In fine, it must be recognized, once for all, that organisms are
not-molded on a Lamarckian basis of use, nor yet on a Darwinian
basis of selected utility. Expediency, in other words, is not the
sole governing principle of the organic world. Neither instinctive
habitude nor the struggle for existence succeeds in forcing structural
adaptation of a predictable nature. Animals with different organic
structure have the same instincts, _e.g._ monkeys with, and without,
prehensile tails alike dwell in trees; while animals having the same
organic structure may have different instincts, _e.g._ the rabbit,
which burrows, and the hare, which does not, are practically identical
in anatomical structure. Again, some animals are highly specialized for
a function, which other animals perform without specialized organs, as
is instanced in the case of moles, which possess a special burrowing
apparatus, and prairie-dogs, which burrow without a specialized
apparatus. Any system of evolution, which ignores the internal or
hereditary factors of organic life and strives to explain all in terms
of the environmental factors, encounters an insuperable obstacle in
this remorseless resistance of conflicting facts.
Another flaw in the Darwinian argument from rudimentary organs is
that it confounds, in many cases, _apparent_, with _real_ inutility
(or absence of function). Darwin and his followers frequently argued
out of their ignorance, and falsely concluded that an organ was
destitute of a function, merely because _they_ had failed to discover
its utility. Large numbers, accordingly, of highly serviceable organs
were catalogued as vestigial or rudimentary, simply because nineteenth
century science did not comprehend their indubitable utility. With the
advance of present-day physiology, this list of “useless organs” is
being rapidly depleted, so that the scientific days of the rudimentary
organ appear to be numbered. At any rate, in arbitrarily pronouncing
many important and functioning organs to be useless vestiges of a
former stage in the history of the race, the Darwinians were not the
friends of Science, but rather its reactionary enemies, inasmuch as
they sought to discourage further investigation by their dogmatic
decision that there was no function to be found. In so doing, however,
they were merely exploiting the ignorance of their times in the
interest of a preconceived theory, which whetted their appetite for
discovering, at all costs, the presence in man of functionless organs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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