The Millennium.
The Professor here begun to roll up his profile. He was evidently
preparing to leave, but as long as he had been with me, and it seemed as
if it were days, I was more loath than ever to part with him. My dread
of the separation rapidly grew into a veritable panic, and I became so
desperate as to beseech him, if he must go, to take me with him. He was
evidently much amused, and I thought gratified as well, but explained
that it would be impossible at that time, as his storage capacity for
compressed air was only sufficient for one, and his car was in fact
hardly suited to carry double.
“Then,” said I, “give me a few moments longer if you possibly can. I do
so wish to know something of our posterity ten millenniums ahead—twenty—a
hundred. But no I am selfish—you are doubtless suffering now from your
long stay and I ought not to ask anything more.”
“Say no more,” he said, “I will stay a few moments longer. I am not
seriously inconvenienced as yet. But I cannot give you continuous history
as that will take too long, but I will post you on a few prominent points
that will interest you.
“One thing you will consider remarkable in the beginning of the first
millennium, is a growing disregard for the accumulation of great wealth.
The day of millionaires passed away before the close of the 20th century.
Legislation looking to the reduction of great estates and the prevention
of such overgrown accumulations in the future, was enacted at the
beginning of the century. But the spirit of greed was not outgrown until
the creation of wealth became so easy and under such control by the state
that more than enough for comfort and ease was placed at the command of
every one. No one was obliged to pay for anything, more than it cost,
because the state would furnish all that was necessary on those terms, if
no one else would. Speculative profits were abolished and the cost of an
article was made up of wages only—the wage of the man in getting the raw
material, the wage of the factors and the machinery in its fabrication,
the cost of transportation, the wage of the salesman etc., all added
together. The accumulation of excessive wealth was possible only when the
speculator got hold of something it was necessary for other people to
have, and who then made them pay for it much more than it cost him. This
was all stopped as I said, before the close of the 20th century. But it
was reserved to the beginning of the millennium to produce wealth in such
abundance that it was not possible for anybody to have a single thing
that it was essential for anybody else to have.
“The material means of comfort and happiness exist on the earth as
abundantly as the air for breathing. The education of the human race
consists in their learning how to take and use them. Having learned this,
the abundance of wealth is its security against the monopoly of the
greedy, and so your millennium begins with available wealth so plentiful,
that its surplus accumulation has no longer a sane object, and there is
no more reason in a man hoarding it than in his eating the surplus food
on the dinner table after he has had enough.
“In your day if all the wealth of the world had been equally divided
among its inhabitants there would hardly have been enough for each
person, to maintain him one year. The people lived from hand to mouth,
and if the earth had failed to bring forth her bounty in crops for one
year, half the population would have perished. Now if sun and rain should
fail to mature the crops, the giant laboratories of artificial food can
soon supply the deficiency. The tendency of the times is to depend less
and less on the cultivation of the natural foods that are liable to the
chances of unfavorable wind and weather, and to rely on the artificial
products the creation of which is a matter of scientific certainty and
accuracy.
“Let us now put ourselves forward again; this time one hundred
millenniums, and look into the past as we have done before. We shall see
that before the middle of the first millennium the principal articles
of food are artificial productions identically like the natural foods
formerly used such as milk, flour, meat, butter, fruits, vegetables
etc. In addition to these many other foods were invented similar and
equivalent to these natural productions. Later on the artificial products
came more and more to consist of the proximate principles and condensed
forms of food, fats, oils, sugar, and starch, gum, gluten, albumen,
fibrin, casein, gelatine etc., directly from minerals, especially coal,
or from cheap vegetation such as weeds that in your day were destroyed
as worthless, sea weed etc., also from sea animals. Nothing came amiss,
chemistry could produce rich and nourishing food from what in your day
were the most unpromising materials, and at a merely nominal cost too,
because power was furnished by the sun as I have explained to you. The
constant tendency of chemical discovery was toward the production of
foods in their purity, unmixed with the bulky residuum that goes with
natural foods and that in the process of assimilation has to be rejected.
As the foods thus became more condensed and pure a few spoons full became
the daily food of a man, the pleasures of the table became less keen and
protracted and gradually fell out of fashion. Other methods of recreation
were more cultivated, such as music, oratory, the lyceum, theater,
scientific lectures and experiments, games, etc. In many other respects
the habits and fashions of life changed during the first millennium. The
practice of walking was almost discontinued; flying machines having come
into universal use. They reached perfection and were so inexpensive to
operate, that they became a part of the equipment of everybody. Gentlemen
went to their business, ladies went shopping, children went to school,
with their flyers, as they formerly used to do to a less universal
extent, with their bicycles.
“The changes that took place in the habits of the people in respect
to eating, walking and other things, reacted upon their physical
development, slowly and imperceptibly, however, unless comparisons were
made between people of several generations apart. The tendency as you
know, is, toward the suppression of organs not habitually used. Use and
habit keep all organs in good running order and develop them in size and
health, whereas disuse allows them to become shriveled and reduced, and
if it is persisted in for too many generations the organ will be reduced
to an unrecognizable functionless remnant or disappear altogether. All
animals including man have lost organs by ceasing to use them. Very many,
as the ox, sheep, dog, deer etc., have lost toes, many have lost part
of their intestines, some have lost a part or the whole of one lung.
