Part 2 (2/2)

[14] Jena, Zeitschriften fur Naturwissenschaft, 1875 Vol x

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CHAPTER III

THE SKULL THEORY AND THE APE THEORY

Inas the theory of descent as an ”unproved hypothesis,” inasnores all the forcible evidences of that hypothesis, he deprives hi a decisive word in this, the most important scientific dispute of the present day Virchow is, in fact, sireat question of evolution, as he is deficient in the greater part of that knowledge--e--which is indispensable to for-point of the whole in of species--he can have no opinion, as he has never turned his attention to the systematic treatment of species: those transitions of one species into another, which he asks to see, abound on all sides, as is well known to every systeenera of Rubus and Salix a plants of the present period, and the A extinct animals Hence, too, Virchow can have no independent views as to the historical developher fro forms of the lower animals are almost unknown to him, and because he has hardly any conception of the marvellous strides which hundreds of industrious workers have made in this very department within the last twenty years But there can be no doubt, indeed it is already universally acknowledged, that it is precisely the comparative anatomy of the lower--nay, of the very lowest anireatest riddles of life, and rereatest obstacles fronores the fact that true Monads actually exist, and have been positively identified by anisans,” and he turns out the poor Bathybius with a kick And yet I believe that in ”Kosmos”[15] I have conclusively proved that Monads must retain their vast elementary importance whether the Bathybius actually exists or not

But even as regards the higher anihest next tothe views of y

We must here examine more closely into this, because it is precisely in this departical experiations as to the skulls of apes and of ht a closer acquaintance with y, and precisely here it is most clearly to be seen how little he is acquainted with the recent advances our science has made, and that he has hardly any conception of the extraordinary importance to that science of the theory of descent

The skull theory, as is well known, has for a long time been a very favourite theme, not only with prominent naturalists, but also with talented amateurs Undoubtedly the skull, viewed as the bony capsule which encloses our an of sense, our brain, has a special claieneral conformation of the skull corresponds on the whole to the developives an approximate idea of the outer surface of the brain In this correspondence lies the only sound kernel of the sickly, overgrown fancies of phrenology The various development of the skull allows of an approxirees of development of the brain and of the mental faculties The comparative study of the skulls of the vertebrate aniists by the end of the last century, when co to constitute a special science; and the genetic inquiry as to the rew out of it It was no less a reatest German poet who first answered this question, and propounded the theory that the skull was neither more nor less than the modified foreroups of bones which lie behind one another in the huher vertebrata, answer to the separate modified vertebrae This ”vertebral theory” of the skull, which Von Goethe and Oken simultaneously and independently attempted to prove, aroused universal interest and round for seventy years, while e upon it in detail

