Many problems faced non-arboreal man as he descended from the trees to claim his suzerainty and place of toil. Not least among them was the question of methods of protec­tion against the terrible creatures among which he was to live. Their produc­tion must needs be slow, and for him to meet by “direct action” with weapons invented ad hoc the fierce large carnivora and clumsy but dangerous dinosaurs would have proved highly dangerous. Too long had they been in possession of his Canaan, and he could not cross his Jordan, walk seven times round their Jericho, blowing with trumpets of rams’ horns, and on the seventh day march in and “consolidate his position.” He had first to do what his descendants have always been bound to do; he had to learn to walk terrestrially long before he could think and live imperially. Sufficient for him was the evil of his day, and, as an old arboreal denizen he had much to learn and not a little to unlearn; and we know from the prehistoric pictures of his own doings and trophies, that he did in course of ages learn to walk, run and jump with variety of step and efficiency unknown in any other Primate group. We can ask, and we can but supply speculative answers as to the details of how he did it, but somewhere and at some time he learned first to become as good a walking animal as later he became a talking one, and some at any rate of the steps of the process are plain for all to read to-day.

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.

An Unique Phenomenon.

That a plantar arch is peculiar to man is a matter of fact, and Lydekker in the Royal Natural History, Vol. I., p. 41, says of the gorilla’s foot incidentally “there is no sort of resemblance to the human instep in the whole foot,” and Professor Keith in the work referred to “the arch is a human character.” One may see this for oneself in living apes and monkeys and in the wonderful series of drawings of apes in all kinds of postures in the Royal Natural History, and indeed in the feet of dead apes and monkeys. All Primates other than man walk on a flat sole.

Equipment.

Our adventurer starts with the following equipment of tools for making his arch as he learns to walk entirely on the ground which it must be remembered he can only do by unlearning pari passu his highly cultivated power of grasping with his foot. The old and the new cannot flourish together. The evolving foot of man is an example of a slow change in the function of an organ and consequent modifica­tion of certain structures in it. He walks with his feet turning in, or in the axis of the leg; his great toe is not in this axis but may even lie at a right angle to the foot; he rests weight on his heel and even more on the outer border of his sole, and thus the sole of one foot turns more or less towards the other; and he puts a good deal of weight on his toes which are frequently doubled over; and his gait, though erect, is never completely so, and is clumsy in appearance.

Bones: his heel-bone is relatively long and pointed and slightly arched below; the bones of his great toe are short and thick, and the other four toes relatively long and slender. You can see at once it is not primarily a walking foot. Any active boy of twelve could give him points and a beating in a race for life in the open. Further, his foot shows a much larger propor­tion of the whole foot in front of the end of the great toe than is ever seen in man. The ligaments which bind the joints of his foot together, while the muscles play upon them, are little different from those he will require for the girders of his arch, except for such a throwing out of slips, and shifting under the stresses and strains of such walking as his new gait involves.