44 ARBOREAL MAN 



provisions for easy, varied, and powerful action, and 

 conclude that nothing could be more perfectly suited to 

 their purposes. But we must extend our views to com- 

 prehend a great deal more — a greater design." This, 

 and many other similar passages, shows Bell's attitude in 

 the work he did for his Bridgwater Treatise, and it is to 

 be regretted that many lesser writers, who were un- 

 trammelled by the confines imposed by so narrowing a 

 circumstance, did not follow Bell in this width of outlook. 

 Those modern authors who have seen so much in the 

 so-called " attainment of the erect position " (Munro) 

 have been especially lavish in their praise of the human 

 hand as a mere anatomical structure. Dr. Munro in his 

 Presidential Address at the British Association in 1893 

 permitted himself the expression that the human hand 

 is "the most complete and perfe.C-t_naechanical_£Li:gaJtL- 

 Nature has yet produced." Such a statement on the 

 part of an anatomist can onl}^ be attributed to enthusiasm, 

 and to a failure to differentiate between the very primitive 

 anatomical condition of the hand and the perfection of 

 this simple mechanism when linked to a human brain. 

 Even John Goodsir was more moderate, for he claimed 

 no more than that " the human hand is the only perfect 

 or complete hand." 



The hand with its multitude of uses, its better suiting 

 to human jourposes than such a thing as a hoof or a paw, 

 its apparent complexity and perfection of movement, 

 w^as a thing so easily turned to as affording evidence of 

 design — ^and by design was meant a special and divine 

 planning. In 1833 almost any anatomist in the United 

 Kingdom could have done the Bridgwater Treatise more 

 to its purpose than did Sir Charles Bell. As things were, 

 and with the height of apparent incongruity, the ])Ook 

 he wrote in 1833 makes a very suitable introduction to the 



\ work of Darwin twenty-six years later. 



^ After 1859 the forearm and hand, in common with 

 everv other feature of the human bodv, came to be 



