A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

As soon as a student begins to understand what mankind has copied in Nature’s wonderful school for mimics, he cannot fail to take delight in natural bridges and their influence on handicraft. At first he is humbled painfully by the small amount of creative wit that a million years or so have gleaned from the big human brain; but soon the novelty of feeling humble is more attractive to him than the vile habit of flattering human nature.[36]

II

AMONG THE HERALDS OF MAN

It was during the Upper Miocene age that two or three big apes migrated into Europe, probably from Africa, and passed from explorers into colonists. One of them was the Dryopithecus, a creature almost as tall as a man, and closely allied to Hylobates. He illustrated that organic art of caricature in which young Dame Nature excelled, many of her experimental efforts having Gargantuan humour in their shapes and proportions.

When food was scarce the Dryopithecus became a nomad, a sort of four-handed Odysseus who was very well able to fight his own battles, whether he wielded a heavy stick, or hugged his foe, or from the shelter of a tree dropped missiles that cracked heads and made backbones exceedingly painful. Hugging seems to have been his forte, after clawing and fierce blows had prepared the way for a close embrace; and by his expert ferocity in defence and in attack he earned for himself the right to be a forerunner of several entertaining creatures, notably the gorilla and the chimpanzee and primitive man. He was inquisitive enough to use every natural bridge put in his path by good fortune.

At first I see him on four sorts of natural bridge, and no fault can be found with his activity. He crawls along fallen trees over some torrents and chasms; across a flooded river here and there he leaps in a shambling, lopsided fashion, when stepping-stones and boulders rise above water-level; he roams into hilly districts where many a ledge of rock spans a dangerous gap; but he enjoys himself most of all when a suspension bridge of branches enables him to amble from tree to tree across a deep-lying river pent up between high cliffs.

In these four bridges, each of them generic, Nature has arrived at utility in her usual manner, by alternating growth and violence. The fallen tree, for instance, from which all timber bridges have been evolved by handicraft in a sequence of gradual improvements, belongs to the utility of Nature’s violent moods; and this applies also to the bridge of stepping-stones. Earthquakes and floods distributed boulders over the beds of rivers, and from these boulders handicraft has developed piers and abutments. On the other hand, a bridge of long boughs—and I have used many a one myself—is a symbol not merely of growth but of abundance, and also of endurance. But it is not to be looked upon as the only suspension bridge along which our arboreal ancestry capered, and from which primitive mankind took, and take, hints in bridge-building. Let us remember also the pendent bridge of lianes, and of other tough creeping plants, which in many warm countries grew, and grow, from tree to tree, forming strong cables. On such a high-swung bridge I can see the Dryopithecus, suspended by his hands, and learning tricks as a gymnast, while his mate squats between the fork of a branch and collects fleas from her baby.

When photographs of natural bridges lie around me on a table, there is another vision that comes before my mind in a succession of vivid pictures. I behold a shaggy little animal, partly an ape, partly a man, who stands upright on a fallen tree; below his feet a river in flood foams among rocks; and over there, beyond the peaked hills, a blood-red sunset makes a wondrous tragedy of colour. Somehow the little animal is awed by the flaming sky, and stares at it fascinated, his protruded mouth wide open, and his teeth gleaming. His arms are thin, sinewy, capable, hairy, and very long; they hang at full length, and their prehensile fingers grasp two sticks, one long and pointed, another short and knobbed. His breastbone looks weak as his shoulders droop forward, and horizontal lines of wrinkled skin run from each armpit across the narrow chest. His legs are short and somewhat arched; and their feet grip wood as a habit. The eyes, overhung by a ledge of bone, shimmer with a peculiar suspicion, an instinctive cunning, very vigilant and fierce, that protects even tired sleep with the alertness of a sentinel. The body is daubed with yellow ochre and iron ore, as if to rival the coloured life seen everywhere in Nature; but through this decoration much uneven hair is noticeable, and a coarse beard surrounds the face with a ruff rather similar to that which now gives pride to the Cebus capucinus. The head is becoming human, a real Pandora box, whence many banes and a few blessings will escape continually, and spread far and wide over the earth. At present this creature is a wild beast in the terrible nursery stage between apehood and savage manhood. Already he has lost the athletic ease and grace of his tree-top cousins. Not only is he out of joint with them, but his own lot is very perilous, a never-ending war against hardships and dangers. Beasts of prey know how weak he is; most animals outrun him; birds in their swift flight escape from his weapons, and he feels rage and jealousy when monkeys at play leap long distances from bough to bough. Out of his nature comes a pitiless hatred for all living creatures. Do you not see this earthling, this Adam of Evolution, part ape and part man, standing alone on a windfall bridge, with a river in flood below his feet, and the sun a radiant crescent, blood-red, dipping below that far horizon of peaked hills?

And yet this biped has been moved by the sunset, and also by an idea of his own, whose history can be read in deep lines of ploughed earth that run from the bridge to a wood over there, a hundred yards away. At this distance from the river a tall tree was blown down, and a tribe of ape-like men, guided by their leader, dragged it to the bank-side and put it across the waterway, taking long days over the wonderful task. Nature at last has discovered a mind that can think in imitation. Her tree-bridge has a rival.

At this moment the picture changes. A female creature appears, accompanied by several children. She is uglier than the male, because she suffers much more; her family grows too fast, and for a long time its members are unfit to defend themselves. Never for an hour can she put aside her motherhood. Other animals are occasional parents, because their young are soon able to do their own business; while she, our Eve of Evolution, for ever anxious about her helpless little ones, is an incessant mother through the few brief years of her fertility. Perils encompass her and them, and in a short time she is worn into old age. But she loses her youth creatively; there is not a privation nor a pain that her constant motherhood fails to make into a spiritualising of the heart, into a Vita Nuova, into the starting-point for a fresh development. So she is humanised by suffering and love-humanised in spirit, that is to say—long ages before her body has matured into womanhood. It is she who endows children with quickened minds and with social inclinations; and it is she who encounters with a yielding but tenacious courage the wild beast that male passions breed and perpetuate. Also—and this is very important—she is by temperament a practical worker, whereas the male is not; he thinks all the time of adventure, and his moods are incalculable. Even his paternity is coarse-handed, and subject to furious greeds and lusts. His brain is active enough to be awed by the strife of Nature and weak enough to be crippled by a little reason. His character threatens to check his evolution. Where the climate is hot, and food grows abundantly, he makes no progress; bad times alone compel him to work, and to pass very slowly, with a dogged reluctance, from handicraft to handicraft. His higher education begins when he chips a stone into a pointed weapon and feels the rhythmical enjoyment that accompanies invention and manipulation. In fact, handicraft is the earliest public school, the first university; it helps motherhood to transform the brute male into a being somewhat better, [37] a primeval savage. Yet naturalists have confirmed themselves in three bad habits: they say too little about handicraft, they admire man far too much, and they patronise woman. When they do not bury Woman in the term Man, they glance at her with a condescending half-pity, as bibliophiles glance at second or third editions; and so it is worth while to do some justice to our primitive foremother, the Eve of Evolution.