FOURTH DAY'S SITTING. 83 



rupted me, that " for many actions it is almost necessary 

 that both arms and the whole upper part of the body "of 

 man " should be free ; and he must, for this end, stand 

 firmly on his feet. To gain this great advantage the feet 

 have been rendered flat, and the great toe peculiarly modified, 

 though this has entailed the loss of the power of prehension. 

 ... 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 become 

 more and more erect or bipedal." (Vol. i. pp. 141, 142.) 



Lord C. In reasoning as you do, Mr. Darwin, you are 

 begging the question in dispute. TTe expect you to prove 

 that man has had progenitors ; instead of doing so, you take 

 it for granted ! I must say, moreover, that your account 

 of the way in which you suppose the ape to have been 

 changed into man is far from satisfactory. It is, no doubt, 

 " an advantage to man " to be erect and bipedal ; but, that 

 it should have been an advantage to an ape-like creature, 

 accustomed to live on trees and find its sustenance on their 

 produce, to lose its power of climbing them in order to 

 attain the erect posture of man this is, to my mind, more 

 than doubtful. As we have already seen, and you your- 

 self admit, it would thus have become exposed to the 

 attacks of enemies which it would have been impossible for 

 it to resist, and quite as impossible for it to escape. I think, 

 therefore, you quite fail to show the possibility of such a 

 transmutation of species as you suppose. 



Darwin. My Lord, "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 Liped ; 



