DECADENCE OF THE AMERICAN FOOT
THE ultimate destiny of the American foot is a subject which, through an enlightened selfishness, must more and more engage the interest of the American head and the sympathies of the American heart. Even apart from the question of its final fate and place in the scheme of things, the human foot, American and foreign, has many features of peculiar interest. In the singular complexity of its structure, closely (and as the scientists affirm, significantly) resembling that of the hand, lurk possibilities of controversy sufficient in themselves to tempt attention and invite research. In truth this honorable member’s framework may be said to consist mainly of bones of contention. Religion affirms of its arched instep, its flexible toes, its padded sole, and the other peculiarities of its intricate construction an obvious adaptability of means to an end: proof positive of intelligent design, and therefore of an intelligent Designer— vide Whateley, passim. Science coldly replies by pointing to the serviceable foot of the bear, which lacks the arched instep, and of the horse, which is without the flexible toes, or toes of any kind, and in which no use is made of the padded sole. To the simple purposes to which the human foot is applied, says the scientist, its complexity is in no sense nor degree contributory; it would perform all its offices equally well if it were a hoof. All the distinguishing features of the human foot, as contrasted with that, for example, of the horse or sheep, he avers to be such, variously modified by long and regrettable disuse, as fit animals for climbing trees and dwelling in the branches. The human foot is, in short, according to this view of the matter, nothing but an expurgated edition of that of the monkey, and a standing evidence of our descent from that tree-dwelling philosopher.
Into this controversy I do not purpose to enter; I prefer to stand afar off and suggest a compromise, whereby each contentionary may retain, with the other’s assent, all that essential part of his belief which is precious to his mind and heart. Let the scientist surrender so much of his theory as is incompatible with the assumption of creative design, the religionist so much of his faith as traverses the assertion of arboreal activity. The new theory, taking broad enough ground for all to stand upon, may be formulated somewhat as follows: The human foot as we have it was designed by an intelligent Power in order to fit mankind for an arboreal future.
Than this nothing could be fairer. It seems acceptable, and I hope it will be accepted by persons of every shade of religious faith and scientific conviction. It leaves the Christian his Adam, the Darwinian his Ape. Revealed in it, as in a magic crystal, we discern the engaging truth that the hope of Heaven and the belief in a more advanced stage of evolution are virtually the same thing—each in its way a prophecy of another and higher life. That we shall enjoy that superior existence in the flesh is a happiness that is but slightly impaired by the circumstance that it will be in the flesh of Posterity. This is a consideration indeed, that does not at all affect the interest of the evolutionist, for he never has had any expectations; and to the religious person there is a peculiar joy inhering in renunciation of his individual hope for the assurance of a racial advantage. In contemplation of Posterity frolicking blithely in its leafy and breezy environment, in shoeless nimbleness arboreally gay, every good soul will accept mortality without a pang.
But I have strayed a long way from the question of the ultimate destiny of the American foot. Be it now confessed in all candor that the compromise theory above propounded has a most dubious relevancy to that subject; for in the sylvan high-jinks of the Coming Man the Coming American will probably have no part. While the human foot in general shows no evidence of ever having been employed in its legitimate duty and future function; while Science is not justified in affirming its degeneracy from long disuse in climbing; nothing is more certain than that the American variety of it is doomed to a fatal atrophy from disuse in walking. In cities the multiplication of street-car lines points unmistakably to a time in the near future when there will be one or more in every street, with possibly a moving sidewalk, supplied with upholstered seats, on each side of the way. The universal use of the “elevator” in public and private buildings, including dwellings, will indubitably be followed by that of tubes for shooting the inmates out of the house and sucking the outmates in. With the general adoption of the traveling carpet, carrying chairs among the several rooms, the last vestigial excuse for the American urban foot will have been effaced, and that member will not lag superfluous on the stage, but in obedience to Nature’s mandate step down and out forthwith.
In the rural districts it will doubtless have a longer lease of life, owing partly to the conservative character of the people, the difficulty of hoeing corn while sitting, the saving badness of the roads—inhibiting vehicular “traffic” by all but the hardiest adventurers—and the intricacy of the trails, which forbids the general use of the steam bicycle in driving home the cows.
Eventually these disabilities will be overcome by American ingenuity, and the rural foot having no longer a function in the physical economy, will be absorbed into the character. Its relegation, with that of its urban congenitor, to Nature’s waste-dump in the tenebrous realm of things that are no more will mark the dawn of a new era in our life and be followed by radical and profound changes, particularly in the tactical movements of infantry.