In the _Descent of Man_ occurs the following passage, which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching. It has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex.... Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous.(268) But here we encounter a singular difficulty. _In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculæ prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac._ Other analogous facts could be added. Are we, then, to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This seems very improbable,(269) _for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms_.(270) Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem from which the Mammalia sprang. His explanation runs: That various accessory organs, proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the other.(271) He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or ornament by male birds” and only _partially_ inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes the old fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs equally mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life. The Occult doctrine, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized upon the origin of the first man.