The Evolution of Man, V.2 by Ernst Haeckel (comprehension books .TXT) 📕

outer world, could be concerned in the origin of sensations, we can see at once that the sense-organs also must have arisen there. This is really the case. The chief part of all the sense-organs originates from the skin-sense layer, partly directly from the horny plate, partly from the brain, the foremost part, of the medullary tube, after it has separated from the horny plate. If we compare the embryonic development of the various sense-organs, we see that they all make their appearance in the simplest conceivable form; the wonderful contrivances that make the higher sense-organs among the most remarkable and elaborate structures in the body develop only gradually. In the phylogenetic explanation of them comparative anatomy and ontogeny achieve their greatest triumphs. But at first all the sense-organs are merely parts of the skin in which sensory nerves expand. These nerves themselves were originally of a homogeneous character. The different functions or specific energies of the differentiated sense-nerves were only gradually developed by division of labour. At the same time, their simple terminal expansions in the skin were converted into extremely complex organs.

The great instructiveness of these historical facts in connection with the life of the soul is not difficult to see. The whole philosophy of the future will be transformed as soon as psychology takes cognisance of these genetic phenomena and makes them the basis of its speculations. When we examine impartially the manuals of psychology that have been published by the most distinguished speculative philosophers and are still widely distributed, we are astonished at the naivete with which the authors raise their airy metaphysical speculations, regardless of the momentous embryological facts that completely refute them. Yet the science of evolution, in conjunction with the great advance of the comparative anatomy and physiology of the sense-organs, provides the one sound empirical basis of a natural psychology.

(FIGURE 2.305. Head of a shark (Scyllium), from the ventral side. m mouth, o olfactory pits, r nasal groove, n nasal fold in natural position, n apostrophe nasal fold drawn up. (The dots are openings of the mucous canals.) (From Gegenbaur.))

In respect of the terminal expansions of the sensory nerves, we can distribute the human sense-organs in three groups, which correspond to three stages of development. The first group comprises those organs the nerves of which spread out quite simply in the free surface of the skin itself (organs of the sense of pressure, warmth, and sex). In the second group the nerves spread out in the mucous coat of cavities which are at first depressions in or invaginations of the skin (organs of the sense of smell and taste). The third group is formed of the very elaborate organs, the nerves of which spread out in an internal vesicle, separated from the skin (organs of the sense of sight, hearing, and space).

(FIGURES 2.306 AND 2.307. Head of a chick embryo, three days old: 2.306 front view, 2.307 from the right. n rudimentary nose (olfactory pits), l rudimentary eyes (optic pits), g rudimentary ear (auscultory pit), v fore brain, gl eye-cleft, o process of upper jaw, u process of lower jaw of the first gill-arch.

FIGURE 2.308. Head of a chick embryo, four days old, from below. n nasal pit, o upper-jaw process of the first gill-arch, u lower-jaw process of same, k double apostrophe second gill-arch, sp choroid fissure of eye, s gullet.

FIGURES 2.309 AND 2.310. Heads of chick embryos: 2.309 from the end of the fourth, 2.310 from the beginning of the fifth week. Letters as in Figure 2.308, except: in inner, an outer, nasal process, nf nasal furrow, st frontal process, m mouth. (From Kolliker.) Figures 2.306 to 2.310 are magnified to the same extent.)

There is little to be said of the development of the lower sense-organs. We have already considered (

Chapter 2.

24) the organ of touch and temperature in the skin. I need only add that in the corium of man and all the higher Vertebrates countless microscopic sense-organs develop, but the precise relation of these to the sensations of pressure or resistance, of warmth and cold, has not yet been explained. Organs of this kind, in or on which sensory cutaneous nerves terminate, are the "tactile corpuscles" (or the Pacinian corpuscles) and end-bulbs. We find similar corpuscles in the organs of the sexual sense, the male penis and the female clitoris; they are processes of the skin, the development of which we will consider later (together with the rest of the sexual parts,

Chapter 2.

29). The evolution of the organ of taste, the tongue and palate, will also be treated later, together with that of the alimentary canal to which these parts belong (

Chapter 2.

27). I will only point out for the present that the mucous coat of the tongue and palate, in which the gustatory nerve ends, originates from a part of the outer skin. As we have seen, the whole of the mouth-cavity is formed, not as a part of the gut-tube proper, but as a pit-like fold in the outer skin (

Chapter 1.

13). Its mucous lining is therefore formed, not from the visceral, but from the cutaneous layer, and the taste-cells at the surface of the tongue and palate are not products of the gut-fibre layer, but of the skin-sense layer.

