CURIOSITIES OF EVOLUTION. 783 



whicli have already been brought about as described, " fresh types 

 of conduct gradually set into form and give rise to corresponding- 

 rules. These rules are the body of morals." * Nor is this all. As 

 this conduct becomes habitual in the individual it affects him physi- 

 ologically as well as psychologically, and through the changed cere- 

 bral structure which it produces, it is transmitted to his offspring, 

 to become in the long process of the ages those moral intuitions 

 which we group under the name of conscience. Note further that 

 the kinds of conduct which our intuitions regard as authoritatively 

 prescribed are such as long social contact has shown to be essen- 

 tial to the well-being of society, and that this same well-being 

 furnishes us the test of our duty to fulfill obligations which for 

 any reason have become ambiguous and indefinite. May we not 

 conclude, then, that the fulfillment of duty to self and to society is 

 the true end of economic action ? If so, " let us bind love with 

 duty, for duty is the love of law, and law is the nature of the 

 Eternal " f 



♦♦♦ 



CURIOSITIES OF EVOLUTION. 



Br Mes. ALICE BODINGTON. 



"■^rOTHING is more strange in the history of evolution than 

 -L^ the persistence of rudimentary structures, which have lost 

 all usefulness untold generations ago, and in many cases have 

 become absolutely dangerous to the organism. Among these sur- 

 vivals, one of the most curious is the pisiform bone of the wrist, 

 which careful researches in comparative anatomy show to be the 

 carpal or wrist bone belonging to a long-vanished sixth finger. 

 The oldest mammals discovered have never more than five fingers. 

 It is necessary to go back to amphibian forms to find a sixth fin- 

 ger, yet all mammals possess the wrist-bone formerly belonging 

 to it. The pineal gland, once supposed, for want of a better hy- 

 pothesis, to be the seat of the soul, is a still more curious instance 

 of survival, inherited probably from some transparent inverte- 

 brate ancestor with a median eye. 



In mammals the jDineal gland is deeply sunk beneath the 

 highly developed intellectual portion of the brain, in a position 

 utterly cut off from all possible communication with the outer 

 world. Human physiology alone would have left us utterly with- 

 out a clew as to the original use of this mysterious body. The 

 secret was discovered after long and patient study of the brains of 

 amphibians and reptiles. In these animals the intellectual portion 

 of the brain (cerebrum) is in a very undeveloped condition, and 



* Martineau, " Types of Ethical Theory," vol. ii, p. 3*74. 

 f " Daniel Deronda," George Eliot, vol. ii, p. 335. / 



