EVOLUTION OF THE GREAT TOE
Perhaps the most striking difference between the feet of men and apes lies in the relative size of the first and second toes. In the ape’s foot the second toe is longer than the first, whereas in modern civilised man’s foot the first or great toe is almost always the longer. Not so, however, with savages, who are intermediate in this as in other respects between man and ape; and there are various other facts which seem to indicate that the evolution of the great toe, like that of the other extreme of the body—the head and brain—is still in progress.
There is a notion very prevalent among artists that the second toe should be longer than the first. This idea, Professor Flower thinks, is derived from the Greek canon, which in its turn was copied from the Egyptian, and probably originally derived from the negro. It certainly does not represent what is most usual in our race and time. “Among hundreds of bare, and therefore undeformed, feet of children I lately examined in Perthshire, I was not able to find one in which the second toe was the longest. Since in all apes—in fact, in all other animals—the first toe is considerably shorter than the second, a long first toe is a specially human attribute; and instead of being despised by artists, it should be looked upon as a mark of elevation in the scale of organised beings.”
Mr. J. P. Harrison, after a careful examination of the unrestored feet of Greek and Roman statues in various museums and art galleries, wrote an article in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain (vol. xiii. 1884), in which he states that he was “led to the conviction that it was from Italy and not Greece that the long second toe affected by many English artists had been imported.” Among the Italians a longer second toe is common, as also among Alsatians; in England so rarely that its occurrence probably indicates foreign blood. Professor Flower, as we have seen, found no cases at all; Paget examined twenty-seven English males, in twenty-four of whom the great toe was the longer. “In the case of the female feet, in ten out of twenty-three subjects the first or great toe was longest, and in ten females it was shorter than the second toe. In the remaining three instances the first and second toes were of equal length.”
Bear these last sentences in mind a moment, till we have seen what is the case with savages. Says Dr. Bruner: “A slight shortening of the great toe undoubtedly exists, not merely amongst the Negro tribes, but also in ancient and modern Egyptians, and even in some of the most beautiful races of Caucasian females.” And Mr. Harrison found this to be, with a few exceptions, a general trait of savages. The great toe was shorter than the second in skeletons of Peruvians, Tahitians, New Hebrideans, Savage islanders, Ainos, New Caledonians.
Must we therefore agree with Carl Vogt when he says, “We may be sure that, whenever we perceive an approach to the animal type, the female is nearer to it than the male”?
Perhaps, however, we can find a solution of the problem somewhat less insulting to women than this statement of the ungallant German professor.
It is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that has thus apparently caused almost half the women to approximate the simian type of the foot; Fashion, which, by inducing women for centuries to thrust their tender feet into Spanish boots of torture, has taken from their toes the freedom of action requisite for that free development and growth which is to be noticed in almost all the men.
Considering the great difference between the left and the right foot, it appears almost incredible, but is a sober fact, that until about half a century ago “rights and lefts” were not made even for the men, who now always wear them. But even to-day “they are not, it is believed, made use of by women, except in a shape that is little efficacious,” says Mr. Harrison; and concerning the Austrians Dr. Schaffer remarks, similarly, that “the like shoe for the left and right foot is still in use in the vast majority of cases.” No wonder women are so averse to taking exercise, and therefore lose their beauty at a time when it ought to be still in full bloom. For to walk in such shoes must be a torture forbidding all unnecessary movement.
Once more be it said—it is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that is responsible for the inferior beauty of the average female foot, by preventing the free development and play of the toes which are absolutely necessary for a graceful walk.
To what an extent the woful rarity of a graceful gait is due to the shape of “fashionable” shoes is vividly brought out in a passage concerning the natives of Martinique, which appeared in a letter in the New York Evening Post: “Many of the quadroons are handsome, even beautiful, in their youth, and all the women of pure black and mixed blood walk with a lightness of step and a graceful freedom of motion that is very noticeable and pleasant to see. I say all the women; but I must confine this description to those who go shoeless, for when a negress crams her feet into even the best-fitting pair of shoes her gait becomes as awkward as the waddle of an Indian squaw, or of a black swan on dry land, and she minces and totters in such danger of falling forward that one feels constrained to go to her and say, ‘Mam’selle Ebène or Noirette, do, I beseech you, put your shoes where you carry everything else, namely, on the top of your well-balanced head, and do let me see you walk barefoot again, for I do assure you that neither your Chinese cousins nor your European mistresses can ever hope to imitate your goddess-like gait until they practise the art of walking with their high-heeled, tiny boots nicely balanced on their heads, as you so often are pleased to do.’”
There is another lesson to be learned from this discussion, namely, that in trying to establish the principles of Beauty, it is better to follow one’s own taste than adhere blindly to Greek canons, and what are supposed to be Greek canons. The longer second toe, as we have seen, is not a characteristic of Greek art, but due apparently to restorations made in Italy where this peculiarity prevails. The Greeks, indeed, never hesitated to idealise and improve Nature if caught napping; and there can be little doubt that if in their own feet the first toe had been shorter than the second, they would have made it longer all the same in their statues, following the laws of gradation and curvature which a longer second toe would interrupt. For it is undeniable that, as Mr. Harrison remarks, “a model foot, according to Flaxman, is one in which the toes follow each other imperceptibly in a graceful curve from the first or great toe to the fifth.”