Note 39 — PROGRESSION ON THE LAND.
Reading edition
“The number of steps which a person can take in a given time in walking depends, first, on the length of the leg, which, governed by the laws of the pendulum, swings from behind forwards; secondly, on the earlier or later interruption which the leg experiences in its arc of oscillation by being placed on the ground. The weight of the swinging leg and the velocity of the trunk serve to give the impulse by which the foot attains a position vertical to the head of the thigh-bone; but as the latter, according to the laws of the pendulum, requires in the quickest walking a given time to attain that position, or half its entire curve of oscillation, it follows that every person has a certain measure for his steps, and a certain number of steps in a given time, which, in his natural gait in walking, he cannot exceed.”