Rudiments. 1 17 



believe in spontaneous generation (life out of non- 

 life), admits miracles. " Ferriere of Haeckel's own 

 school answers in his book on Darwinism: "As if 

 the formation of living beings, by a crystallization 

 of carbon or lime, were not a miracle just as absurd 

 as" creation — but, after italicizing the absurdity of 

 Haeckel, he expresses the idea of creafion in terms 

 not unworthy of the school and its ancestry. Pro- 

 fanity, it would seem, is included by some of these 

 men among their scientific credentials, to commend 

 them to their kind. But, if that is only a sin which 

 they rather affect, there is something which is worse 

 in their eyes, and they seem unable to avoid it — 

 that is blundering. Without however pursuing any 

 such psychological rudiment back to its origin in 

 their moral structure, I prefer to hurry on to a char- 

 acteristic argument of theirs in the present question 

 of species, and with it to finish the definition of 

 species which has occupied us thus far. I refer to 

 what Mr. Darwin has called rudiments. 



129. It is found that in many an organism there 

 appear certain local structures quite useless as they 

 now stand. Man has certain muscles 



Rudiments. 



for moving his ears; but he never moves 

 them now; they seem to have lost some pristine am- 

 plitude, when the muscles might have been useful. 

 The great finny monster called the whale has imper- 

 fect legs, or similar structures of motor significance; 

 so has the boa; but these beasts never walk now- 

 And though the young whale in the foetus state has 



