THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



evidence that he once belonged to the highest class 

 of animals next to himself. His feet, with toes 

 which are still more or less prehensile in infancy 

 and among savage races even the people who in- 

 herit the ancient civilization of India will astonish 

 you sometimes- by picking up a spoon that has been 

 dropped or replacing a coal on the fire with their 

 feet, and the Indian tailor habitually holds his 

 thread with his toes as he squats in your verandah 

 are manifestly modifications of the climbing 

 hind-hands of four-handed ancestors, whose other 

 descendants are still apes. 



On the other hand, our flat soles and the dis- 

 connected bones in some of our toes show that 

 many ages have passed since man used his feet for 

 grasping purposes in climbing. What, then, caused 

 the change in his habits? We may never be able 

 to answer this question with certainty. It is in 

 the last degree improbable that a creature, admir- 

 ably adapted for climbing trees should have aban- 

 doned the practice while still dwelling in the 

 primeval forests; because there all the fruits and 

 the honey and the wild life are to be found on the 

 sunny outside of the dense mass of vegetable 

 growth. 



The probability is that man's predestined aban- 

 donment of arboreal life came about through the 

 gradual change of climate in the region which he 

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