MEASURING BODIES H 3
reconstruct the tree of life. Fossils might have provided the evi-
dence, for only they could record the actual ancestors of modern
forms. But the fossil record is extremely imperfect, and the major
trunks and branches of life's tree all grew before the evolution of
hard parts permitted the preservation of a fossil record at all. Some
indirect criterion had to be found. Ernst Haeckel, the great Ger-
man zoologist, refurbished an old theory of creationist biology and
suggested that the tree of life might be read directly from the
embryological development of higher forms. He proclaimed that
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" or, to explicate this mellifluous
tongue-twister, that an individual, in its own growth, passes
through a series of stages representing adult ancestral forms in
their correct order—an individual, in short, climbs its own family
tree.
Recapitulation ranks among the most influential ideas of late
nineteenth-century science. It dominated the work of several
professions, including embryology, comparative morphology, and
paleontology. All these disciplines were obsessed with the idea of
reconstructing evolutionary lineages, and all regarded recapitula-
tion as the key to this quest. The gill slits of an early human embryo
represented an ancestral adult fish; at a later stage, the temporary
tail revealed a reptilian or mammalian ancestor.
Recapitulation spilled forth from biology to influence several
other disciplines in crucial ways. Both Sigmund Freud and C. G.
Jung were convinced recapitulationists, and Haeckel's idea played
no small role in the development of psychoanalytic theory. (In
Totem and Taboo, for example, Freud tries to reconstruct human
history from a central clue provided by the Oedipus complex of
young boys. Freud reasoned that this urge to parricide must reflect
an actual event among ancestral adults. Hence, the sons of an
ancestral clan must once have killed their father in order to gain
access to women.) Many primary-school curriculums of the late
nineteenth century were reconstructed in the light of recapitula-
tion. Several school boards prescribed the Song of Hiawatha in early
grades, reasoning that children, passing through the savage stage
°f their ancestral past, would identify with it.*
hf eatifrS interested >n the justification provided for recapitulation by Haeckel and
h^hi Sues' anc^ m ^e reasons for its later downfall, may consult my dull, but
'ghly detailed treatise, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Harvard University Press, 1977.
