THE MAN OF THE YEAR MILLION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 4079, 28 February 1894, Page 5

THE MAN OF THE YEAR MILLION.

A SCIENTIFIC FORECAST.

Accomplished literature is all very well in its way, no doubt, but much more fascinating to the contemplative man are the books that have not been written. These latter are no trouble to hold ; there are no pages to turn over. One can read them in bed on sleepless nights without a candle. Turning to another topic, primitive man, in the works of the descriptive anthropologist, is certainly a very entertaining ana quaint person ; but the man of the future, if we only had the facts, would appeal to us more strongly. Yet where are the books? As Ruskin has said somewhere, fnrojjus vi Darwin, it is not what man hu,a boon, but what he will be, that should interest us.

The contemplative man in his easy chair, pondering this saying, suddenly beholds in the fire, through the blue haze of his pipe, one of these great unwritten volumes. It is large in size, heavy in lettering, seemingly by one Professor Holzkopf, presumably professor at Weissnichtwo. 'Tho Necessary Characters of the Man of the Remote Future deduced from the Existing Stream of Tendency' is the title. The worthy professor is severely scientific in his method, and deliberate and cautious in his deductions, the contemplative man discovers as he pursues his theme, and yet the conclusions are, to say the least, remarkable. We must figure the excellent professor expanding the matter at great length, voluminously technical, but the contemplative man — since he has access to tho only copy — is clearly at liberty to make such extracts and abstracts as he chooses for the unscientific reader. Here, for instance, is something of practicable lucidity that he considers admits of quotation.

" The theory of ovolutioD," writes the professor, " is now universally accepted by zoologists and botanists, and it is applied unreservedly to man. Some question, indeed, whether it fits his soul, but all agree it accounts for his body. Man, we are assured, is descended from ape-like ancestors, moulded by circumstances into men, and these apes again were derived from ancestral forms of a lower order, and so up from the primordial protoplasmic jelly. Clearly, then, man, unless the order of the universe has come to an end, will undergo further modifications iv the future, and at last cease to be man, giving rise to some other type of animated being. At once the fascinating question arises : What Avill this being be ? Let us consider for a little the plastic influences at work upon our species. " Just as the bird is the creature of the wing, and is all moulded and modified to flying, and just as the fish is the creature that swims, and has had to meet the inflexible conditions of a problem in hydrodynamics, so man is the creature of the brain ; he will live by intelligence, and not by physical strength, if he live at all. So that much that is purely 'animal' about him is being, and must be, beyond all question, suppressed in his ultimate development. Evolution is no mechanical tendency makiug for perfection according to the ideas current in the year of grace. 1892 ; it is simply the continual adaptation of plastic life, for good or evil, to the circumstances that surround it. ... We notice this decay of the animal part around us now, in the loss of teeth and hair, in the dwindling hands and feet of men, in their smaller jaws, and slighter mouths and ears. Man now docs by wit and machinery and verbal agreement what he once did by bodily toil ; for once he had to catch his dinner, capture his wife, run away from his enemies, and continually exercise himself, for love of himself, to perform these duties well. But now all this is changed. Cabs, trains, trams, render speed unnecessary, the pursuit of food becomes easier ; his wife is no longer himted, but rather, in view of the crowded matrinlonial market, seeks him out. One needs wits now to live, and physical activity is a drug, a snare even j it seeks artificial outlets and overflows in games. Athleticism takes up time and cripples a man in his competitive examinations, and in business. So is your fleshy man handicapped against his subtler brother. He is \msuccessful in life, docs not marry. The better adapted survive." The coming man, then, will clearly have a larger brain and a slighter body than the present. But the professor makes one exception to this. " The human hand, since it is the teacher and interpreter of the brain, wilLbeconie constantly more powerful and subtle as the rest of the musculature dwindles."

