THE LONG ROAD 



with another order of senses — a finer sight, a finer 

 touch, wrought in him by the disciphne of Hfe, and 

 the wonder of the world about him, beginning de 

 novo in him only as the wing began de novo in the 

 bird, or the color began de novo in the flower — ■ 

 struck out from preexisting potentialities. The fa- 

 ther of the eye is the light, and the father of the ear 

 is the vibration of the air, but the father of man's 

 higher nature is a question of quite another sort. 

 About the only thing in his physical make-up that 

 man can call his own is his chin. None of the orders 

 below him seem to have what can strictly be called 

 a chin. 



Man owes his five toes and five fingers to the 

 early amphibians of the sub-carboniferous times. 

 The first tangible evidence of these five toes upon 

 the earth is, to me, very interesting. The earliest 

 record of them that I have heard of is furnished 

 by a slab of shale from Pennsylvania, upon which, 

 while it was yet soft mud, our first five-toed ances- 

 tor had left the imprint of his four feet. He was evi- 

 dently a small, short-legged gentleman with a stride 

 of only about thirteen inches, and he carried a tail 

 instead of a cane. He was probably taking a stroll 

 upon the shores of that vast Mediterranean Sea that 

 occupied all the interior of the continent when he 

 crossed his mud flat. It was raining that morning — 

 how many million years ago? — as we know from the 

 imprint of the raindrops upon the mud. Probably 



31 



