286 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



the adult, but from the embryonic forms of the anthropoids 

 whose more favorable form of skull they managed to pre- 

 serve in further growth.' . . . Schwalbe makes the telling 

 criticism of these views of Kollmann that much the same 

 thing might be said of the heads of embryonic animals in 

 general that is said of those of apes, and that thus mammals 

 might be said to have come from a more man-like ancestor." 

 {Op. cit., pp. 186, 187.) All of which goes to show that the 

 ''biogenetic law" is more misleading than helpful in settling 

 the question of human phylogeny. 



§ 3. Rudimentary Organs 



Darwin attached great importance to the existence in man 

 of so-called rudimentary organs, which he regarded as con- 

 vincing evidence of man's descent from the lower forms of 

 animal life. Nineteenth century science, being ignorant of 

 the functional purpose served by many organs, arbitrarily 

 pronounced them to be useless organs, and chose, in conse- 

 quence, to regard them all as the atrophied and (wholly or 

 partially) functionless remnants of organs that were formerly 

 developed and fully functional in remote ancestors of the race. 

 Darwin borrowed this argument from Lamarck. It may be 

 stated thus: Undeveloped and functionless organs are 

 atrophied organs. But atrophy is the result of disuse. Now 

 disuse presupposes former use. Consequently, rudimentary 

 organs were at one time developed and functioning, viz. in the 

 remote ancestors of the race. Since, therefore, these self- 

 same organs are developed and functional in the lower forms 

 of life, it follows that the higher forms, in which these organs 

 are reduced and functionless, are descended from forms similar 

 to those in which said organs are developed and fully func- 

 tional. 



This argument, however, fairly bristles with assumptions 

 that are not only wholly unwarranted, but utterly at variance 

 with actual facts. In the first place, it wrongly assumes that 

 all reduced organs are functionless, and, conversely, that all 



