ORIGIN OF NEW ORGANS. 291 
of despair. Their ludicrous attempts to explain that rudi- 
mentary organs were given to organisms by the Creator “for 
the sake of symmetry,” or “as a formal provision,” or “ 
consideration of his general plan of creation,” sufficiently 
prove the utter impotence of their perverse conception of 
the universe. I must here repeat that, even if we knew 
absolutely nothing of the other phenomena of development, 
we should be obliged to believe in the truth of the Theory of 
Descent, solely on the ground of the existence of rudimentary 
organs. Not one of its opponents has been able to throw 
even a feeble glimmer of an acceptable explanation upon 
these exceedingly remarkable and important phenomena. 
There is scarcely any highly developed animal or vegetable 
form which has not some rudimentary organs, and in most 
cases it can be shown that they are the products of natural 
selection, and that they have become suppressed by disuse. 
It is the reverse of the process of formation in which new 
organs arise from adaptation to certain conditions of life, and 
by the use of parts as yet incompletely developed. It is true 
our opponents usually maintain that the origin of altogether 
new parts is completely inexplicable by the Theory of 
Descent. However, I distinctly assert that to those who 
possess a knowledge of comparative anatomy and physiology 
this matter does not present the slightest difficulty. Every 
one who is familiar with comparative anatomy and the 
history of development will find as little difficulty about 
the origin of completely new organs as about the utter disap- 
in 
pearance of rudimentary organs. The disappearance of the 
latter, viewed by itself, is the converse of the origin of the 
former. Both processes are particular phenomena of differ- 
entiation, which, like all others, can be explained quite 
