The Evolution of Man, vol 1 by Ernst Haeckel (paper ebook reader .txt) 📕

Comparative anatomy furnishes a second series of facts which are of great importance for the forming of our inductive law. This branch of morphology compares the adult structures of living things, and seeks in the great variety of organic forms the stable and simple law of organisation, or the common type or structure. Since Cuvier founded this science at the beginning of the nineteenth century it has been a favourite study of the most distinguished scientists. Even before Cuvier’s time Goethe had been greatly stimulated by it, and induced to take up the study of morphology. Comparative osteology, or the philosophic study and comparison of the bony skeleton of the vertebrates—one of its most interesting sections—especially fascinated him, and led him to form the theory of the skull which I mentioned before. Comparative anatomy shows that the internal structure of the animals of each stem and the plants of each class is the same in its essential features, however much they differ in external appearance. Thus man has so great a resemblance in the chief features of his internal organisation to the other mammals that no comparative anatomist has ever doubted that he belongs to this class.

The whole internal structure of the human body, the arrangement of its various systems of organs, the distribution of the bones, muscles, blood-vessels, etc., and the whole structure of these organs in the larger and the finer scale, agree so closely with those of the other mammals (such as the apes, rodents, ungulates, cetacea, marsupials, etc.) that their external differences are of no account whatever. We learn further from comparative anatomy that the chief features of animal structure are so similar in the various classes (fifty to sixty in number altogether) that they may all be comprised in from eight to twelve great groups. But even in these groups, the stem-forms or animal types, certain organs (especially the alimentary canal) can be proved to have been originally the same for all. We can only explain by the theory of evolution this essential unity in internal structure of all these animal forms that differ so much in outward appearance.

This wonderful fact can only be really understood and explained when we regard the internal resemblance as an inheritance from common-stem forms, and the external differences as the effect of adaptation to different environments.

In recognising this, comparative anatomy has itself advanced to a higher stage. Gegenbaur, the most distinguished of recent students of this science, says that with the theory of evolution a new period began in comparative anatomy, and that the theory in turn found a touch stone in the science. “Up to now there is no fact in comparative anatomy that is inconsistent with the theory of evolution; indeed, they all lead to it. In this way the theory receives back from the science all the service it rendered to its method.” Until then students had marvelled at the wonderful resemblance of living things in their inner structure without being able to explain it. We are now in a position to explain the causes of this, by showing that this remarkable agreement is the necessary consequence of the inheriting of common stem-forms; while the striking difference in outward appearance is a result of adaptation to changes of environment. Heredity and adaptation alone furnish the true explanation.

But one special part of comparative anatomy is of supreme interest and of the utmost philosophic importance in this connection. This is the science of rudimentary or useless organs; I have given it the name of “dysteleology” in view of its philosophic consequences. Nearly every organism (apart from the very lowest), and especially every highly-developed animal or plant, including man, has one or more organs which are of no use to the body itself, and have no share in its functions or vital aims. Thus we all have, in various parts of our frame, muscles which we never use, as, for instance, in the shell of the ear and adjoining parts. In most of the mammals, especially those with pointed ears, these internal and external ear-muscles are of great service in altering the shell of the ear, so as to catch the waves of sound as much as possible. But in the case of man and other short-eared mammals these muscles are useless, though they are still present. Our ancestors having long abandoned the use of them, we cannot work them at all to-day. In the inner corner of the eye we have a small crescent-shaped fold of skin; this is the last relic of a third inner eye-lid, called the nictitating (winking) membrane. This membrane is highly developed and of great service in some of our distant relations, such as fishes of the shark type and several other vertebrates; in us it is shrunken and useless. In the intestines we have a process that is not only quite useless, but may be very harmful—the vermiform appendage. This small intestinal appendage is often the cause of a fatal illness. If a cherry-stone or other hard body is unfortunately squeezed through its narrow aperture during digestion, a violent inflammation is set up, and often proves fatal.

This appendix has no use whatever now in our frame; it is a dangerous relic of an organ that was much larger and was of great service in our vegetarian ancestors. It is still large and important in many vegetarian animals, such as apes and rodents.

There are similar rudimentary organs in all parts of our body, and in all the higher animals. They are among the most interesting phenomena to which comparative anatomy introduces us; partly because they furnish one of the clearest proofs of evolution, and partly because they most strikingly refute the teleology of certain philosophers. The theory of evolution enables us to give a very simple explanation of these phenomena.

