THE AREEST OF THE BODY. 107 



quick sense of the lower animals, the organ is almost 

 deaf. The skin, from the continuous use of clothes, 

 has forfeited its protective power. Owing to the use 

 of viands cooked, the muscles of the jaw are rapidly 

 losing strength. The teeth, partly for a similar 

 reason, are undergoing marked degeneration. The 

 third molar, for instance, among some nations is 

 already showing symptoms of suppression, and that 

 this threatens ultimate extinction may be reasoned 

 from the fact that the anthropoid apes have fewer 

 teeth than the lower monkeys, and these fewer than 

 the preceding generation of insectivorous mammals. 



In an age of vehicles and locomotives the lower 

 limbs find their occupation almost gone. For mere 

 muscle, that on which his whole life once depended, 

 Man has almost now no use. Agility, nimbleness, 

 strength, once a stern necessity, are either a luxury 

 or a pastime. Their outlet is the cricket-field or the 

 tennis-court. To keep them up at all artificial means 

 dumb-bells, parallel-bars, clubs have actually to be 

 devised. Vigor of limb is not to be found in com- 

 mon life, we look for it in the Gymnasium ; agility 

 is relegated to the Hippodrome. Once all men were 

 athletes ; now you have to pay to see them. More or 

 less with all the animal powers it is the same. To 

 some extent at least some phonograph may yet speak 

 for us, some telephone hear for us, the typewriter 

 write for us, chemistry digest for us, and incubation 

 nurture us. So everywhere the Man as Animal is in 

 danger of losing ground. He has expanded until the 

 world is his body. The former body, the hundred 

 and fifty pounds or so of organized tissue he carries 

 about with him, is little more than a mark of identity. 



