Man And His Ancestor: A Study In EvolutionMorris, Charles
Science
Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution
Morris, Charles
Human beings -- Origin
When, not many years ago, men began to find the fossil remains of
ancient structures in the body of man himself, theology was brought face
to face with a problem as difficult to explain, from its special point
of view, as that of the fossils in the rocks. As the latter had
threatened and finally disproved the doctrine of the special creation of
the earth, so the former assailed the doctrine of the special creation
of man, and annihilated it in the minds of many eminent scientists. It
formed a prominent argument in favor of the theory of organic evolution,
and as such calls for consideration here, as a suitable groundwork for
our special theme.
The structures referred to may justly be called fossil, since they
present strong evidence of being the useless remains of structures which
played an active part in the bodies of some former animals. A
significant example of this exists in the vermiform appendix, a narrow,
blind tube descending from the cæcum of man, and detrimental instead of
useful, since it is the seat of the frequently fatal disease known as
appendicitis. This tube, usually from three to six inches long and of
the thickness of a goose quill, is occasionally absent in man,
occasionally of considerable size. It is quite large, as compared with
the other intestines, in the human embryo, but ceases to grow after a
certain stage of development. The cæcum is extremely long in some of the
lower vegetable-eating animals, and the vermiform appendix seems to be a
rudiment of the formerly extended portion of this organ. It is large in
the anthropoid apes, especially in the orang, in which it is very long
and spirally convoluted. Its survival in man as a useless and dangerous
aborted organ is a powerful argument in favor of his descent from the
lower animals.
In the brain of man and many of the lower vertebrates, hanging by two
peduncles, or strands of nerve fibre, from the thalami, or beds of the
optic nerve, is a small rounded or heart-shaped body of about the size
of a pea, known as the pineal gland. It is so destitute of any evident
function that Descartes, in lack of any more probable explanation of its
presence, ascribed to it the noble duty of serving as the seat of the
soul. Late research has been more successful in tracking this organ to
its lair. It is larger in the embryo than in the adult man, still larger
in some lower vertebrates, and in certain lizards has been found to
exist as an eye, its parts plainly distinguishable under the microscope.
It is placed in the middle of the forehead, between the other eyes, and
was no doubt an active organ of vision in some ancient batrachians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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