This applies also to the mucous lining of the olfactory organ, the nose. However, the development of this organ is much more interesting. Although the nose seems superficially to be simple and single, it really consists, in man and all other Gnathostomes, of two completely separated halves, the right and left cavities. They are divided by a vertical partition, so that the right nostril leads into the right cavity alone and the left nostril into the left cavity. They open internally (and separately) by the posterior nasal apertures into the pharynx, so that we can get direct into the gullet through the nasal passages without touching the mouth. This is the way the air usually passes in respiration; the mouth being closed, it goes through the nose into the gullet, and through the larynx and bronchial tubes into the lungs. The nasal cavities are separated from the mouth by the horizontal bony palate, to which is attached behind (as a dependent process) the soft palate with the uvula. In the upper and hinder parts of the nasal cavities the olfactory nerve, the first pair of cerebral nerves, expands in the mucous coat which clothes them. The terminal branches of it spread partly over the septum (partition), partly on the side walls of the internal cavities, to which are attached the turbinated bones. These bones are much more developed in many of the higher mammals than in man, but there are three of them in all mammals. The sensation of smell arises by the passage of a current of air containing odorous matter over the mucous lining of the cavities, and stimulating the olfactory cells of the nerve-endings.

Man has all the features which distinguish the olfactory organ of the mammals from that of the lower Vertebrates. In all essential points the human nose entirely resembles that of the Catarrhine apes, some of which have quite a human external nose (compare the face of the long-nosed apes). However, the first structure of the olfactory organ in the human embryo gives no indication of the future ample proportions of our catarrhine nose. It has the form in which we find it permanently in the fishes--a couple of simple depressions in the skin at the outer surface of the head. We find these blind olfactory pits in all the fishes; sometimes they lie near the eyes, sometimes more forward at the point of the muzzle, sometimes lower down, near the mouth (Figure 2.249).

(FIGURE 2.311. Frontal section of the mouth and throat of a human embryo, neck half-inch long. "Invented" by Wilhelm His. The vertical section (in the frontal plane, from left to right) is so constructed that we see the nasal pits in the upper third of the figure and the eyes at the sides: in the middle third the primitive gullet with the gill-clefts (gill-arches in section); in the lower third the pectoral cavity with the bronchial tubes and the rudimentary lungs.)

This first rudimentary structure of the double nose is the same in all the Gnathostomes; it has no connection with the primitive mouth. But even in a section of the fishes a connection of this kind begins to make its appearance, a furrow in the surface of the skin running from each side of the nasal pit to the nearest corner of the mouth. This furrow, the nasal groove or furrow (Figure 2.305 r), is very important. In many of the sharks, such as the Scyllium, a special process of the frontal skin, the nasal fold or internal nasal process, is formed internally over the groove (n, n apostrophe). In contrast to this the outer edge of the furrow rises in an "external nasal process." As the two processes meet and coalesce over the nasal groove in the Dipneusts and Amphibia, it is converted into a canal, the nasal canal. Henceforth we can penetrate from the external pits through the nasal canals direct into the mouth, which has been formed quite independently. In the Dipneusts and the lower Amphibia the internal aperture of the nasal canals lies in front (behind the lips); in the higher Amphibia it is right behind. Finally, in the three higher classes of Vertebrates the primary mouth-cavity is divided by the formation of the horizontal palate-roof into two distinct cavities--the upper (secondary) nasal cavity and the lower (secondary) mouth-cavity. The nasal cavity in turn is divided by the construction of the vertical septum into two halves--right and left.

(FIGURE 2.312. Diagrammatic section of the mouth-nose cavity. While the palate-plates (p) divide the original mouth-cavity into the lower secondary mouth (m) and the upper nasal cavity, the latter in turn is divided by the vertical partition (e) into two halves (n, n). (From Gegenbaur.))

Comparative anatomy shows us to-day, in the series of the double-nosed Vertebrates, from the fishes up to man, all the different stages in the development of the nose, which the advanced olfactory organ of the higher mammals has passed through at various periods in the course of its phylogeny. It first appears in the embryo of man and the higher Vertebrates, in which the double fish-nose persists throughout life. At an early stage, before there is any trace of the characteristic human face, a pair of small pits are formed in the head over the original mouth-cavity; these were first discovered by Baer, and rightly called the "olfactory pits" (Figures 2.306 n and 2.307 n). These primitive nasal pits are quite separate from the rudimentary mouth, which also originates as a pit-like depression in the skin, in front of the blind fore end of the gut. Both the pair of nasal pits and the single mouth-pit (Figure 2.310 m) are clothed with the horny plate. The original separation of the former from the latter is, however, presently abolished, a process forming above the mouth-pit--the "frontal process" (Figure 2.309 st). Its outer edge rises to the right and left in the shape of two lateral processes; these are the inner nasal processes or folds (in). Opposite to these a parallel ridge is formed on either side between the eye and the nasal pit; these are the outer nasal processes (an). Thus between the inner and outer nasal processes a groove-like depression is formed on either side, which leads from the nasal pit towards the mouth-pit (m); this groove is, as the reader will guess, the same nasal furrow or groove that we have already seen in the shark (Figure 2.305 r). As the parallel edges of the inner and outer nasal processes bend towards each other and join above the nasal groove, this is converted into a tube, the primitive nasal canal. Hence the nose of man and all the other Amniotes consists at this embryonic stage of a couple of narrow tubes, the nasal