Biological Possibilities in the Next Ten Thousand Years 
The élite, by which I mean roughly persons like ourselves who 
are thought sufficiently interesting to be invited from great 
distances, will be more polymorphic than the general popula- 
tion, partly because they will largely be products of assortative 
mating. A musician will tend to marry a musician, and so on, 
but such of their children as are not musically gifted will not 
remain in the musical caste, as they do in Indian castes. The 
élite will perhaps include anatomical freaks, say people with 
cerebral hernia whose thinking can be watched with the remote 
descendant of the microscope, astronauts with prehensile feet 
unsuited for walking, and so on. But the physiological poly- 
morphisms will be far more important. There may be a few 
people on the planet who can give as good an account of the 
messages reaching their brains from the carotid sinus as I can 
now give of my auditory sensations, and better than I can give 
of my labyrinthine sensations. I think there will be more 
psychological polymorphism, and much more tolerance. Pro- 
vided they do not harm others who do not want to be harmed, 
posterity will be allowed to try all sorts of things, including drug 
addiction and various types of sexual experience, which we 
condemn, perhaps rightly, in the present state of our civilization. 
Once poverty is a state which no one has experienced, but 
merely an evil smell from the past, like cannibalism, I think 
there will be much less interest in acquiring material objects, 
and more and more interest in our own bodies and minds, and 
those of others in whom we are interested and whom perhaps 
we love. So far introspection has been rather barren except in 
so far as some mystics have had important historical effects, as 
often causing wars and other organized cruelties like Muham- 
mad and St. Dominic, as making for increased love and toler- 
ance, like Patanjali and George Fox. 
What an objective investigation of the inner life, or as I should 
prefer to say, the study of life from inside, will reveal, is quite 
uncertain. It is at least imaginable that, apart from private 
worlds, described for example by Blake in his prophetic books 
and by Freud, it will reveal one or more objective realities, the 
same for all men and perhaps for many or all animals. I am 
Say 
