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Certain Personal Matters - Of a Book Unwritten · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty three of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by D. J. Wood Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty three of a book. Unwritten Accomplished literature is
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  Speaker 1: all very well in its way, no doubt, But much
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  Speaker 1: more fascinating to the contemplative man are the books that
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  Speaker 1: have not been written. These latter are no trouble to hold.
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  Speaker 1: There are no pages to turn over. One can read
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  Speaker 1: them in bed on sleepless nights without a candle. Turning
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  Speaker 1: to another topic, primitive man in the works of the
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  Speaker 1: descriptive anthropologists is certainly a very entertaining and quaint person.
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  Speaker 1: But the man of the future, if only we had
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  Speaker 1: the facts, would appeal to us more strongly. Yet where
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  Speaker 1: are the books? As Ruskin has said, somewhere a propos
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  Speaker 1: of Darwin, It is not what man has been, but
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  Speaker 1: what he will be that should interest us. The contemplative man,
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  Speaker 1: in his easy chair, pondering this saying, suddenly beholds in
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  Speaker 1: the fire through the blue haze of his pipe. One
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  Speaker 1: of these great unwritten volumes. It is large in size,
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  Speaker 1: heavy in lettering, seemingly by one Professor Holskoff, presumably Professor
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  Speaker 1: at Weisnik two. The necessary characters of the Man of
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  Speaker 1: the Remote Future, deduced from the existing stream of tendency,
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  Speaker 1: is the title. The worthy professor is severely scientific in
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  Speaker 1: his method, and deliberate and cautious in his deductions. The
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  Speaker 1: contemplative man discovers as he pursues his theme, and yet
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  Speaker 1: the conclusions are, to say the least remarkable. We must
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  Speaker 1: figure the excellent professor, expanding the matter at great length,
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  Speaker 1: voluminously technical. But the contemplative man, since he has access
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  Speaker 1: to the only copy, is clearly at liberty to make
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  Speaker 1: such extracts and abstracts as he chooses. For the unscientific reader, here,
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  Speaker 1: for instance, is something of the practicable lucidity that he
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  Speaker 1: considers admits of quotation. The theory of evolution writes the
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  Speaker 1: professor is now universally accepted by zoologists and botanists, and
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  Speaker 1: is applied unreservedly to man. Some question, indeed, whether it
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  Speaker 1: fits his soul, but all agree it counts for his body. Man,
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  Speaker 1: we are assured, is descended from apelike ancestors molded by
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  Speaker 1: circumstances into men, and these apes again were derived from
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  Speaker 1: ancestral forms of a lower order, and so up the
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  Speaker 1: primordial protoplasmic jelly. Clearly, then, man, unless the order of
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  Speaker 1: the universe has come to an end, will undergo further
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  Speaker 1: modification in the future, and at least cease to be man,
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  Speaker 1: giving rise to some other type of animated being. At once,
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  Speaker 1: the fascinating question arises, what will this being be? Let
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  Speaker 1: us consider for a little the plastic influence is at
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  Speaker 1: work upon our species. Just as the bird is the
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  Speaker 1: creature of the wing, and is all molded and modified
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  Speaker 1: to flying, And just as the fish is the creature
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  Speaker 1: that swims and has had to meet the inflexible conditions
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  Speaker 1: of a problem in hydrodynamics, so man is the creature
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  Speaker 1: of the brain. He will live by intelligence and not
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  Speaker 1: by physical strength, if he live at all. So that
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  Speaker 1: much that is purely animal about him is being, and
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  Speaker 1: must be beyond all question suppressed in his ultimate development.
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  Speaker 1: Evolution is no mechanical tendency making for perfection. According to
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  Speaker 1: the ideas of the current Ear of Grace eighteen ninety seven,
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  Speaker 1: it is simply the continual adaptation of plastic life, for
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  Speaker 1: good or evil, to the circumstances that surround it. We
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  Speaker 1: notice this decay of the animal part around us now
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  Speaker 1: in the loss of teeth and hair, in the dwindling
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  Speaker 1: hands and feet of men, in their smaller jaws and
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  Speaker 1: slighter mouths and ears. Man now does by wit and
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  Speaker 1: machinery and verbal agreement what he once did by bodily toil.
