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Certain Personal Matters - Incidental Thoughts on a Bald Head · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty two 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 Greg Giardano. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty two, Incidental Thoughts on a bald Head. I
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  Speaker 1: was asked to go quite suddenly and found myself there.
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  Speaker 1: Before I had time to think of what it might be,
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  Speaker 1: I understood her to say it was a meeting of
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  Speaker 1: some Sunday society, some society that tried to turn the
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  Speaker 1: Sabbath from a day of woe to a day of rejoicing.
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  Speaker 1: Saint George's Hall, Langham Place, a cab and there we were.
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  Speaker 1: I thought there would be picturesque pagans, but the entertainment
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  Speaker 1: was the oddest. It has ever been my lot to
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  Speaker 1: see a kind of mystery. The place was dark except
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  Speaker 1: for a big circle of light on a screen, and
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  Speaker 1: a dismal man with a long stick was talking about
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  Speaker 1: the effects of alcohol on your muscles. We talked and talked,
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  Speaker 1: and people went to sleep all about us. You fear me.
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  Speaker 1: His face looked so very pretty in the dim light that.
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  Speaker 1: I tried to talk to her and hold her hand,
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  Speaker 1: but she only said ssh. And when they began showing
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  Speaker 1: pictures on the screen, the most shocking things, stomachs and
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  Speaker 1: all that kind of thing. They went on like that
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  Speaker 1: for an hour, and then there was a lot of
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  Speaker 1: thumbing with umbrellas, and they turned the lights up and
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  Speaker 1: we went home. Curious way of spending Sunday afternoon, is
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  Speaker 1: it not? But you may imagine I had a dismal
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  Speaker 1: time all that hour. I understood that people about me
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  Speaker 1: were skeptics, the kind of people who didn't believe things,
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  Speaker 1: a singular class, and I am told a growing one.
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  Speaker 1: These excellent people, it seems, have conscientious objections to going
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  Speaker 1: to chapel or church. But at the same time the
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  Speaker 1: devotional habit of countless generations of pious forerunners is strong
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  Speaker 1: in them. Consequently, they have invented things like these lectures
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  Speaker 1: to go to with a professor instead of a priest,
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  Speaker 1: and the lantern slide of a stomach by way of
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  Speaker 1: altar piece an alcohol. They make their devil and their
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  Speaker 1: God is hygiene, a curious and instructive case of mental inertia.
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  Speaker 1: I understand too. There are several other temples of this
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  Speaker 1: cult in London South Place Chapel and Essex Hall, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: where they worshiped the Spirit of the Innermost. But the
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  Speaker 1: thing that struck me so oddly was the number of
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  Speaker 1: bald heads glimmering faintly in the reflected light from the
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  Speaker 1: Life entern circle. And that set me thinking upon a
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  Speaker 1: difficulty I have never been able to surmount. You see,
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  Speaker 1: these people, and lots of other people too, believe in
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  Speaker 1: a thing they call natural selection. They think, as part
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  Speaker 1: of that belief, that men are descended from hairy Simean
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  Speaker 1: ancestors assert that even a hundred thousand years ago, the
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  Speaker 1: ancestor was hairy, hairy, heavy, and almost as much a
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  Speaker 1: brute as if he lived in mister Arthur Morrison's Whitechapel.
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  Speaker 1: For my own part, I think it is a pretty
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  Speaker 1: theory and would certainly accept it were it not for
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  Speaker 1: one objection. The thing I cannot understand is how our
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  Speaker 1: ancestor lost that hair. I see no reason why he
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  Speaker 1: should have not kept his hair on. According to the
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  Speaker 1: theory of natural selection, materially favorable variations survive, unfavorable disappear.
