THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE 19 
THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE 
By Proressor T. D. A. COCKERELL 
* UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO 
Ty\ VOLUTION is not an orderly march along a well-defined high- 
way, to the slow time of the music of the spheres. In its 
details, it is an irregular process, sometimes so slow that millions of 
years seem to make no difference; sometimes so rapid that a single 
generation marks a notable advance. Many of its most remarkable 
products come into existence only to perish shortly afterwards, because 
they are exclusively adapted to conditions which are not permanent. 
Rapid progress seems usually to go with a high percentage of failures, 
as though progress itself were only an attempt to dodge the stroke of 
doom. Out of all this man, the species Homo sapiens, zoologically 
speaking one of the higher apes, has in these latter days evolved. A 
creature in many ways inferior to his brother mammalia, but favored 
by the gods. Denuded of hair, he is obliged to spend much of his time 
and energy providing artificial clothing; slow of foot, he is compelled 
to devise means of travel not depending upon his muscular activities ; 
so deficient in the sense of smell, that he does not know, as do the dog 
and the ant, that it is the most important of all the senses; lacking a 
tail, and with no grasping power in his feet, he rarely ventures to 
climb the trees; a poor creature indeed, well-fitted to be the laughing 
stock of the rest of animal creation. 
All this would not be so bad if, like his sylvan ancestors, he could 
go on his way with a placid sense of his own sufficiency. Alas! even 
this poor privilege is denied to him; in the Garden of Eden, at the 
very beginning of his career, he acquired the sense of sin, and was 
henceforth to be a wanderer in a spiritual as well as a physical sense. 
Hence it comes that we, in this year 1910, think it proper to enquire 
anxiously about the future of our species, an inquiry which would cer- 
tainly never occur to any other species of mammal. 
At the very outset we are bound to observe that without exception 
the species of mammalia are short-lived. The records of the Tertiary 
rocks show a continually changing panorama of mammalian life, in 
which genera and species come and go, while plants, mollusca and other 
lowly organisms remain almost unaltered. We further notice that the 
comparatively brief existence of these animals may be terminated in 
either of two ways—by extinction, or by change into something else. 
When the creatures are very highly developed in special ways, they 
