The opponents of evolution still appealed to these "special features" of human embryology, which were supposed to distinguish man from all the other mammals, even so late as ten years ago. But in 1890 Emil Selenka proved that the same features are found in the anthropoid apes, especially in the orang (_satyrus_), while the lower apes are without them. Thus Huxley's pithecometra thesis was substantiated once more: "The differences between man and the great apes are not so great as are those between the manlike apes and the lower monkeys." The supposed "evidences _against_ the near blood-relationship of man and the apes" proved, on a closer examination of the real circumstances, to be strong reasons in favor of it. Every scientist who penetrates with open eyes into this dark but profoundly interesting labyrinth of our embryonic development, and who is competent to compare it critically with that of the rest of the mammals, will find in it a most important aid towards the elucidation of the descent of our species. For the various stages of our embryonic development, in the character of _palingenetic_ phenomena of heredity, cast a brilliant light on the corresponding stages of our ancestral tree, in accordance with the great law of biogeny. But even the _cenogenetic_ phenomena of adaptation, the formation of the temporary foetal organs--the characteristic foetal membranes, and especially the placenta--gives us sufficiently definite indications of our _close genetic relationship with the primates_. CHAPTER V THE HISTORY OF OUR SPECIES Origin of Man--Mythical History of Creation--Moses and Linné--The Creation of Permanent Species--The Catastrophic Theory: Cuvier--Transformism: Goethe--Theory of Descent: Lamarck--Theory of Selection: Darwin--Evolution (Phylogeny)--Ancestral Trees--General Morphology--Natural History of Creation--Systematic Phylogeny--Fundamental Law of Biogeny--Anthropogeny--Descent of Man from the Ape--Pithecoid Theory--The Fossil Pithecanthropus of Dubois The youngest of the great branches of the living tree of biology is the science we call biological evolution, or _phylogeny_. It came into existence much later, and under much more difficult circumstances, than its natural sister, embryonic evolution or _ontogeny_. The object of the latter was to attain a knowledge of the mysterious processes by which the individual organism, plant or animal, developed from the egg. Phylogeny has to answer the much more obscure and difficult question: "What is the origin of the different organic species of plants and animals?"