In a certain sense, the true science of man, rational anthropology, takes precedence of every other science. The saying of the ancient sage, "Man, know thyself," and that other famous maxim, "Man is the measure of all things," have been accepted and applied from all time. And yet this science--taking it in its widest sense--has languished longer than all other sciences in the fetters of tradition and superstition. We saw in the first section how slowly and how late the science of the human organism was developed. One of its chief branches--embryology--was not firmly established until 1828 (by Baer), and another, of equal importance--the cellular theory--until 1838 (by Schwann). And it was even later still when the answer was given to the "question of all questions," the great riddle of the origin of man. Although Lamarck had pointed out the only path to a correct solution of it in 1809, and had affirmed the descent of man from the ape, it fell to Darwin to establish the affirmation securely fifty years afterwards, and to Huxley to collect the most important proofs of it in 1863, in his _Place of Man in Nature_. I have myself made the first attempt, in my _Anthropogeny_ (1874), to present in their historical connection the entire series of ancestors through which our race has been slowly evolved from the animal kingdom in the course of many millions of years.
V.--PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
From The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century by Ernst Haeckel.
