Perhaps the most striking difference between the feet of men and apes
lies in the relative size of the first and second toes. In the ape’s
foot the second toe is longer than the first, whereas in modern
civilised man’s foot the first or great toe is almost always the longer.
Not so, however, with savages, who are intermediate in this as in other
respects between man and ape; and there are various other facts which
seem to indicate that the evolution of the great toe, like that of the
other extreme of the body—the head and brain—is still in progress.
There is a notion very prevalent among artists that the second toe
should be longer than the first. This idea, Professor Flower thinks, is
derived from the Greek canon, which in its turn was copied from the
Egyptian, and probably originally derived from the negro. It certainly
does not represent what is most usual in our race and time. “Among
hundreds of bare, and therefore undeformed, feet of children I lately
examined in Perthshire, I was not able to find one in which the second
toe was the longest. Since in all apes—in fact, in all other animals—the
first toe is considerably shorter than the second, a long first toe is a
specially human attribute; and instead of being despised by artists, it
should be looked upon as a mark of elevation in the scale of organised
beings.”
Mr. J. P. Harrison, after a careful examination of the unrestored feet
of Greek and Roman statues in various museums and art galleries, wrote
an article in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain_ (vol. xiii. 1884), in which he states that he was “led to the
conviction that it was from Italy and not Greece that the long second
toe affected by many English artists had been imported.” Among the
Italians a longer second toe is common, as also among Alsatians; in
England so rarely that its occurrence probably indicates foreign blood.
Professor Flower, as we have seen, found no cases at all; Paget examined
twenty-seven English males, in twenty-four of whom the great toe was the
longer. “In the case of the female feet, in ten out of twenty-three
subjects the first or great toe was longest, and _in ten females it was
shorter_ than the second toe. In the remaining three instances the first
and second toes were of equal length.”
Bear these last sentences in mind a moment, till we have seen what is
the case with savages. Says Dr. Bruner: “A slight shortening of the
great toe undoubtedly exists, not merely amongst the Negro tribes, but
also in ancient and modern Egyptians, and even in some of the most
beautiful races of Caucasian _females_.” And Mr. Harrison found this to
be, with a few exceptions, a general trait of savages. The great toe was
shorter than the second in skeletons of Peruvians, Tahitians, New
Hebrideans, Savage islanders, Ainos, New Caledonians.
Must we therefore agree with Carl Vogt when he says, “We may be sure
that, whenever we perceive an approach to the animal type, the female is
nearer to it than the male”?
Perhaps, however, we can find a solution of the problem _somewhat_ less
insulting to women than this statement of the ungallant German
professor.
It is _Fashion_, the handmaid of ugliness, that has thus apparently
caused almost half the women to approximate the simian type of the foot;
_Fashion_, which, by inducing women for centuries to thrust their tender
feet into Spanish boots of torture, has taken from their toes the
freedom of action requisite for that free development and growth which
is to be noticed in almost all the men.
Considering the great difference between the left and the right foot, it
appears almost incredible, but is a sober fact, that until about half a
century ago “rights and lefts” were not made even for the men, who now
always wear them. But even to-day “they are not, it is believed, made
use of by women, except in a shape that is little efficacious,” says Mr.
Harrison; and concerning the Austrians Dr. Schaffer remarks, similarly,
that “the like shoe for the left and right foot is still in use in the
vast majority of cases.” No wonder women are so averse to taking
exercise, and therefore lose their beauty at a time when it ought to be
still in full bloom. For to walk in such shoes must be a torture
forbidding all unnecessary movement.
Once more be it said—it is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that is
responsible for the inferior beauty of the average female foot, by
preventing the free development and play of the toes which are
absolutely necessary for a graceful walk.
To what an extent the woful rarity of a graceful gait is due to the
shape of “fashionable” shoes is vividly brought out in a passage
concerning the natives of Martinique, which appeared in a letter in the
New York _Evening Post_: “Many of the quadroons are handsome, even
beautiful, in their youth, and all the women of pure black and mixed
blood walk with a lightness of step and a graceful freedom of motion
that is very noticeable and pleasant to see. I say all the women; but I
must confine this description to those who go shoeless, for when a
negress crams her feet into even the best-fitting pair of shoes her gait
becomes as awkward as the waddle of an Indian squaw, or of a black swan
on dry land, and she minces and totters in such danger of falling
forward that one feels constrained to go to her and say, ‘Mam’selle
Ebène or Noirette, do, I beseech you, put your shoes where you carry
everything else, namely, on the top of your well-balanced head, and do
let me see you walk barefoot again, for I do assure you that neither
your Chinese cousins nor your European mistresses can ever hope to
imitate your goddess-like gait until they practise the art of walking
with their high-heeled, tiny boots nicely balanced on _their_ heads, as
you so often are pleased to do.’”
There is another lesson to be learned from this discussion, namely, that
in trying to establish the principles of Beauty, it is better to follow
one’s own taste than adhere blindly to Greek canons, and what are
supposed to be Greek canons. The longer second toe, as we have seen, is
not a characteristic of Greek art, but due apparently to restorations
made in Italy where this peculiarity prevails. The Greeks, indeed, never
hesitated to idealise and improve Nature if caught napping; and there
can be little doubt that if in their own feet the first toe had been
shorter than the second, they would have made it longer all the same in
their statues, following the laws of gradation and curvature which a
longer second toe would interrupt. For it is undeniable that, as Mr.
Harrison remarks, “a model foot, according to Flaxman, is one in which
the toes follow each other imperceptibly in a graceful curve from the
first or great toe to the fifth.”