Then in the physiology of these children of men, with their expanding brains, their great sensitive hands and diminishing bodies, great changes were necessarily worked. "We see now," says the professor, " in the more intellectual sections of humanity an increasing sensitiveness to stimulants, a growing inability to grapple with such a matter as alcohol, for instance. No longer can men drink a bottleful of port ; some cannot drink tea — it is too exciting for their highly- wrought nervous systems. The process will go on, and the Sir Wilfrid .Lawson of some near generation may find it his duty and pleasure to make the silvery spray of his wisdom tintinnabulate against the teatray. These facts lead naturally to the comprehension of others. Fresh raw meat was once a dish for a king. Now refined persons scarcely touch meat unless it is cunningly disguised. Again, consider the case of turnips. The raw root is now a thing almost uneatable, but once upon a time a turnip must have been a rare and fortunate find, to be torn up with delirious eagerness and devoured in ecstasy. The time will come when the change will affect all the other fruits of the earth. Even now only the young of mankind eat apples raw — the young always preserving ancestral characteristics after their disappearance in the adult. Some day boys even will regard apples without emotion. The boy of the future, one must believe, will gaze on au apple with the same unspeculative languor with which he now regards a flint " — in the absence of a cat.

"Furthermore, fresh chemical discoveries came into action as modifying influences upon men. In the prehistoric period, even, man's mouth had ceased to be an instrument for grasping food. It is still growing continually less prehensile. His front teeth are smaller, his lips thinner and less muscular. He has a new organ, a mandible not of irreparable tissue, but of bone and steel — a knife and fork. There is no reason why things should stop at partial artificial division thus afforded ; there is every reason, on the contrary, to believe my statement that some cunning exterior mechanism will presently masticate and insalivate his

dinner, relieve his diminishing salivary glands and teeth, and at last altogether abolish them."

Then what is not needed disappears. What use is there for external ears, nose, and brow ridges now? The two latter once protected the eye from injury in conflict and in falls, but in these days we keep on our legs, and at peace. Directing his thoughts in this way, the reader may presently conjure up a dim, strange vision of the latter-day face : " Eyes large, lustrous, beautiful, soulful ; above them, no longer separated by rugged brow ridges, is the top of the head, a glistening, hairless dome, terete and beautiful ; no craggy nose rises to disturb by its unmeaning shadows the symmetry of that calm face, no vestigial ears project ; the mouth is a small, perfectly round aperture, toothless and gumless, jawless, unanimal, no futile emotions disturbing its roundness as it lies, like the harvest moon or the evening star, in the wide firmament of face." Such is the face the professor beholds in the future.

Of course parallel modifications will also affect the body and limbs. " Every day so many hours and so much energy are required for digestion ; a gross torpidity, a carnal lethargy, seizes on mortal men after dinner. This may and can be avoided. Man's knowledge of organic chemistry widens daily. Already he can supplement the gastric glands by artificial devices. Every doctor who administers physic implies that the bodily functions may be artificially superseded. We have pepsine, pancreatine, artificial gastric acid — I know not what like mixtures. Why, then, should not the stomach be ultimately superannuated altogether ? A man who could not only leave his dinner to be cooked, but also leave it to be masticated and digested, would have vast social advantages over his food-digesting fellow. This is, let me remind you here, the calmest, most passionless, and scientific working out of the future forms of things from the data of the present. At this stage the following facts may, perhaps, stimulate yoxir imagination. There can be no doubt that many of the anthropods, a division of animals more ancient and even now more prevalent than the vertebrcita, have undergone more phylogenetic modification " — a beautiful phrase — " than even the most modified of vertebrated animals. Simple forms like the lobsters display a primitive structure parallel with that of the fishes. However, in such a form as the degraded ' Chondracanthus,' the structure has diverged far more widely from its original type than in man. Among some of these most highly modified crustaceans the whole of the alimentary canal — that is, all the food-digesting and food-absorbing parts — form a useless solid cord : the animal is nourished — it is a parasite — by absorption of the nutritive fluid in which it swims. Is there any absolute impossibility in supposing man to be destined for a similar change ; to imagine him no longer dining, with unwieldy paraphernalia of servants and plates, xipon food queerly dyed and distorted, but nourishing himself in elegant simplicity by immersion in a tub of nutritive fluid? There grows upon the impatient imagination a building, a dome of crystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most glorious and pure prismatic colors pass.and fade and change. In the centre of this transparent chameleontinted dome is a circular white marble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in this plunge and float strange beings. Are they birds ? They are the descendants of man — at dinner. Watch them as they hop on their hands — a method of progression advocated already by Bjornsen — about the pure white marble floor. Great hands they have, enormous brains, soft, liquid, soulful eyes. Their whole muscular system, their legs, their abdomens are shrivelled to nothing, a dangling, degraded pendant to their minds."

