2l8 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 



later it provided the chief source of inspiration for many early 

 Darwinians, who pushed it to an unwarranted extreme in 

 gathering support for the doctrine of descent. 



6. Rudimentary Organs. Finally, one other class of evi- 

 dence had been used by Chambers in his argument for trans- 

 formation I refer to the fact, then well known, that many 

 animals exhibit in their structure rudimentary organs which 

 are of no functional use, like the rudimentary digits of the 

 horse, the rudimentary teeth of whale embryos and many other 

 instances. Such abortive structures had seriously perplexed 

 the adherents of special creation who could offer no satisfac- 

 tory explanation of their presence. Yet, interpreted in the 

 light of descent, they are merely the persistent vestiges of 

 structures once possessed and actually used by the animal's an- 

 cestors, and still transmitted in their reduced form by inher- 

 itance. 



Such then, in brief, was the status of the case for the 

 transmutability of species before Darwin. It is true that as 

 yet no species had actually been observed in the process of the 

 making, and although the evidence for trans formism was en- 

 tirely circumstantial, the facts as known all pointed in the one 

 direction that of descent and strongly against the hypothesis 

 of special creation, for which there existed not a shred of evi- 

 dence that could be seriously considered as having a scientific 

 basis. A science, to develop, must have a working hypothesis, 

 and, even though actual demonstration is impossible, an hy- 

 pothesis that fits the facts as known is better than none at all 

 and far better than one that resorts to supernatural causation. 



This was the condition of the doctrine of transformism 

 when Darwin's work appeared. 



DARWIN 



In the brief limits of this lecture it is impossible to pause 

 long enough to give to Darwin his true relative position or to 

 adequately picture his pre-eminence over all of his predeces- 

 sors. 



