The Evolution of Man, vol 1 | Page 3

to anatomy).
MYOTOMES: segments into which the muscles break up.
NEPHRA: the kidneys; hence:-- Nephridia: the rudimentary kidney-organs. Nephrotomes: the segments of the developing kidneys.
ONTOGENY: the science of the development of the individual (generally equivalent to embryology).
PERIGENESIS: the genesis of the movements in the vital particles.
PHAGOCYTES: cells that absorb food (phagein = to eat).
PHYLOGENY: the science of the evolution of species (phyla).
PLANOCYTES: cells that move about (planein).
PLASM: the colloid or jelly-like matter of which organisms are composed; hence:-- Caryoplasm: the matter of the nucleus (caryon). Cytoplasm: the matter of the body of the cell. Deutoplasm: secondary or differentiated plasm. Metaplasm: secondary or differentiated plasm. Protoplasm: primitive or undifferentiated plasm.
PLASSON: the simplest form of plasm.
PLASTIDULES: small particles of plasm.
POLYSPERMISM: the penetration of more than one sperm-cell into the ovum.
PRO- or PROT: (in compounds) the earlier form (opposed to META); hence:-- Prochorion: the first form of the chorion. Progaster: the first or primitive stomach. Pronephridia: the earlier form of the kidneys. Prorenal: the earlier form of the kidneys. Prostoma: the first or primitive mouth. Protists: the earliest or unicellular organisms. Provertebrae: the earliest phase of the vertebrae. Protophyta: the primitive or unicellular plants. Protoplasm: undifferentiated plasm. Protozoa: the primitive or unicellular animals.
RENAL: pertaining to the kidneys (renes).
SCATULATION: packing or boxing-up (scatula = a box).
SCLEROTOMES: segments into which the primitive skeleton falls.
SOMA: the body; hence:-- Cytosoma: the body of the cell (cytos). Episoma: the upper or back-half of the embryonic body. Somites: segments of the embryonic body. Hyposoma: the under or belly-half of the embryonic body.
TELEOLOGY: the belief in design and purpose (telos) in nature.
TELOLECITHAL: see LECITH-.
UMBILICAL: pertaining to the navel (umbilicus).
VITELLINE: pertaining to the yelk (vitellus).
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PREFACE.
[BY JOSEPH MCCABE.]
The work which we now place within the reach of every reader of the English tongue is one of the finest productions of its distinguished author. The first edition appeared in 1874. At that time the conviction of man's natural evolution was even less advanced in Germany than in England, and the work raised a storm of controversy. Theologians--forgetting the commonest facts of our individual development--spoke with the most profound disdain of the theory that a Luther or a Goethe could be the outcome of development from a tiny speck of protoplasm. The work, one of the most distinguished of them said, was "a fleck of shame on the escutcheon of Germany." To-day its conclusion is accepted by influential clerics, such as the Dean of Westminster, and by almost every biologist and anthropologist of distinction in Europe. Evolution is not a laboriously reached conclusion, but a guiding truth, in biological literature to-day.
There was ample evidence to substantiate the conclusion even in the first edition of the book. But fresh facts have come to light in each decade, always enforcing the general truth of man's evolution, and at times making clearer the line of development. Professor Haeckel embodied these in successive editions of his work. In the fifth edition, of which this is a translation, reference will be found to the very latest facts bearing on the evolution of man, such as the discovery of the remarkable effect of mixing human blood with that of the anthropoid ape. Moreover, the ample series of illustrations has been considerably improved and enlarged; there is no scientific work published, at a price remotely approaching that of the present edition, with so abundant and excellent a supply of illustrations. When it was issued in Germany, a few years ago, a distinguished biologist wrote in the Frankfurter Zeitung that it would secure immortality for its author, the most notable critic of the idea of immortality. And the Daily Telegraph reviewer described the English version as a "handsome edition of Haeckel's monumental work," and "an issue worthy of the subject and the author."
The influence of such a work, one of the most constructive that Haeckel has ever written, should extend to more than the few hundred readers who are able to purchase the expensive volumes of the original issue. Few pages in the story of science are more arresting and generally instructive than this great picture of "mankind in the making." The horizon of the mind is healthily expanded as we follow the search-light of science down the vast avenues of past time, and gaze on the uncouth forms that enter into, or illustrate, the line of our ancestry. And if the imagination recoils from the strange and remote figures that are lit up by our search-light, and hesitates to accept them as ancestral forms, science draws aside another veil and reveals another picture to us. It shows us that each of us passes, in our embryonic development, through a series of forms hardly less uncouth and unfamiliar. Nay, it traces a parallel between the two series of forms. It shows us man beginning his existence, in the ovary of the female infant, as