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the upright position. So characteristic of man, nevertheless it is the first to dwindle and disappear in the descending scale of animal forms. The little toe is next lost, but the three middle toes are much more constant and more alike in size and strength.[1]
Now, turning to the works of the ancient Greeks, we see how faithful and how true they were to nature. The great toe of the Greek foot is as truly proportioned as the little toe, and the relations of the three middle toes as contrasted with the first and last.
But this ideal of the beautiful and the true was, strange to say, almost confined to Greek art.[2] Some of the finest works in our National Gallery wrongly represent the toes as progressively decreasing from the second to the fifth.
I have no time to urge upon you, as I ought, the kindred study of physiology. It has been lately said by one of the most gifted workers in this field—"There is no side of the intellect which it does not call into play, no region of human knowledge into which, either its roots or its branches, do not extend, like the Atlantic between the old and the new worlds, its waves wash the shores of the two worlds of matter and of mind."[3]
Of the other subjects I must forbear to speak,
- ↑ Owen, 'Archetype and Homologies of the Vetebrate Skeleton.'
- ↑ In illustration of this see No. 171 (Mercury), also 109 and 118, in the British Museum; and in the Hellenic Room, the lovely figure of "an athlete," and also the "Apollo." In our National Gallery the celebrated picture by Benjamin West represents some exquisite feet of the Grecian type.
- ↑ Huxley's 'Aberdeen Address,' as Lord Rector of the University.
