MAN. THE INSTINCT OF LIFE ANI> DEATH. 35 1 



must be transformed into a cultivated and selected 

 flora. Although the organ in question may be of 

 doubtful utility, and although its existence, the 

 legacy of atavic heredity,- must be considered as a 

 .disharmony of human nature, Metchnikoff does not 

 go so far as to propose that it should be cut away, 

 and that we should call in surgery to assist in making 

 mankind perfect ! But the rational means he pro- 

 poses will be endorsed by the most' judicious students 

 of hygiene; and their effect, if it not as wonderful 

 as one hopes for, cannot fail to ameliorate the 

 conditions of old age and make it more vigorous. 



§ 3. Disharmonies in Human Nature. 



Another misery in the condition of man is due to 

 the dissidencies of his nature — that is to say, to his 

 physical imperfections and the discordancies which 

 exist between the physiological functions and the 

 instincts which should regulate them. 



This discordance reigns throughout the physical 

 organism. The body of man is not the perfect 

 masterpiece it was once supposed to be. It is 

 encumbered with annoying inutilities, with rudi- 

 mentary organs that have neither role nor function, 

 unfinished sketches which nature has left in the 

 different parts of his body. Such are the lachrymal 

 caruncle, a vestige of the third eyebrow in mammals; 

 the extrinsic muscles of the ear; the pineal gland of 

 the brain, which is only the rudiment of an ancestral 

 organ; the third eye, or the Cyclopean eye of the 

 saurians. The list is interminable. Wiedersheim has 

 counted in man 107 of these abortive hereditary 