Most vertebrates including man were derived from ancestors who once
possessed—but lost—an eye on the back of the head. The whales and snakes
have lost their legs and feet in whole or in part.
“You will not be surprised therefore to be told that the man of the
second millennium began to be perceptibly changed from the one you knew
in the 19th century. But when we come to the tenth millennium the change
is astonishing. Let me describe him.
“His average height is eight inches less. His legs are short and
spindling, his feet are small, and his toes reduced to small nubbins
or mere warts. He has no teeth and the males and third sex people have
not hair enough to make a scalp lock, even among the young, and it all
disappears before middle age. The females however still maintain enough
for a few bangs and spit curls. The external ears are reduced to a low
rim of cartilage around the opening, about one inch in diameter. The
lower part of the trunk is small and weak. The upper part containing
the heart and lungs is, however, very well developed. The arms and
hands are well formed strong and symmetrical. The head is very large
indicating large mental power. All these deviations from the average
man of your day became more pronounced with time, and if you could see
a man of the one hundredth millennium you would have to inquire what it
was. His stature now is but four feet, twelve inches of which is head,
eighteen inches trunk, and the other eighteen inches legs. His chest is
very broad, and very thick from front to back. His arms are stout and
long enough to allow him to reach to his knees while standing. They are
much larger and stronger than his legs. He is bald as an orange from
birth. He has an immense mouth which he uses much in singing, laughing
and speaking. He has not the vestige of an external ear nor any hair on
any part of the body. No teeth of course and no sign of a toe. The foot
is also much shortened and his walk is neither graceful nor vigorous.
Foot ball is no longer his best hold, although his ancestor in your day
may have belonged to the Sophomore foot ball eleven, of the Minnesota
University. It would probably astonish you to see him eat. If not, it
would be because you did not know what he was doing. His food is a
liquid, an artificial preparation digested and assimilated ready for
absorption by the tissues. He does not take it in at the mouth, but by an
orifice leading into the abdomen. This orifice is in the position of the
navel, and is the opening of the umbilical cord through the outer wall of
the abdomen to its connection with the vascular system inside.
“In ancient times the umbilical cord through which the embryo received
its nourishment became pinched off on the outside after birth, while
the part of it that remained inside of the body cavity became reduced
to a mere string, a useless rudiment. But now that inside piece is
kept in use from birth, the child being fed in the same way after as
before birth. This opening by hereditary habit has developed wonderful
changes for which, however, the long ages of use have furnished ample
time for adjustment into a perfect adaptation of the parts and functions
concerned. But really the changes are by no means so radical as they seem
at first view. The change made in the mode of life of a new infant is in
reality the same in effect now that it was in your day. The essential
operation in both cases is the introduction of nourishment into the blood
and it is accomplished in both cases by osmosis. The history of this
evolution is interesting, but I can give you only a bare outline of it.
“As the business of the world came to be done almost exclusively by
machinery directed by men’s brains, there was but little use for muscular
exertion, especially of the legs and body. The use for legs in locomotion
was also superseded by artificial modes of conveyance. Every road and
street in the world was as smooth and clean as a parlor floor. On
these were unlimited facilities for inexpensive transportation, public
and private, the power being electric. Besides these were the flyers,
also public and private. The life became almost exclusively a sitting
life, even when in motion, sedentary in the most literal sense. This
was, however, accompanied by the most intense activity of the brain.
These conditions were decidedly antagonistical to the old system of the
nourishment of the body by the stomach and intestines, because that
system had been developed in connection with an active muscular body,
and could be kept in good health only by vigorous muscular activity.
Formerly four-fifths of the blood went to support digestion and muscular
activity, and one-fifth went to the brain to support the mind. Increasing
mental activity diverted more and more of the circulation towards the
brain, until now it consumes three-fifths, muscular work takes not quite
two-fifths and digestion and assimilation almost none. The result of
the changes that constantly pressed in this direction, was that the
first millennium was an age of dyspepsia. The increasing disability of
the stomach for digestion, encouraged the use of digested foods, and
these by excusing the stomach from doing its proper work, increased its
disability. Children at first were usually born with good stomachs, but
these by middle life or before, commonly degenerated into instruments of
misery. Finally they would not even tolerate digested food and it became
necessary to convey food within by some other means. Any method by which
the nutritious matter properly digested can be introduced into the blood
will support life. It became necessary to adopt hypodermic injections and
other similar expedients. As this sort of treatment had to be applied
earlier and earlier in life as time went on, even in some cases in
childhood and infancy, they finally hit on the plan of using the ancient
natural entrance of the umbilicus and not allowing it to close at all
during life. In this way the ancient system of support and nutrition for
the body through the stomach has been entirely subverted. The chemical
processes of digestion, selection and assimilation of food are all done
outside of the body, by artificial processes, and the cavity of the body
is no longer filled with a series of brewing vats, soap factories, gas
works and receptacles for refuse filth and foul water. For we may truly
say that digestion consists of processes of fermentation of several
different kinds and saponification or soap making. Little or nothing that
is now taken into the body requires to be excreted and the only excretory
organs are the skin and lungs, for moisture and carbonic dioxide. This
radical change was not all effected at once, but was extended over many
generations, and was not fully consummated till the second millennium
was well spent. But before that one was finished, the atrophy of the
digestive functions was so far complete that cases of possible reversion
to them were extremely rare. The people of the present time look back
with amusement, commiseration and disgust upon the walking laboratories
that constituted their ancestors.”
