THE ERA OF HELPLESSNESS 29 



live or move about among the forest trees away 

 above ground, and there compete for the necessaries 

 of existence with apes, snakes, felines, and great 

 birds? It was impossible! Our brute ancestors 

 were therefore inevitably obliged, as soon as this 

 transformation had taken place, to begin the strug- 

 gle for existence on the surface of the earth. Could 

 they do this on all fours!* By no means! How 

 could two hands in front, with ringers outstretched 

 and thumbs nearly at right angles — and that is the 

 only way in which the horizontal body can be sup- 

 ported on the flat of the hands — co-operate with two 

 feet, each swinging in locomotion with natural ease 

 around its hallux as a fulcrum? It would have 

 required a new plexus of regulating nerves for each 

 of the two movements, so vastly differing from the 

 other, and these two nerve plexi would have needed 

 new systems of nerve connections with the higher 

 co-ordinating centers. Many generations would 

 have to pass before all these new nerves and connec- 

 tions could come into existence, and in the mean time 

 the creatures needing them must have died without 

 leaving offspring. And even if it could have been 

 accomplished, what a clumsy, waddling unmanage- 

 able mode of locomotion it would have made ! The 

 supposition must therefore be rejected. 



It is obvious, then, that if any of the two-footed 

 brutes persisted in attempting to move and live with 

 the body on all fours in the horizontal attitude, then 

 they must have perished so quickly as to leave no 