The further visions of the professor are less alluring. " The animals and plants die away before men, except such as he preserves for his food or delight, or such as maintain a precarious footing about him as commensals and parasites. These vermin and pests must succumb sooner or later to his untiring inventiveness and incessantly growing discipline. When he learns (the chemists are doubtless getting towards the secret now) to do the work of chlorophyll without the plant, then his necessity for other animals and plants upon the earth will disappear. Sooner or later, where there is no power of resistance and no necessity, there comes extinction. In the last days man will be alone on the earth, and his food will be won by the chemist from the dead rocks and the sunlight. And — one may learn the full reason in that explicit and painfully right book, the ' Data of Ethics ' — the irrational fellowship of man will give place to an intellectual co-operation, iind emotion foil within the scheme of reason. Undoubtedly it is a long time yet, biit a long time is nothing in the face of eternity, and every man who thinks of these things must look eternity in the face."

Then the earth is ever radiating away heat into space, the professor reminds us. And so at last comes a vision of earthly cherubim, hopping heads, great unemotional intelligences, and little hearts, fighting together perforce and fiercely against the cold that grips them tighter and tighter. For the world is cooling — slowly and inevitably it grows colder as the years rolls by. "We must imagine these creatures," says the professor, "in galleries and laboratories deep down in the bowels of the earth. The whole world will be snow-covered and piled with ice, all animals, all vegetation vanished, except this last branch of the tree of life. The last men have gone even deeper, following the diminishing heat of the planet, and vast steel shafts and ventilators make way for the air they need." So with a gnnipse of these human tadpoles, in their deep close gallery, with their boring machinery ringing away, aud artificial lights glaring and casting black shadows, the professor's horoscope concludes. Humanity in dismal retreat before the cold, changed beyond recognition. Yet the professor is reasonable enough— his facts are current science, bis methods orderly. The contemplative man shivers at the prospect, starts up to poke the fire, and the whole of this remarkable book that is not written vanishes straightway in the smoke of his pipe. This is the great advantage of this unwritten literature — there is no bother in changing the books. Our contemplative man consoles himself for the destiny of the species with the lost portion of Kubla Khan.—Exchange.

A beggar woman named Margaret Whale died recently in New York. Over 20,000d0l were found in the lining of her clothes.

BURGLARY UNDER ARMS.

