Nay, it is certain that Plato's attention was drawn to some of these facts, and that he makes use of them in a way that is as legitimately a probable occurrence as any use that is made of them at the present day. For example, he was struck with the existence of what in scientific parlance are called "rudiments," a term that is employed to describe an organ or part which appears to have no special use where it is found in one animal, but which, in a more developed or in a diversified condition, has an obvious use in another animal. Thus, he tells us that the gods, with a long-sighted providence, introduced a sketch or rudiment of nails into the earliest organization of man, foreseeing that the lower animals would be produced from the degeneration of man, and that to them claws and nails would be absolutely indispensable.[32] In the same way, he seems to regard hair as a rudiment, relatively speaking; for while its use on different parts of the body of man, or even on the head, is not very apparent, its use to the lower animals is very obvious. Why, then, is it not just as rational, and just as much in accordance with proper scientific reasoning, to suppose those parts of animal structure which are called "rudiments" to have been introduced as mere sketches in the organization of a very high animal, and then to have been developed into special uses in lower animals produced by the degeneration of the higher, as it is to suppose that they were developed in full activity and use in the lower animals, but sank into the condition of useless or comparatively useless appendages as the higher animal was evolved out of the lower by a process of elevation? The modern naturalist of the evolution school will doubtless say that "rudiments" in the human structure, for which there is no assignable use that can be observed, are not to be accounted for as sketches from which Nature was to work, in finding for them a use in some other animal in a developed and practically important condition; that, to the extent to which such things are found in man, they are proofs of his cognate relations to the lower animals, in which they have a palpable use; and that the gradations by which they have proceeded from practical and important uses in the lower animals, until they have become mere useless or comparatively useless sketches in the human structure, are among the proofs of the descent of man from the lower animals which had a use for such things. I shall endeavor hereafter to examine the argument that is derived from "rudiments" more closely. At present, the point which I suggest to the mind of the reader arises in the parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory of the origin of the different species of animals. I ask, why is it not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that man was first created with these rudimentary sketches in his organization, and that they became useful appendages