A quite new light was thrown on this, as on every other ical question, as soon as Darwin in 1859 had once more put into our hands the torch of the doctrine of descent The inquiry as to the origin of the skull now assuible forree so completely as to their essential internal structure that they can be rationally conceived of no otherwise than as branches of one stock and as descendants of one parent-form, the distinctly formulated question as to the skull theory which now started into prominence was this: ”How, historically, has the skull of inated from that of the lower animals? How is the development of the bones of the skull from the vertebrae to be proved?” The answer to these difficult questions was supplied by the first coenbaur After Huxley had pointed out that the ontogenesis or individual development of the skull by no enbaur brought forward evidence that the fundamental idea of that theory was correct; that the skull does in fact correspond to a series of coalescent vertebrae, but that the separate bones of the skull are not to be regarded as representing parts of such modified vertebrae The skull-bones of all recent vertebrate animals are rather, for the most part, dermal bones, which have coinous primitive skull We can even now trace the nuinal vertebrae, froinated, by the nuill-arches) which are attached to it, as well as by the number and position of those vertebrae, froinous fishes, or Selachians, have most nearly preserved the form and structure of this primordial skull These Selachians, the Rays and Sharks, are on the whole the creatures which throw the clearest light on the history of the lineage of the vertebrata and on the organisation of our primeval fish-natured ancestors It is one of the particular enbaur that he clearly and firmly established the place in nature of the Selachians as the common ancestors of all vertebrate animals frohly studied the coenetic issue froical problems at the hands of the theory of descent, can duly value the ienbaur has done by this and other ”Investigations into the Coations are asout of the wonderfully-extensive empirical materials for the subject, as by their critical acurasp At the saht the immeasurable value of the theory of descent in the causal explanation of the ht, therefore, with perfect right, enunciate this axiom in the Introduction to his ”Comparative Anatomy” ”The theory of descent will at once find a touchstone of proof in comparative anatomy Up to this time no experience in comparative anatomy has transpired which contradicts that theory; on the contrary, they all lead up to it Thus it will receive back froiven to scientific method: clearness and certainty” In point of fact we can adduce no ations which better support this declaration than those very phylogenetic researches ”as to the cranium of the Selachians, as a basis for the critical exaenesis of the craniuhly studied the old skull-hypothesis, and in his adiven an excellent exposition of it; as moreover he had produced ical anatoht have expected that he would have received Gegenbaur's grand reform of the theory of the skull, and historical solution of the skull-problereatest interest, and have made it the clue to his own further researches But we seek in vain through Virchow's latest contributions to the study of the hu Gegenbaur's investigations On the contrary, we see hioal in view, on that trodden and devious path of investigation which finds the highest ai of skulls, or cranionificance of the results of exact and careful descriptions and measurements of various conformations of the skull as an empirical basis for a true and scientific study of the skull--_ie_, for coy But still we must say that the way and method by which this skull measurement has, for ten years now, been pursued by nu scientific results; on the contrary, though it is cried up as the ”exact y” of the skull, it sie amount of time has in the last ten years been squandered in disputes as to the best ists concerned have not, in the first place, answered the obviously ain by this specialist , what proposition they mean to prove by it? Most of those nu beyond the perfect human skull, or at most the skulls of a few other y and historical development of the crania of the lower vertebrata are wholly unknown to them; and yet these last contain the true key to the cole month devoted by these ”exact skull enbaur's theory of the skull, and to testing the hypothesis by the skulls of Selachians, would have yielded the years of describing andhuman skulls, however various

Virchow hi example of the usual results of this so-called ”exactskulls In his popular essay on ”The Skulls of Men and Apes,” 1870, he concludes with this notable proposition:--”It is therefore self-evident that Man can never by any progressive developinated from the Apes” Every evolutionist who is fay will draw from them the opposite conclusion: ”It is self-evident that Man could only have originated froaniss us to that question which, in the popular treatment of the theory of descent, is justly considered as its most important outcome and as the keystone of the evolutionist edifice--to the well-known proposition, ”Man is descended fronore all the misrepresentation, distortion, and misinterpretation which this ape, or pithecoid hypothesis, has met with on all sides, ill only remark that this fundamental proposition, in the sense of our modern doctrine of evolution, can rationally have only this plainsince developed from the order of apes, indeed actually fro since extinct for series of his vertebrate ancestry were apes or ape-like ani species of apes is to be regarded as the unaltered posterity of that pri the ”ape question” in this sense, answers it, as Bastian also does, with the most positive contradiction ”We cannot teach the doctrine that man is descended froard it as a real acquisition of science” (p 31) Although I reeues, look upon the descent of enetic hypotheses, I will here expressly admit that the _relative_ certainty of this, as of all other historical hypotheses of descent, is not coeneral theory of descent It is now ten years since I first explicitly stated (in my ”Natural History of Creation,” vol ii p

358): ”The pedigree of the human race, like that of every anieneral hypothesis This, however, in no way affects the application of the theory of descent to man In this, as in all researches into the derivation of our organiseneral theory_ of descent and the _specific hypothesis_ of descent The general theory of descent claims full and permanent value, because it is inductively based on the whole range of coical phenomena and on their internal causal connection Each special hypothesis of descent, on the other hand, is conditional as to its specific value on the existing state of our biological inforrounds on which we deductively found the hypothesis, by our subjective inferences” And I must here emphatically add that I have on every opportunity repeated that reservation, and have always insisted on the difference which exists between the absolute certainty of transeneral and the relative certainty of each individual specific pedigree So that when Semper and others of ies as ”infallible dogmas,” it is simply false I have, on the contrary, pointed out on all occasions that I regard them only as _heuristic or provisional hypotheses_, and as a nate races of organic forms more and more approximately