The fatal burglary which occurred at Williamstown recently has resulted in one of the housebreakers (Ernest Knox) being sentenced to death, aud the other (John Charles Jent) to three years' imprisonment. The prisoners were tried before Mr Justice Hodges, and according to the opening statement of the Crown Prosecutor they resided together for two or three months prior to 11th January at the house of Knox's mother, at Carlton. On the evening of 29th December both prisoners went to the Eastern Market and purchased a revolver and twenty -five cartridges each. In the forenoon of 11th January the prisoner Jent went down to Williamstown, and, according to his own statement, examined the premises of Mr Crawcour, situated in Nelson place. On the night of the same day prisoners journeyed to Williamstown by the 10.30 train. They went straight to the house of Mr Crawcour, and, having inspected the premises again, remained in Williamstown until about two o'clock in the morning. The evidence was not clear as to whether they were both armed with revolvers, but it was quite clear that there was one revolver in the possession of the prisoner Knox. According to their own account they entered the premises of Mr Crawcour at about two o'clock by jumping over the back gate. Passing up the garden they found an axe, and with this they forced open one of the two windows looking into the sitting room. Passing through the sitting room they gained access to the shop by breaking open the door. They then stole thirty -four rings from a case in the shop window. Mr Crawcour had locked up his premises at about 11.30 on the previous night. At about two o'clock in the morning he was disturbed by the ringing, of the electric alarm in his bedroom. Getting up at once, he proceeded downstairs. He tried the door to the shop, but found it locked. He also tried the door leading from the passage to the sitting room, which he found locked, despite the fact that it was unlocked when he went to bed. Arming himself with a revolver he returned, and went out of the back door leading to the garden. He ran up the yard and found the sitting room window open. He called out : " Come out, you beggars ; I'm ready for you. " As soon as he said that he heard a shot fired, which grazed his right ear. He called out "If that's your game I'm as good as you." This brought forth a second shot, which passed through his whiskers. ' He then concealed himself under the window, and heard someone inside call out " Jump out. Now's your time to get away ! " Thereupon he saw the prisoner Jent jump out and run down the garden. Mr Crawcour attempted to fire, but his revolver would not work. Jent thus made his escape. Going to the back door he heard, a shot fired in the passage, and his son cried out " There's another one here, father. I've got him ! " He crept up the passage, seized the prisoner Knox, and held him. His son then said "I'm shot." The shot fired by Knox had passed through young Crawcour, and he subsequently died. An alarm was given, and Knox was handed over to the police. He then made a statement showing how Jent went to Williamstown, examined the house, entered it, and stole the rings. Mr Justice Hodges, in sentencing the prisoner Knox, said :— -Ernest Knox, it is pitiable to see one of your years standing in the position in which you are now, and for the cause which has brought you where you are. It is suggested that the shot which brought death to Crawcour was fired accidentally ; but the jury do not appear to have arrived at that conclusion, and found that that shot was intentional ; and I cannot say that my own conviction is not in precise accord with the finding of the jury. On that night, and before that night, by your conduct it was shown that you contemplated using that deadly weapon. You used it on that night twice, each time with nearly fatal results. You used it a third time fatally. Whatever consideration the Court might have felt disposed to extend to you, the circumstances of this case are such that I can do but one thing, and that is to pass the last dread sentence of the law. The seutence of the Court is that you be taken from the place where you now stand to the place from whence you came, and that you be taken thence at such time and to such place as His Excellency the Governor shall direct, and you then be hanged by the neck till you be dead, and your body be confined within the precincts of such places. May the Lord have mercy on your soul.

The order was given to remove the prisoner, and he wulked resolutely down the steps of the dock to the underground cells. When asked, Jent said he had nothing to say why the sentence of the Court should not be passed on him. Addressing him His Honor said : John Charles Jent, I must now deal with your case. The jury have acquitted you of any participation in the use of deadly weapons. I take the most merciful view of your case I can take. I assume that that night you were without a weapon, bub you probably might have had one. If you had I would still further assume that you respected human life too much to use it, and did not use it. I shall take your case aa an ordinary one of burglary, with one or two only aggravating circumstances — one aggravating circumstance being that you appear to have some doubt as to whether or not it might not be well to use deadly weapons. The other aggravating circumstance is that you were in the company of one whom I have no doubt had talked over the use of these weapons with you ; and, although you might not have had any participation in the use of the weapons, you, knew the kind of man or youth you were with. On the other hand, you are very young, aud taking this circumstance into consideration, I shall direct you to be imprisoned in Her Majesty's Gaol, Melbourne, with hard labor, for three years, and that you pass the first four days of each of the last six months in solitary confinement.