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  Speaker 1: For once he had to catch his dinner, capture his wife,
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  Speaker 1: run away from his enemies, and continually exercise himself for
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  Speaker 1: love of himself to perform these duties. Well. But now
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  Speaker 1: all this is changed. Cabs, trains, trams render speed unnecessary.
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  Speaker 1: The pursuit of food becomes easier. His wife is no
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  Speaker 1: longer hunted, but rather, in view of the crowded matrimonial market,
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  Speaker 1: seeks him out. One needs wits now to live, and
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  Speaker 1: physical activity is a drug, a snare, even it seeks
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  Speaker 1: artificial outlets and overflows. In games, Athleticism takes up time
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  Speaker 1: and cripples a man in his competitive examinations, and in business,
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  Speaker 1: so is your fleshly man handicapped against his sutler brother.
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  Speaker 1: He is unsuccessful in life, does not marry the better
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  Speaker 1: adapted survive. The coming man, then will clearly have a
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  Speaker 1: larger brain and a slighter body than the present. But
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  Speaker 1: the Professor makes one exception to this. The human hand,
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  Speaker 1: since it is the teacher and in turnpreter of the brain,
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  Speaker 1: will become constantly more powerful and subtle as the rest
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  Speaker 1: of them. Musculature dwindels. Then in the physiology of these
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  Speaker 1: children of men, with their expanding brains, their great sensitive hands,
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  Speaker 1: and diminishing bodies, great changes were necessarily worked. We see now,
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  Speaker 1: says the Professor, in the more intellectual sections of humanity,
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  Speaker 1: and increasing sensitiveness to stimulants, a growing inability to grapple
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  Speaker 1: with such a matter as alcohol. For instance, no longer
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  Speaker 1: can men drink a bottleful of port. Some cannot drink tea.
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  Speaker 1: It is too exciting for their highly wrought nervous systems.
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  Speaker 1: The process will go on, and the Sir Wilfrid Lawson
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  Speaker 1: of some near generation may find it his duty and
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  Speaker 1: pleasure to make the silvery spray of his wisdom to
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  Speaker 1: tonobulate against the tea tray. These facts lead naturally to
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  Speaker 1: the comprehension of others. Fresh raw meat was once a
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  Speaker 1: dish for a king. Now refined persons scarcely touch meat
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  Speaker 1: unless it is cunningly disguised. Again, consider the case of turnips.
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  Speaker 1: The raw root is now a thing almost uneatable, But
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  Speaker 1: once upon time a turnip must have been a rare
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  Speaker 1: and fortunate find to be torn up with delirious eagerness
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  Speaker 1: and devoured in ecstasy. The time will come when the
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  Speaker 1: change will affect all the other fruits of the earth.
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  Speaker 1: Even now, only the young of mankind eat apples raw,
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  Speaker 1: the young, always preserving ancestual characteristics after their disappearance in
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  Speaker 1: the adult. Some day even boys will regard apples without emotion.
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  Speaker 1: The boy of the future, one must believe, will gaze
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  Speaker 1: on an apple with the same unspeculative languor with which
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  Speaker 1: he now regards a flint in the absence of a cat. Furthermore,
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  Speaker 1: fresh chemical discoveries came into action as modifying influences upon men.
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  Speaker 1: In the prehistoric period, even man's mouth had ceased to
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  Speaker 1: be an instrument for grasping food. It is still growing
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  Speaker 1: continually less prehensile. His front teeth are smaller, his lips
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  Speaker 1: thinner and less muscular. He has a new organ, a
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  Speaker 1: mandible not of irreparable tissue, but of bone and steel,
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  Speaker 1: a knife and fork. There is no reason why things
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  Speaker 1: should stop at partial artificial division. Thus afforded, there is
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  Speaker 1: every reason, on the contrary, to believe my statement that
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  Speaker 1: some cunning exterior mechanism will presently masticate and ensalvate his dinner,
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  Speaker 1: relieve his diminishing salivary glands and teeth, and at last
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  Speaker 1: altogether abolish them. Then what is not needed disappears. What
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  Speaker 1: use is there for external ears, nose and browridges? Now?