“I think,” said I, “that if the people of my day could see them the
amusement would be mutual.”
“Probably it would,” he replied, “but if you should come to compare real
advantages, I am of the opinion they would be entitled to laugh the
loudest. They have decidedly the advantage of you in the simplicity of
their construction and in their reduced liability to get out of order.
An autopsy of this latter day man would reveal a little shriveled up bit
of parchment in the place where the stomach used to be, and another in
the place where the bladder was, a handful of shoe strings in the place
of the intestines, the total reduced in length at least one-half; some
little fleshy nodules like so many beans and peas and hickory nuts to
stand for the kidneys, the pancreas, the spleen and that ancient terror,
the liver. It is strange that after these organs are thus discarded
and atrophied, nature continues to perpetuate the remembrance of them
by reproducing in every individual that is born, these odd and grim
caricatures, like a miserly old woman that carefully hoards her cellar
full of old tin cans and broken jugs, bottles and dishes—of no use to
anybody.—But this is nature’s way. Even in your day your scientists
pointed out numerous remnants of played-out organs that your race then
had about them, such as the coracoid bone, the tail bones, the vermiform
appendix, the ear muscles, the pineal gland and many more. But now there
are to be added, this fresh batch. They will be constantly reduced in
size, one generation after another, but your race will hardly exist long
enough to get rid of them entirely; but they may congratulate themselves
that they have ended their mischief and are no longer functional.
“There are also notable changes in the skeleton of the present man. He no
longer has 33 segments or vertebrae in his back bone as folks had in your
day, but only 23. The seven neck and twelve dorsal segments remain the
same, but the five lumbar vertebrae are reduced to two, the five sacral
and four tail bones are reduced to one each, much diminished in size, the
tail a mere button. So he is much shortened from the diaphragm down.”
“Professor,” said I, “I confess I am disappointed in this man of the
latter days. It is doubtless true as you say that he has been greatly
improved by getting rid of his troublesome insides. I was somewhat
shocked when you first told me of it, but on reflection I have no doubt,
that although it seemed at first so strange and unnatural, it was all
for the best. But his stature—I cannot get over that. He is nothing but
a big headed spindle shanked dwarf. Our dreamers and prophets of the
nineteenth century always pictured the coming man to us as a Hercules
with brawny limbs and muscles of steel; he was never to be less than six
feet high, and he was to be as graceful as he was powerful and all that.
He was to be intellectual, too, of course; a Daniel Webster in brain. And
they seemed to have the experience of the race in their favor in this
prognostication, because it does not appear that the average stature of
the race diminished any, but probably increased, during the 4,000 or
5,000 years before the 20th century. Now if it did not decrease for that
period, why should it in the periods following?”
“During the 4,000 years or more you refer to, the conditions of life on
which stature depend, did not materially change, for which reason stature
did not. War and field exercises, tend to large stature. Sedentary
employments, tend to reduce the stature. The latter mode of life has
prevailed for 100,000 years, and besides the general causes there has
been the additional special one in this case, of the loss of function in
a considerable portion of the trunk which would of consequence lose size
in an increased proportion.
“But after all it is not physical stature that commands respect, but
mental stature. Many of your greatest men have been of small stature.
You speedily forget one’s size when attending to the actions of his
mind. The most dignified presence is that which impresses itself as the
strongest mentally. We consider that to which we are accustomed, as the
most correct and proper, in stature as in everything else. If you had
been most accustomed to people four feet high, you would regard six
feet people as coarse unwieldy overgrown monsters, and when you become
accustomed to the people of these times with their gentleness patience,
industry, unselfishness, sympathy and kindness and unfailing good humor,
their ability ingenuity, almost divine wisdom and learning, their stature
and form will be transformed before you to become your standard of
perfection. In the abstract, that is the most perfect form that admits
of the accomplishment of the greatest ends. By this standard the man of
this latter day is far in advance of all that preceded him, because in no
other human form would it ever have been possible to properly sustain so
great a brain.
“It may interest you to know that the latter day man has almost entirely
lost the sense of taste, the sense of smell was already much decayed in
your day. It is somewhat poorer now, but still fairly good. The sense
of touch is far more delicate than formerly, hearing equally good,
and sight better for near objects, but not so good for far ones. The
telepathic sense has been remarkably developed and is one of the subjects
of study and drill in the schools. The adult people of the third sex wear
hats ten inches in diameter. The heads of the other sexes are somewhat
smaller. The longevity of the race has increased to an average of 200
years, some occasionally reaching 300. The cause of this is due in part
to the greater purity of their food and the smaller quantity of mineral
impurities, such as lime, that is allowed to clog up the tissues and
vitiate the circulation.”