify by microscopic and anatomic study at any moment. The first and most important of these facts is that every man, like every other animal, begins his existence as a simple 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.
In order to appreciate fully this remarkable fact, and especially to secure the sound basis we seek for the genealogical tree of the vertebrates, it is necessary to study thoroughly the embryology of both these animals, and compare the individual development of the Amphioxus step by step with that of the Ascidia. We begin with the ontogeny of the Amphioxus.
Comparative anatomy and ontogeny show clearly that the Ganoids descended from the Selachii, and the Teleostei from the Ganoids. On the other hand, a collateral line, or rather the advancing chief line of the vertebrate stem, was developed from the earlier Ganoids, and this leads us through the group of the Dipneusta to the important division of the Amphibia.
That shadow would at once activate the rabbit and the bird to an endeavor to escape, each in a specific manner according to its phylogenetic adaptation; the cow would be indifferent and neutral; while the boy, according to his personal experience or ontogeny, might remain neutral, might watch the flight of the hawk with interest or might try to shoot it.
To woman the command was imperative that she must strive for more wisdom, for more light on her holy mission as the evangel of evolving life; that she might reach a higher consciousness of her individual responsibility as the keeper and guardian of the sacred temple of human life a temple in which is ever repeated the evolution, ontogeny, and phylogeny of the race; where, by this most mysteriously beautiful of all processes, there is constantly being welded together the planetary growth, physical, mental and psychical experiences of ages upon ages in the past; with the higher, purer, better and more spiritual possibilities of the race in its planetary progress for uncounted ages yet to come.
Little by little I became familiar with the principles of embryonic evolution, ontogeny, and of biological evolution, phylogeny; realized, for the first time, my own history and that of the ancestors from whom I had developed and descended. I, this marvellously complicated being, torn by desires and despairs, was the result of the union of two microscopic cells.
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