Abstract
I REGRET to find that I put an erroneous interpretation upon the phrase “non-significant organs,” as used by Prof. Ray Lankester. I never doubted that it meant organs or structures which were non-significant in respect to actual use; that, in short, it was his phrase for what other men have variously called aborted or rudimentary organs. He now explains that “non-significant,” in his terminology, means any variation from hereditary forms which is fortuitous—as unknown in respect to its origin as it is in respect to its actual or future use. Although I see no value in this phrase as descriptive of anything that exists, I see great value in Prof. Ray Lankester's admission that natural selection cannot act upon any structure which is not already developed up to the stage of actual use. This is really all I want for my previous argument, because all organs whatever do actually pass through rudimentary stages in which actual use is impossible. In no possible case, therefore, can selection explain the origin of any organic structure. I rejoice to find Prof. Ray Lankester denouncing as “an absurdity” the idea that “congenital variations are selected when they are not of any actual use.” It must therefore be quite according to the admitted constitution and course of Nature that we should find organs “on the rise,” as well as organs “on the wane.” All germs must be prophetic of their future use, so long as they are in germinal stages; and, if evolution be true, the world ought always to have been full of them, and ought to be full of them now, unless the creative or evolutionary work has been arrested, at least locally, and for a time.
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ARGYLL. Prophetic Germs. Nature 38, 564 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038564c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038564c0
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