"Vestigial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standpoint is right, is not fear at least a vestigial organ, a survival of a mental activity which served its purpose in times gone by? Is it not even truer to go further still and say, as each particular fear serves its purpose it may safely be discarded, but that, as far as our present knowledge goes, other grades of sensitiveness, finer ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... tumults of youth and the contractions of senility. Man who used to weaken and die as his teeth decayed now looks forward to a continually lengthening, continually fuller term of years. And all those parts of him that once gathered evil against him, the vestigial structures and odd, treacherous corners of his body, you know better and better how to deal with. You carve his body about and leave it re-modelled and unscarred. The psychologists are learning how to mould minds, to reduce and remove bad complexes of thought and motive, to relieve pressures and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... modern conceptions of evolution. He felt sure the pig could not have been a special creation, because he had four toes, two of which, with all their bones and their hoofs, are quite useless to him. We now call these toes "vestigial," and know the pig's ancestors used them, walking on four toes and not on two, as at present. Buffon believed there were degenerations as well as developments, and considered the ape a degenerate man. He conceived these changes to be brought about by ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker |
