160 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



no trace of it. In only two out of thirty female subjects 

 was this muscle developed on both sides, but in three 

 others the rudimentary ligament was present. This 

 muscle, therefore, appears to be much more common in 

 the male than in the female sex ; and on the belief in the 

 descent of man from some lower form the fact is intelli- 

 gible ; for it has been detected in several of the lower 

 animals, and in all of these it serves exclusively to aid the 

 male in the act of reproduction. 



Pa*e 43 That this unknown factor is reversion to a 



former state of existence may be admitted as 

 in the highest degree probable. It is quite incredible that 

 a man should through mere accident abnormally resemble 

 certain apes in no less than seven of his muscles, if there 

 had been no genetic connection between them. On the 

 other hand, if man is descended from some ape-like crea- 

 ture, no valid reason can be assigned why certain muscles 

 should not suddenly reappear after an interval of many 

 thousand generations, in the same manner as with horses, 

 asses, and mules, dark-colored stripes suddenly reappear 

 on the legs and shoulders, after an interval of hundreds, 

 or more probably of thousands, of generations. 



REVERSION IN THE HUMAN FAMILY. 



Animals and When the child resembles either grand- 

 Plants, Vol. parent more closely than its immediate parents, 

 1 page ' our attention is not much arrested, though in 

 truth the fact is highly remarkable ; but when the child 

 resembles some remote ancestor or some distant member 

 in a collateral line — and in the last case we must attribute 

 this to the descent of all the members from a common 

 progenitor — we feel a just degree of astonishment. When 



