THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 291 



In fine, it must be recognized, once for all, that organisms 

 are not -molded on a Lamarckian basis of use, nor yet on a 

 Darwinian basis of selected utility. Expediency, in other 

 words, is not the sole governing principle of the organic world. 

 Neither instinctive habitude nor the struggle for existence 

 succeeds in forcing structural adaptation of a predictable 

 nature. Animals with different organic structure have the 

 same instincts, e.g. monkeys with, and without, prehensile tails 

 alike dwell in trees; while animals having the same organic 

 structure may have different instincts, e.g. the rabbit, which 

 burrows, and the hare, which does not, are practically identical 

 in anatomical structure. Again, some animals are highly spe- 

 cialized for a function, which other animals perform without 

 specialized organs, as is instanced in the case of moles, which 

 possess a special burrowing apparatus, and prairie-dogs, which 

 burrow without a specialized apparatus. Any system of evo- 

 lution, which ignores the mternal or hereditary factors of 

 organic life and strives to explain all in terms of the environ- 

 mental factors, encounters an insuperable obstacle in this re- 

 morseless resistance of conflicting facts. 



Another flaw in the Darwinian argument from rudimentary 

 organs is that it confounds, in many cases, apparent, with real 

 inutility (or absence of function). Darwin and his followers 

 frequently argued out of their ignorance, and falsely concluded 

 that an organ was destitute of a function, merely because they 

 had failed to discover its utility. Large numbers, accordingly, 

 of highly serviceable organs were catalogued as vestigial or 

 rudimentary, simply because nineteenth century science did 

 not comprehend their indubitable ^utility. With the advance 

 of present-day physiology, this list of "useless organs" is being 

 rapidly depleted, so that the scientific days of the rudimentary 

 organ appear to be numbered. At any rate, in arbitrarily 

 pronouncing many important and functioning organs to be 

 useless vestiges of a former stage in the history of the race, 

 the Darwinians were not the friends of Science, but rather 

 its reactionary enemies, inasmuch as they sought to discourage 



