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They conferred upon it a distinguished romance and mystery by identifying it as the last heir and vestigial remnant of a third eye, situated in the back of the head, which may still be observed in certain reptiles. Imagine it!
Now, the meaning of these anatomical homologies, biologists say, is that these animals are genetically related, that is, they had a common ancestry at some remote period in the past. The presence of vestigial organs in the higher animals supplies another argument for the belief in common descent.
The basic characteristics of every group in a high position may be traced back to some one or another of the divisions at a lower level, so that the general sequence of the structural levels from low to high becomes intelligible as the order of their evolution. To my mind the rudimentary and vestigial structures of animals are in themselves proof positive of a natural history of change.
Even Wallace, an evolutionist of Darwin's day, who did not believe in the evolution of man, calls attention to the fact that even the so-called vestigial hair on the human form is entirely absent from the back, while it is very abundant and useful on the backs of the monkey family.
In the human body there are now seventy vestigial structures, e.g., vermiform appendices, useful in the lower life but worse than useless in man.
The last pair, that on the eighth abdominal segment, consists of stigmata so small that to detect them we have to gather their position by that in the succeeding states of the larva and to pass a very patient magnifying-glass along the direction of the other pairs. These are as yet but vestigial stigmata. The others are fairly large, with pale, round, flat edges.
Whatever view we take of the origin of man, each organ in his frame must have a meaning; and, as these organs are vestigial and useless even in the lowest tribes of men, who represent primitive man, they must be vestiges of organs that were of use in a remote pre-human ancestor.
Concerning economic marriage as a vestigial survival, see, e.g., Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 212. Sénancour, De l'Amour, vol. ii, p. 233. The author of The Question of English Divorce attributes the absence of any widespread feeling against sexual license to the absurd rigidity of the law. Bruno Meyer, "Etwas von Positiver Sexualreform," Sexual-Probleme, Nov., 1908.
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