The Professor here begun to roll up his profile. He was evidently preparing to leave, but as long as[195] 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[196] 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[197] 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[198] 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,[199] 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.[200] 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[201] 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 furnish............