ORIGIN OF NEW ORGANS. 29 1 



of despair. Their ludicrous attempts to explain that rudi- 

 mentary organs were given to organisms by the Creator " for 

 the sake of symmetry," or " as a formal provision," or " in 

 consideration of his general plan of creation," sufficiently 

 prove the utter impotence of their perverse conception of 

 the universe. I must here repeat that, even if we knew 

 absolutely nothing of the other phenomena of development, 

 we should be obliged to believe in the truth of the Theory of 

 Descent, solely on the ground of the existence of rudimentary 

 organs. Not one of its opponents has been able to throw 

 even a feeble glimmer of an acceptable explanation upon 

 these exceedingly remarkable and important phenomena. 

 There is scarcely any highly developed animal or vegetable 

 form which has not some rudimentary organs, and in most 

 cases it can be shown that they are the products of natural 

 selection, and that they have become suppressed by disuse. 

 It is the reverse of the process of formation in which new 

 organs arise from adaptation to certain conditions of life, and 

 by the use of parts as yet incompletely developed. It is true 

 our opponents usually maintain that the origin of altogether 

 new parts is completely inexplicable by the Theory of 

 Descent. However, I distinctly assert that to those who 

 possess a knowledge of comparative anatomy and physiology 

 this matter does not present the slightest difficulty. Every 

 one who is familiar with comparative anatomy and the 

 history of development will find as little difficulty about 

 the origin of completely new organs as about the utter disap- 

 pearance of rudimentary organs. The disappearance of the 

 latter, viewed by itself, is the converse of the origin of the 

 former. Both processes are particular phenomena of differ- 

 entiation, which, like all others, can be explained quite 