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  Speaker 1: The two latter once protected the eye from injury in
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  Speaker 1: conflict and in falls, But in these days we keep
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  Speaker 1: on our legs and at peace. Directing his thoughts in
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  Speaker 1: this way, the reader may presently conjure up a dim,
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  Speaker 1: strange vision of the latter day face, eyes large, lustrous, beautiful, soulful.
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  Speaker 1: Above them, no longer separated by rugged browridges, is the
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  Speaker 1: top of the head a glistening, hairless dome, tourette and beautiful.
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  Speaker 1: No craggy nose rises to disturb by its unmeaning shadows
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  Speaker 1: the symmetry of that calm face. No vestigial ears project.
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  Speaker 1: The mouth is a small, perfectly round aperture, toothless and gumless, jawless, unanimal,
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  Speaker 1: no futile emotions, disturbing its roundness as it lies, like
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  Speaker 1: the harvest moon or the evening star, in the wide
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  Speaker 1: firmament of face. Such is the face the professor beholds
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  Speaker 1: in the future. Of course, parallel modifications will also affect
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  Speaker 1: the body and limbs. Every day, so many hours in
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  Speaker 1: so much energy are required for digestion. A gross torpidity,
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  Speaker 1: a carnal lethargy, seizes on mortal men after dinner. This
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  Speaker 1: may and can be avoided. Man's knowledge of organic chemistry
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  Speaker 1: widens daily. Already he can supplement the gastric glands by
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  Speaker 1: artificial devices. Every doctor who administers physic implies that the
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  Speaker 1: bodily functions may be artificially superseded. We have pepsin, pancretin,
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  Speaker 1: artificial gastric acid, I know not what like mixtures. Why
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  Speaker 1: then should not the stomach be ultimately superannuated altogether. A
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  Speaker 1: man who could not only leave his dinner to be cooked,
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  Speaker 1: but also leave it to be masticated and digested, would
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  Speaker 1: have vast social advantages over his food digesting fellow. This
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  Speaker 1: is let me remind you here the calmest, most passionless
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  Speaker 1: and scientific working out of the future forms of things
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  Speaker 1: from the data of the present. At this stage, the
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  Speaker 1: following facts may perhaps stimulate your imagination. There can be
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  Speaker 1: no doubt that many of the arthropods, a division of
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  Speaker 1: animals more ancient and even now more prevalent than the vertebrata,
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  Speaker 1: have undergone more phylogenetic modification a beautiful phrase, than even
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  Speaker 1: the most modified of vertebrated animals. Simple forms like the
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  Speaker 1: lobster display a primitive structure parallel with that of the fishes. However,
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  Speaker 1: in such a form as the degraded chondrocanthus the structructure
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  Speaker 1: has diverged far more widely from its original type than
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  Speaker 1: in man. Among some of these most highly modified crustaceans,
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  Speaker 1: the whole of the alimentary canal, that is, all the
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  Speaker 1: food digesting and food absorbing parts, form a useless solid cord.
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  Speaker 1: The animal is nourished, it is a parasite by the
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  Speaker 1: absorption of the nutritive fluid in which it swims. Is
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  Speaker 1: there any absolute impossibility, in supposing man to be destined
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  Speaker 1: for a similar change, to imagine him no longer dining
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  Speaker 1: with unwilly paraphernalia of servants and plates upon food queerly
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  Speaker 1: dyed and distorted, but nourishing himself in an elegant simplicity
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  Speaker 1: by immersion in a tub of nutritive fluid. There grows
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  Speaker 1: upon the impatient imagination of building a dome of crystal
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  Speaker 1: across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most
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  Speaker 1: glorious and pure prismatic colors pass and fade and change.
