The Evolution of Man

by Ernst Haeckel

If we compare these permanent blastulæ with the free-swimming ciliated larvæ or blastulæ, with similar construction, of many of the lower animals, we can confidently deduce from them that there was a very early and long-extinct common stem-form of substantially the same structure as the blastula. We may call it the Blastæa. Its body consisted, when fully formed, of a simple hollow ball, filled with fluid or structureless jelly, with a wall composed of a single stratum of ciliated cells. There were probably many genera and species of these blastæads in the Laurentian period, forming a special class of marine protists.

It is an interesting fact that in the plant kingdom also the simple hollow sphere is found to be an elementary form of the multicellular organism. At the surface and below the surface (down to a depth of 2000 yards) of the sea there are green globules swimming about, with a wall composed of a single layer of chlorophyll-bearing cells. The botanist Schmitz gave them the name of Halosphæra viridis in 1879.

The next stage to the Blastæa, and the sixth in our genealogical tree, is the Gastræa that is developed from it. As we have already seen, this ancestral form is particularly important. That it once existed is proved with certainty by the gastrula, which we find temporarily in the ontogenesis of all the Metazoa (Fig. 29 J, K). As we saw, the original, palingenetic form of the gastrula is a round or oval uni-axial body, the simple cavity of which (the primitive gut) has an aperture at one pole of its axis (the primitive mouth). The wall of the gut consists of two strata of cells, and these are the primary germinal layers, the animal skin-layer (ectoderm) and vegetal gut-layer (entoderm).

The actual ontogenetic development of the gastrula from the blastula furnishes sound evidence as to the phylogenetic origin of the Gastræa from the Blastæa. A pit-shaped depression appears at one side of the spherical blastula (Fig. 29 H). In the end this invagination goes so far that the outer or invaginated part of the blastoderm lies close on the inner or non-invaginated part (Fig. 29 J). In explaining the phylogenetic origin of the gastræa in the light of this ontogenetic process, we may assume that the one-layered cell-community of the blastæa began to take in food more largely at one particular part of its surface. Natural selection would gradually lead to the formation of a depression or pit at this alimentary spot on the surface of the ball. The depression would grow deeper and deeper. In time the vegetal function of taking in and digesting food would be confined to the cells that lined this hole; the other cells would see to the animal functions of locomotion, sensation, and protection. This was the first division of labour among the originally homogeneous cells of the blastæa.

Fig. 231—The Norwegian Magosphæra planula, swimming about by means of the lashes or cilia at its surface.
Fig. 232—Section of same, showing how the pear-shaped cells in the centre of the gelatinous ball are connected by a fibrous process. Each cell has a contractile vacuole as well as a nucleus.

The effect, then, of this earliest histological differentiation was to produce two different kinds of cells—nutritive cells in the depression and locomotive cells on the surface outside. But this involved the severance of the two primary germinal layers—a most important process. When we remember that even man’s body, with all its various parts, and the body of all the other higher animals, are built up originally out of these two simple layers, we cannot lay too much stress on the phylogenetic significance of this gastrulation. In the simple primitive gut or gastric cavity of the gastrula and its rudimentary mouth we have the first real organ of the animal frame in the morphological sense; all the other organs were developed afterwards from these. In reality, the whole body of the gastrula is merely a “primitive gut.” I have shown already (Chapters VIII and XIX) that the two-layered embryos of all the Metazoa can be reduced to this typical gastrula. This important fact justifies us in concluding, in accordance with the biogenetic law, that their ancestors also were phylogenetically developed from a similar stem-form. This ancient stem-form is the gastræa.

The gastræa probably lived in the sea during the Laurentian period, swimming about in the water by means of its ciliary coat much as free ciliated gastrulæ do to-day. Probably it differed from the existing gastrula only in one essential point, though extinct millions of years ago. We have reason, from comparative anatomy and ontogeny, to believe that it multiplied by sexual generation, not merely asexually (by cleavage, gemmation, and spores), as was no doubt the case with the earlier ancestors. Some of the cells of the primary germ-layers probably became ova and others fertilising sperm. We base these hypotheses on the fact that we do to-day find the simplest form of sexual reproduction in some of the living gastræads and other lower animals, especially the sponges.

The fact that there are still in existence various kinds of gastræads, or lower Metazoa with an organisation little higher than that of the hypothetical gastræa, is a strong point in favour of our theory. There are not very many species of these living gastræads; but their morphological and phylogenetic interest is so great, and their intermediate position between the Protozoa and Metazoa so instructive, that I proposed long ago (1876) to make a special class of them. I distinguished three orders in this class—the Gastremaria, Physemaria, and Cyemaria (or Dicyemida). But we might also regard these three orders as so many independent classes in a primitive gastræad stem.