How the Arch was Built.

Did I not know something of the severity of the judges in such a Court of Appeal as we are facing in this case and of the opposing counsel—of the jury I have less fear—I should be disposed to settle on a half-sheet of note-paper the problem that non-arboreal man settled ages ago for himself on the ground, by a familiar saying. It really meets the non-scientific mind which is not weighed down by what Captain Marryat used to call “top-hamper,” to answer Solvitur Ambulando. But I hear judges and counsel both saying “This will never do,” and must address myself to opening up the case.

If an adventurous gorilla and his mate, whom we may call gorilla Columbi, had long ago made a bid for a life completely terrestrial rather than partly arboreal, it is difficult to imagine how the feet of this pair could have failed to adjust themselves and their separate tarsal elements to a better if rudimentary form like that of man, and that their progeny would not have followed or improved upon this. Professor Keith,[70] in his work referred to, and Professor Wood Jones in Arboreal Man, have much to say on the evolution of man’s foot and arch, and I mention this ab initio so as to be free from any supposed claim to originality which is apt in the present extended range of scientific progress to be as damaging to a man as for him to proclaim his honesty or a woman her virtue. And I also formally grant to the Mendelians and Mutationists, without offence and with some possible relief to their minds, a period of leave from this poor trench-warfare—Plasto-diēthēsis will not be obliged to call in at the place of its hyphen any reinforcements from these of the higher command.

The assumed precursor of our human walker was probably more highly evolved in his own special line than the real ancestor, but we have so little yet of discoveries of whole skeletons of earliest man that the bodily structure of gorilla C. may fairly be taken as a starting point, indeed he is for this purpose a valuable lay-figure, almost artistic for once, on which may be draped the following story of the making of an arch. The ultimate verdict, which word I use in the old English sense of a “true saying” rather than the most recent declara­tion of those who “ride on white asses and sit in judgment,” does not therefore invalidate the verisimilitude of this picture. One may go farther and affirm that, given certain anatomical and physiological facts in an earlier Primate stock, which marvellously resemble those of modern man, and it must follow as the night the day that his more primitive physical basis employed in a new mode of progression, that is of terrestrial walking on two feet, will be converted by use and habit into the construc­tion of such new formations as will best agree with the new style—in other words, in this instance, a plantar arch.