192 SIR WILLIAM CROOKES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



vention of insects must be thwarted, and this would lead to the 

 extinction, or at all events to a scarcity, of entomophilous plants, i. e., 

 all those with the showiest blossoms— a gloomy result to follow from 

 a mere increase of the earth's attraction. 



But having- known no other type of human form, it is allowable to 

 think that, under these different conditions, man would still consider 

 woman — though stunted, thick limbed, flat-footed, with enormous jaws 

 underlying a diminutive skull — as the highest type of beauty! 



Decreased attraction of the earth might be attended with another 

 set of changes scarcely less remarkable. With the same expenditure 

 of vital energy as at present, and with the same quantity of transfor- 

 mation of matter, we should be able to lift heavier weights, to take 

 longer bounds, to move with greater swiftness, and to undergo pro- 

 longed muscular exertion with less fatigue — possibl}^ to fly. Hence 

 the transformation of matter required to keep up animal heat and to 

 restore the waste of energy and tissue would be smaller for the same 

 amount of duty done. A less volume of blood, reduced lungs and 

 digestive organs would be required. Thus we might expect a set of 

 structural changes of an inverse nature to those resulting from intensi- 

 fied gravitation. All parts of the body might safel}^ be constructed 

 upon a less massive plan — a slighter skeleton, smaller muscles, and 

 slenderer trunk. These modifications, in a less degree than we are con- 

 templating, tend in the present to beauty of form, and it is easy to 

 imagine our assthetic feelings would naturally keep pace with further 

 developments in the direction of grace, slenderness, symmetry, and 

 tall figures. 



It is curious that the popular conceptions of evil and malignant 

 beings are of the type that would be produced by increased gravitation — 

 toads, reptiles, and noisome creeping things — while the arch fiend 

 himself is represented as perhaps the ultimate form which could ha 

 assumed by a thinking brain and its necessary machinery were the 

 power of gravitation to be increased to the highest point compatible 

 with existence — a serpent crawling along the ground. On the other 

 hand, our highest types of beauty are those which would be common 

 under decreased gravitation. 



The "daughter of the gods, divinely tall," and the leaping athlete, 

 please us by the slight triumph over the earthward pull which their 

 stature or spring implies. It is true we do not correspondingly admire 

 the flea, whose triumph over gravitation, unaided by wings, is so strik- 

 ing. Marvellous as is the flea, its body, like ours, is strictly condi- 

 tioned by gravitation. 



But popular imagination presupposes spiritual beings to be utterly 

 independent of gravitation, while retaining shapes and proportions 

 which gravitation originally determined, and only gravitation seems 

 likely to maintain. 



