EMBRYOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
the development of the species; if they are consistent they will demand that we return to the teachings of the “preformationists” of the eighteenth century—to the idea of endless encasement of one generation within an earlier one and hence to the special and supernatural creation of every child of Adam in the creation of Adam himself. When that comes to pass, there will probably be a demand that the teaching of embryology shall be abolished in all schools and colleges.
How much truer and better is the view that God made the first man as he has made the last and that divine power and wisdom are shown just as fully in the development of the last human child as in the origin of the first! The actual facts of development are no less wonderful than any conceivable acts of creation—indeed they are vastly more wonderful than any that were ever conceived in prescientific times. Just as astronomy and geology and physics and chemistry have given us grander views of the universe than were ever dreamed of before, so biology, and especially the study of development and evolution, have given us grander views of the living world—its unity, its antiquity, its mystery—than were ever before held or suspected.
REFERENCES
I. Older Classical Works
- Agassiz, Louis. Methods of Study in Natural History, Boston, 1863.
- Baer, Karl Ernst von. Ueber Entwicklungsgeschichte der Thiere. Königsberg, 1828.
- Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. First edition, 1859; sixth edition, 1877. Appleton, New York. The Descent of Man. First edition, 1871; second edition, 1874. Appleton, New York.
- Haeckel, Ernst. Natural History of Creation (English translation, 1870), 2 vols. Appleton, 1906. The Evolution of Man (English translation, 1879). Putnam, 1910.
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