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Here it may also be well to point out the great importance of anthropogeny, in the light of the biogenetic law, for the purposes of philosophy. Most certainly every clear and consistent thinker must derive from the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny we have adduced a number of suggestive ideas that cannot fail to have an influence on the progress of philosophy.
The four factors of Osborn heredity, ontogeny, environment, selection play upon and modify endlessly the new form when it is started, but what about the original start? Whence comes this inborn momentum, this evolutionary send-off? What or who set the whole grand process going? Bergson sees an internal psychological principle of development, hence the name of his book, "Creative Evolution."
The second chapter concerns itself with ontogeny, and the student is wisely advised to make drawings of various stages in the development of the brain of one of the higher mammals. An actual brain is always to be preferred to a model. The third chapter gives directions of a simple and practical sort as to methods of removing the sheep's brain.
As we have been convinced from comparative anatomy and ontogeny, and from paleontology, that all past and living vertebrates descend from a common ancestor, so the comparative study of dead and living Indo-Germanic tongues proves beyond question that they are all modifications of one primitive language.
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.
That is, by disconnecting one or more of the activating organs from the brain, the motor mechanism might be saved from its self-destruction. Under this hypothesis, that man in disease, as in health, is the product of his phylogeny as well as of ontogeny, the sphere of the physician's activities takes on new aspects of far-reaching and inspiring significance.
Our comparative investigation of the anatomy and ontogeny of the Amphioxus and Ascidia has given us invaluable assistance.
From the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the existing Marsupials we may draw very interesting conclusions as to their intermediate position between the earlier Monotremes and the later Placentals. Moreover, all the Marsupials have teats on the mammary glands, at which the new-born animal sucks.
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