THE MAN OF THE FUTURE. 165 
ape-like ancestor, and still obvious in the human embryo, is retained in part by 
savage races; but of necessity lost by those human beings who habitually inclose 
their feet in the boots and shoes of civilized life. Indeed, the separation of the 
five toes under such circumstances is no longer necessary, and will not perma- 
nently survive. Already the percentage of persons who have two or more of 
their toes united throughout their length is surprisingly large. 
In that particular form of endurance, again, which enables a man to travel 
long distances on foot, the savage is, as was to be expected, immensely superior 
to his civilized brother. And increased facilities of artificial locomotion, by ren- 
dering the use by the latter of his lower limbs more and more unnecessary, will 
reduce them in time to a comparatively rudimentary condition. Finally, the 
readiness of our ancestors, and of our savage contemporaries, to fight with one 
another is no longer profitable, but absolutely pernicious, in the struggle for 
civilized existence. There is no necessity nowadays for frequent personal combats 
and struggles of life and death. On the contrary, a man who is violent and pug- 
nacious will, as a general rule, be more often imprisoned or slain in the prime of 
life than his more pacific neighbors, and will therefore leave fewer children to 
inherit his fighting spirit. Thus the constant process of elimination of combative 
men will continue, without any compensating advantage in the struggle for exist- 
ence, arising as heretofore from success as a warrior. The man of the future, 
therefore, will not only be toothless, bald-headed, and incapable of extended 
locomotion with his imperfectly developed feet, but he will also be particularly 
averse to engaging in personal conflict — a lover of peace at any price. 
Now it would, as was remarked above, furnished a strong confimation to 
this theory if it were found that each individual of the human species, during his 
passage from maturity to old age, presented in his own person any of these sev- 
eral changes predicted for the species. That he does so in a remarkable degree 
cannot be denied. Taking up our position in imagination at that point which is 
called the prime of life; as representing the highest point of development attained 
by man in the present, and looking back, we can in his person trace the career 
of his species throught the fiery age of serai-civilized youthful nations, the period 
of unbridled love and fearless war, and through the uncivilized period of boyhood, 
with all the restlessness, impudence, and love of discordant noises that distinguish 
savages, to the mere embryo, with its hairy skin, separate great toe, and long 
tail like a monkey, and with the single pulsating vessel which serves for a heart 
to animals far lower than the apes. Turning round and looking forward, on the 
other hand, we can see the latter period of life when man has lost two of his teeth 
and much of his love of locomotion; and the final period, when he has become a 
toothless, bald headed, stiff-Umbed animal, incapable of extended locomotion, 
nervous and timid — an old man in fact. If it should enter into the head of any 
future novehst to write another circumstantial account of "The Coming Race," 
it is to be hoped that he will make use of the above materials, which, if less pic- 
turesque than "vril" and wings, are, as I have said before, at least more conso- 
nant with nature. — The Nineteenth Century. 