Since the conception of the natural anienetic interpretation of ical affinity which that conception involves, afford in fact the only rational interpretation of that affinity in general, ical attempts soon found many imitators, and at the present time numerous industrious labourers in the different depart to find in the construction of such hypothetical genealogies the shortest and completest expression of the modern conception of structural affinity If Virchow had not been as ignorant of the true significance and ress and scientific contents, he must certainly have known this, and then he would surely have withheld his enetic studies as ”personal crotchets” and worthless dreay we haveout of the systeht and life it has at once thrown into the system that before was dead and cold, can only be known to those who have long and deeply studied specific syste of species; Virchow has not the remotest suspicion of it Moreover, these attee proportion of the phylogenetic hypotheses are regarded as very nearly certain, and can hardly undergo any further essential reater number of them are still in an unfixed state, and one systematist tries to improve the phylogenetic hypotheses are held to be alle-celled, of the Medusae from the hydroid Polyps, of the jointed fro insects, of amphibious animals from fishes, of birds from reptiles, of the placental mammalia from the marsupials, and so forth I personally consider the descent of ard this ical hypothesis as one of those which, up to the present time, rest on the best eo, in his celebrated ”Man's Place in Nature,” 1863, so admirably proved the undoubted ”descent of man from apes,” and so clearly discussed all the relations that had to be taken into consideration, that very little was left to others to do The result of his coations is contained in this proposition----” If we take up a systeans, be it which ill, the cohout the series of apes leads us to the sale visible character her apes than these do from the lower members of the saist, according to the principles of comparative systematisation, to ascribe to man any other place in the animal world than in the order of apes; and it is quite iroup as the Order of Apes, or, with Linnaeus, as the Prienetic construction of the system, the common descent of man and of apes from one corouping, and on this proposition only all the general inferences of the ”ape-hypothesis” depend As to what that common parent-forht probably be brought on opposite sides; but any one who knows the collected facts that bear upon the matter, and estimates them impartially, must, in conclusion, arrive at the certain conviction that that hypothetical and long-since extinct parent-forenuine apes; that is to say, of the placentalbefore our eyes we unhesitatingly class, on the ground of their zoological characters, as true apes, in the order of Apes or Prienetic hypotheses, we mayinto consideration and cole opponent of the ape-hypothesis has been able to coenetic hypothesis that has the faintest gliested, or can suggest, any other animal form that can serve as our nearest ancestor than the ape No one has ever reproachedthat Mother Nature has endowed ination; on the contrary, I aift of the Gods; but I have often and repeatedly exerted ination to picture to myself any known or unknown animal-form as the nearest parent-form to man in the place of the apes, and have always foundback upon the stock of apes Let me conceive of the outward conformation and the internal structure of the nearest mammalian ancestors of e that this hypothetical parent-forically-conceived order of apes, and cannot possibly be separated from the Simiadoe or Primates If, in spite of this, any one chooses, out of a ”personal crotchet,” to accept some other series of unknown ani to do with apes, that is but ain the air Our ape-hypothesis, on the other hand, is objectively and thoroughly proved by the essential agreement of the internal bodily structure of man and of apes, and by the identity of their embryonic development, as I have fully shown in my ”Evolution of Man” (chaps xix and xxvi) The y in the foreground, and throws on the theory of descent the task of producing an unbroken gradation of fossil transitional forms between the apes and ical question--in which I, as a professional zoologist, must decisively declare his incompetence The reasons why such a solution of the problem is not to be expected, the extraordinary iical record, the natural iical table, have been so lucidly unfolded by Darwin hiin of Species”) that I aed once more to come to the conclusion that Virchow has never read it with any attention

Besides, long before Darwin, the gifted Lyell, the great originator of ly how, for reater part of the fossil series must remain most imperfect, and these reasons were at a later period so often and so fully discussed (byothers, in chap xv of the ”History of Creation,”

vol ii pp 24-32) that it is wholly superfluous once more and in this place to state these well-known and time-worn questions It only sho little Virchoas acquainted with geology and palaeontology, and what a liment he can form of these historical causal relations

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Vol i p 293

CHAPTER IV

THE CELL-SOUL AND CELLULAR PSYCHOLOGY

No attack in Virchow's Munich address surprised me so much, and none so plainly betrayed the subversion of his ainst y A mystic dualism in his fundamental views is here revealed, which stands in the sharpest contrast to the ist of Wurzburg