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  Speaker 1: In the center of this transparent chameleon tinted dome is
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  Speaker 1: a circular white marble basin filled with some clear mobile
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  Speaker 1: amber liquid. And in this plunge and float strange beings
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  Speaker 1: are they birds? They are the descendants of man at dinner.
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  Speaker 1: Watch them as they hop on their hands, a method
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  Speaker 1: of progression advocated already by Bjornsen about the pure white
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  Speaker 1: marble floor. Great hands. They have enormous brains, soft liquid,
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  Speaker 1: soulful eyes, their whole muscular system, their legs, their abdomens
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  Speaker 1: are shriveled to nothing, a dangling, degraded pendant to their minds.
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  Speaker 1: The further visions of the professor are less alluring. The
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  Speaker 1: animals and plants die away before men accept such as
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  Speaker 1: he preserves for his food or delight, or such as
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  Speaker 1: maintain a precarious footing about him as commonsoles and parasites.
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  Speaker 1: These vermin and pests must succome sooner or later to
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  Speaker 1: his untiring inventiveness and incessantly growing discipline. When he learns
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  Speaker 1: the chemists are doubtless getting towards the secret now to
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  Speaker 1: do the work of chlorophyll without the plant, then his
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  Speaker 1: necessity for other animals and plants upon the earth will disappear.
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  Speaker 1: Sooner or later. Where there is no power of resistance
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  Speaker 1: and no necessity, there comes extinction. In the last days,
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  Speaker 1: man will be alone on earth, and his food will
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  Speaker 1: be won by the chemist from the dead rocks in
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  Speaker 1: the sunlight. And one may learn the full reason in
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  Speaker 1: that explicit and painfully right book the Data of Ethics,
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  Speaker 1: that irrational fellowship of man will give place to an
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  Speaker 1: intellectual cooperation and emotion fall within this scheme of reason.
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  Speaker 1: Undoubtedly it is a long time yet, But a long
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  Speaker 1: time is nothing in the face of eternity, and every
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  Speaker 1: man who dares think of these things must look eternity
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  Speaker 1: in the face. Then the Earth is ever radiating away
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  Speaker 1: heat into space, the professor reminds us, And so at
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  Speaker 1: last comes a vision of earthly chaubim hopping heads, great
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  Speaker 1: unemotional intelligences and little hearts, fighting together perforce and fiercely
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  Speaker 1: against the cold that griffs them tighter and tighter. For
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  Speaker 1: the world is cooling slowly and inevitably it grows colder
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  Speaker 1: as the years roll by. We must imagine these creatures,
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  Speaker 1: says the professor, in galleries and laboratories, deep down in
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  Speaker 1: the bowels of the earth. The whole world will be
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  Speaker 1: snow covered and piled with ice, All animals, all vegetation
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  Speaker 1: vanished except this last branch of the tree of life.
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  Speaker 1: The last men have gone even deeper following the diminishing
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  Speaker 1: heat of the planet, and vast metallic shafts and ventilators
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  Speaker 1: make way for the air they need. So with a
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  Speaker 1: glimpse of these human tadpoles in their deep close gallery,
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  Speaker 1: with their boring machinery ringing away and artificial lights glaring
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  Speaker 1: and casting black shadows, the Professor's horoscope concludes humanity in
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  Speaker 1: dismal retreat before the cold changed beyond recognition. Yet the
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  Speaker 1: professor is reasonable enough. His facts are current science, his
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  Speaker 1: methods orderly. The contemplative man shivers at the prospect, starts
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  Speaker 1: up to poke the fire, and the whole of this
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  Speaker 1: remarkable book that is not written, vanishes straight away in
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  Speaker 1: the smoke of his pipe. This is the great advantage
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  Speaker 1: of this unwritten literature. There is no bother in changing
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  Speaker 1: the books. The contemplative man consoles himself for the destiny
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  Speaker 1: of the species with the lost portion of Kubla Khan
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  Speaker 1: end of Chapter twenty three.