We have to look on them as organs which have fallen into disuse in the course of many generations. With the decrease in the use of its function, the organ itself shrivels up gradually, and finally disappears. There is no other way of explaining rudimentary organs.

Hence they are also of great interest in philosophy; they show clearly that the monistic or mechanical view of the organism is the only correct one, and that the dualistic or teleological conception is wrong. The ancient legend of the direct creation of man according to a preconceived plan and the empty phrases about “design” in the organism are completely shattered by them. It would be difficult to conceive a more thorough refutation of teleology than is furnished by the fact that all the higher animals have these rudimentary organs.

The theory of evolution finds its broadest inductive foundation in the natural classification of living things, which arranges all the various forms in larger and smaller groups, according to their degree of affinity. These groupings or categories of classification—the varieties, species, genera, families, orders, classes, etc.—show such constant features of coordination and subordination that we are bound to look on them as genealogical, and represent the whole system in the form of a branching tree. This is the genealogical tree of the variously related groups; their likeness in form is the expression of a real affinity. As it is impossible to explain in any other way the natural tree-like form of the system of organisms, we must regard it at once as a weighty proof of the truth of evolution. The careful construction of these genealogical trees is, therefore, not an amusement, but the chief task of modern classification.

Among the chief phenomena that bear witness to the inductive law of evolution we have the geographical distribution of the various species of animals and plants over the surface of the earth, and their topographical distribution on the summits of mountains and in the depths of the ocean. The scientific study of these features—the “science of distribution,” or chorology (chora = a place)—has been pursued with lively interest since the discoveries made by Alexander von Humboldt. Until Darwin’s time the work was confined to the determination of the facts of the science, and chiefly aimed at settling the spheres of distribution of the existing large and small groups of living things. It was impossible at that time to explain the causes of this remarkable distribution, or the reasons why one group is found only in one locality and another in a different place, and why there is this manifold distribution at all. Here, again, the theory of evolution has given us the solution of the problem. It furnishes the only possible explanation when it teaches that the various species and groups of species descend from common stem-forms, whose ever-branching offspring have gradually spread themselves by migration over the earth. For each group of species we must admit a “centre of production,” or common home; this is the original habitat in which the ancestral form was developed, and from which its descendants spread out in every direction. Several of these descendants became in their turn the stem-forms for new groups of species, and these also scattered themselves by active and passive migration, and so on. As each migrating organism found a different environment in its new home, and adapted itself to it, it was modified, and gave rise to new forms.

This very important branch of science that deals with active and passive migration was founded by Darwin, with the aid of the theory of evolution; and at the same time he advanced the true explanation of the remarkable relation or similarity of the living population in any locality to the fossil forms found in it. Moritz Wagner very ably developed his idea under the title of “the theory of migration.” In my opinion, this famous traveller has rather over-estimated the value of his theory of migration when he takes it to be an indispensable condition of the formation of new species and opposes the theory of selection. The two theories are not opposed in their main features.

Migration (by which the stem-form of a new species is isolated) is really only a special case of selection. The striking and interesting facts of chorology can be explained only by the theory of evolution, and therefore we must count them among the most important of its inductive bases.

The same must be said of all the remarkable phenomena which we perceive in the economy of the living organism. The many and various relations of plants and animals to each other and to their environment, which are treated in bionomy (from nomos, law or norm, and bios, life), the interesting facts of parasitism, domesticity, care of the young, social habits, etc., can only be explained by the action of heredity and adaptation. Formerly people saw only the guidance of a beneficent Providence in these phenomena; to-day we discover in them admirable proofs of the theory of evolution. It is impossible to understand them except in the light of this theory and the struggle for life.

Finally, we must, in my opinion, count among the chief inductive bases of the theory of evolution the foetal development of the individual organism, the whole science of embryology or ontogeny. But as the later chapters will deal with this in detail, I need say nothing further here. I shall endeavour in the following pages to show, step by step, how the whole of the embryonic phenomena form a massive chain of proof for the theory of evolution; for they can be explained in no other way. In thus appealing to the close causal connection between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, and taking our stand throughout on the biogenetic law, we shall be able to prove, stage by stage, from the facts of embryology, the evolution of man from the lower animals.

The general adoption of the theory of evolution has definitely closed the controversy as to the nature or definition of the species. The