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Updated: May 15, 2025
It is clear that in structure and development the primitive languages, mother and daughter languages, and varieties, correspond exactly to the classes, orders, genera, and species of the animal world. In both cases the "natural" system is phylogenetic.
Like the latter, the human gastrula and that of all other mammals must be regarded as the ontogenetic reproduction of the phylogenetic form that we call the Gastraea, in which the whole body is nothing but a double-walled gastric sac. We already know from embryology the manner in which the gut develops in the embryo of man and the other mammals.
These he illustrates mainly by examples from his own special domain and personal observation. The simplest unicellular forms of life are to be thought of as at the beginning of evolution; and, since mechanical causes cannot explain their ascent, it must be assumed that they have an inherent “phylogenetic potential of development,” which, working epigenetically, results in ascending evolution.
So we come to the second of the two great hypotheses we have to examine. Suppose the variations are due, not to accidental and inner causes, but to the direct influence of outer circumstances. Let us see what line we should have to take, on this hypothesis, to account for the resemblance of eye-structure in two series that are independent of each other from the phylogenetic point of view.
I am also not prepared to discuss here at any length the phylogenetic or ontogenetic significance and the biological genesis and meaning of the various mental trends of the ticquer, but I may say that they too have been acquired in the course of evolution, for certain very definite reasons which need not concern us here, although it can be appreciated that the biological motive of self-preservation played a most important role in their genesis and fixation.
That immunity is a chemical reaction is no argument against the application of the law of natural selection or of association. The administration of vaccines becomes the adequate stimulus which awakens phylogenetic association of a chemical nature as a result of which immune bodies are produced.
Philosophers and others, who are equally ignorant of the empirical sources of our evidence and the phylogenetic methods of utilising it, have even lately claimed that in the matter of constructing our genealogical tree nothing more has been done than the discovery of a "gallery of ancestors," such as we find in the mansions of the nobility.
We have viewed each anatomic and pathologic part as an entity and man as an isolated phenomenon in nature. May we not find in the laws of adaptation under natural selection, and of phylogenetic association, the master key that will disclose to us the explanation of many pathologic phenomena as they have already explained many normal phenomena?
Although, as has already been stated, the efficiency of the hands of man has largely supplanted the use of the teeth, he still shows his teeth in anger and so gives support to the theory that this emotion is of remote ancestral origin and proves the great persistence of phylogenetic association.
The individual, as a biological unit, is reacting to the particular situation which presents itself by the tic mechanism. By granting the phylogenetic, racial significance we also give the basic, psychophysical meaning of tics in all ticquers. How is it that these activities may come into play again? What brings them to the surface once more?
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