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  Speaker 1: The only way in which the loss is to be
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  Speaker 1: accounted for is by explain it as advantageous. But where
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  Speaker 1: is the advantage of losing your hair? The disadvantages appear
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  Speaker 1: to me to be innumerable. A thick covering of hair
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  Speaker 1: like that of a capuchin monkey would be an invaluable
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  Speaker 1: protection against sudden changes of temperature, far better than any
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  Speaker 1: clothing can be had. I that, for instance, I should
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  Speaker 1: be rid of the perpetual cold in the head that
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  Speaker 1: so disfigures my life. And the multitudes who die annually
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  Speaker 1: of chills, bronchitis, and consumption, and most of those who
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  Speaker 1: suffer from rheumatic pains, neuralgia, and so forth, would not
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  Speaker 1: so die and suffer. And in the past, when clothing
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  Speaker 1: was less perfect in firing a casual commodity, the disadvantages
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  Speaker 1: of losing hair were all the greater. In very hot countries,
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  Speaker 1: hair is perhaps even more important in saving the possessor
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  Speaker 1: from the excessive glare of the sun. Before the divention
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  Speaker 1: of the hat, thick hair on the head at least
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  Speaker 1: was apt essential to save the owner of the skull
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  Speaker 1: from some stroke. That perhaps explains why the hair has
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  Speaker 1: been retained there and why it is going Now that
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  Speaker 1: we have hats but it certainly does not explain why
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  Speaker 1: it is gone from the rest of the body. One
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  Speaker 1: remarkably weak explanation has been propounded, and appeal to our
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  Speaker 1: belief and human vanity. He picked it out by the
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  Speaker 1: roots because he thought he was prettier without. But that
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  Speaker 1: is no reason at all. Suppose he did, it would
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  Speaker 1: not affect his children. Professor Wiseman has at least convinced
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  Speaker 1: scientific people of this that the characters acquired by a
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  Speaker 1: parent are rarely, if ever, transmitted to its offspring. An
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  Speaker 1: individual given to such wanton denudation would simply be at
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  Speaker 1: a disadvantage with his decently covered fellows, would fall behind
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  Speaker 1: in the race of life and perish with his kind. Besides,
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  Speaker 1: if man has been at such pains to uncover his skin,
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  Speaker 1: why have quite a large number of the most respected
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  Speaker 1: among us such a passionate desire to have it covered
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  Speaker 1: up again? Yet that is the only attempted explanation I
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  Speaker 1: have ever come upon, and the thing has often worried me.
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  Speaker 1: I think it is just as probably a change of dietary.
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  Speaker 1: I have noticed that most of your vegetarians are shockheaded,
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  Speaker 1: ample bearded men, and I have heard the ancestor was vegetarian,
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  Speaker 1: or it may be I sometimes fancy a kind of
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  Speaker 1: inherent disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle.
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  Speaker 1: That came back in my memory vividly. As I looked
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  Speaker 1: at the long rows of skeptics typical advanced people and
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  Speaker 1: marked their glistening crania, I recalled other losses. Here is humanity,
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  Speaker 1: thought I growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, unemotional, irreligious,
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  Speaker 1: losing the end joint of the little toe, dwindling in
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  Speaker 1: its osseous structures, its jawbone and brow ridges, losing all
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  Speaker 1: the full, rich curvatures of its primordial beauty. It seems
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  Speaker 1: almost like what the scientific people call a law, And
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  Speaker 1: by strenuous efforts, the creature just keeps pace with his losses, devises, clothes, wigs,
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  Speaker 1: artificial teeth, paddings, shoes. What civilized being could use his
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  Speaker 1: bare feet for his ordinary locomotion? Imagine him on the
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  Speaker 1: fir sprinkled golf links. Then stays an efficient substitute for
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  Speaker 1: the effeet feminine backbone. So the thing goes on long
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  Speaker 1: ago his superfacies become artificial, and now the human being
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  Speaker 1: shrinks like a burning cigar and the figure he has abandoned,
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  Speaker 1: remains distended with artificial ashes, dead dry protections against the
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  Speaker 1: exposures he so uncountably fears. Will he go on shrinking?
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  Speaker 1: I wonder, become at last a mere lurking atomy and
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  Speaker 1: his own resas a kind of hermit crab, the bulk
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  Speaker 1: of him a complex mechanism, a thing of rags and
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  Speaker 1: tatters and paper machet stolen from the earth and the
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  Speaker 1: plant world and his fellow beasts. And at last may
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  Speaker 1: he not disappear altogether, none missing him in a democracy
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  Speaker 1: of honest machinery, neatly clad and loaded up with the
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  Speaker 1: sound principles of action, walked to and fro in a
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  Speaker 1: regenerate world. Thus it was my mind when dreaming in
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  Speaker 1: Saint George's hall. But presently, as I say, came the
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  Speaker 1: last word about stomachs, and the bald men woke up,
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  Speaker 1: rattled their umbrellas. So it was vastly interesting, and went
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  Speaker 1: toddling off home in an ecstasy of advanced liberalism. And
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  Speaker 1: we two returned to the place whence we came. And
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter twenty two recording by Greg Giardano, Newport, Ritchy, Florida.
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  Speaker 1: Scoot six