142 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part 1. 



the principle of the division of physiological labour, 

 which prevails throughout the animal kingdom, that 

 as the hands became perfected for prehension, the 

 feet should have become perfected for support and 

 locomotion. With some savages, however, the foot has 

 not altogether lost its prehensile power, as shewn by 

 their manner of climbing trees and of using them in 

 other ways. 66 



If it be an advantage to man to have his hands and 

 arms free and to stand firmly on his feet, of which there 

 can be no doubt from his pre-eminent success in the 

 battle of life, then I can see no reason why it should 

 not have been advantageous to the progenitors of man 

 to have become more and more erect or bipedal. They 

 would thus have been better able to have defended 

 themselves with stones or clubs, or to have attacked 

 their prey, or otherwise obtained food. The best con- 

 structed individuals would in the long run have succeeded 

 best, and have survived in larger numbers. If the 

 gorilla and a few allied forms had become extinct, it 

 might have been argued with great force and apparent 

 truth, that an animal could not have been gradually 

 converted from a quadruped into a biped; as all the 

 individuals in an intermediate condition would have 

 been miserably ill-fitted for progression. But we know 

 (and this is well worthy of reflection) that several kinds 

 of apes are now actually in this intermediate condition ; 

 and no one doubts that they are on the whole well 

 adapted for their conditions of life. Thus the gorilla 



66 H'ackel has an excellent discussion on the steps by which man 

 became a biped : ' Naiiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte,' 1868, s. 507. Dr. 

 Biichuer (' Conferences sur la The'orie Darwinienne,' 18b'9, p. 135) has 

 given good cases of the use of the foot as a prehensile organ by man ; 

 also on the manner of progression of the higher apes to which I allude 

 in the following paragraph : see also Owen (' Anatomy of Vertebrates,' 

 vol. iii. p. 71) on this latter subject. 



