THE MAN OF THE FUTURE. i GI- 
ANT H R O PO LOG Y. 
THE MAN OF THE FUTURE. 
E. KAY ROBINSON. 
The Man of the Future — that mysterious being who will look back across a 
dim gulf of time upon imperfect humanity of the nineteenth century with just 
such kindly and half incredulous scorn as we now condescend to bestow upon 
our own club-wielding, ape-like ancestor — will be a toothless, hairless, slow- 
limbed animal, incapable of extended locomotion. His feet will have no division 
between the toes. He will be very averse to fighting, and will maintain his posi- 
tion in the foremost files of time to come solely upon the strength of one or two 
peculiar convolutions in his brain. This may seem to be a poor prophecy; but it 
differs from most prophecies in being a mere logical deduction from accompHshed 
facts. 
Only in very recent times has the extent of our scientific knowledge been 
sufficient to justify even the genius of a Darwin in attempting to evolve a rational 
scheme of the past; and it is not suprising, therefore, that the idea of using that 
knowledge like a two-edged knife to cut forward into the future, as well as back- 
ward into the past, should not have occurred to our men of science as yet. A 
little inspection of the weapon, however, will show that it is equally handy for 
either purpose: for dissecting the coiled-up thread of the destiny of species, as 
for cutting through the tangled web of their origin. From the same plentiful 
materials of the present it should not be more difiScult to write an account of the 
descendants than of the descent of Man. The task, however, in its entirety, 
demands another Darwin. Meantime others less gifted may venture to sketch 
in a rough outline of the Man of the Future with his bald scalp and empty gums. 
Of course it may be objected at the outset that Darwin's theory of the Origin 
of Species stands itself still in need of scientific demonstration. To those to 
whom such a contention commends itself, no reply shorter than three volumes is 
possible, and to them these few paragraphs are not addressed. I may take u 
therefore for granted that, although the logical buttresses of some of Darwin's 
theories are plainly built of materials too flimsy to support the weight placed upon 
them and some few are completely undermined and useless, nevertheless no man 
of thought can honestly deny that his genealogy of the human race is in the 
main reconcilable with fact, with science, and with religion in the highest accept- 
ation of that term. Nor, after a moment's consideration of the arguments here- 
after to be adduced, should any honest thinker find difficulty in going further 
and admitting with me that Nature, like Janus of old, has two faces, one looking 
