WHAT THE COMING MAN MAY BE

Evening Star, Issue 4160, 27 June 1876, Page 4

WHAT THE COMING MAN MAY BE

[From the Scientific American.)

Clever writers have frequently amused themselves and their readers by forecasting the future and prognosticating the condition of humanity centuries hence. They have materialised, so to speak, the dreams of to-day, and pictured human life as it slight be were those dreams fulfilled. In all these Utopias, however, the, people, though better morally, more'happy socially, more fortunate politically, and more powerful through easily-predicted increase of knowledge, are yet substantially the same as the people of the present. It is assumed, apparently, that the future progress of man is to be measured in his condition, not by changes in himself; that, sup-! posing progress to 'go on,in the future; M in the past, the. men of 5876 will! differ from ■ns in their personal' deyelopmqnt. ,

A writer of sufficient knowledge and liveliness of imagination might plan a : more marvellous and, it is hardly too’ much to say, more probable Uptopia,j from the standpoint of psychical ; rather than material development, picturing a time when the average man will be in-; tellectually as superior to ns as we are superior to the less developed, man of 1 8,000 years ago. That there Has been a similar increase of human brain power during the past few thousand years is as certain as that there was a steady increase of brain, bulk throughout the animal kingdom during the geological ages just preceding; and there is no physiological or other leason for believing that man may not go on perpetually increasing in mental power.

7 Measure the intellectual gulf between the Australian savage, barely able to count his fingers and having no numerals above, two, and a Newton or ft La Place, or even the average man of to-day; then suppose the whole race advanced an equal interval. Jmagine a race of' men so intellectual that the average man would be a Michael Angelo! The basis for such an estimate of the powers of the coming man Is found, strange to say, in certain idiots.

Idiocy is commonly marked by the *en - development of the physical powers, but sometimes by-1 the nondevelopment of all but one, in which eases a single faculty appears to receive the whole of the force evolved, and to develop enormously at the'expense of all the rest. Thus we may account for the marvellous power in one direction shown by idiotic prodigies like Blind Tom, whose psychical power is wholly musical. The idiot painter known as Cat Raphael illustrates the same perversion of force in ; another direction. He drew and painted cats and kittens of, every sort, shape, and shade, me very possible position and condition, and painted them wonderfully well; yet eould do nothing else. In like manner we have calculating, idiots, able to maketho most elaborate calculations almost instantly, but utterly unable to explain the mental operations involved. Other idiots, without reference to clock or watch, and without conception of the object or meaning of divisions of time, are able to tell the hour and minute at any time, night or_ day. Still others show an extraordinary development of verbal memory, unaccompanied by other mental power. Though unable to read or to understand the meaning of many words, they will repeat by sound hundreds of verses, lists of words, everything, in short, that they may hear. Then there are historical prodigies, who, though ignorant of history in any just.sense, can give the date of every great battle or other event, repeating them as isolated facts, devoid of interest and* meaning. Similarly, there are mechanical idiots, or rather mechanical geniuses, who are idiots in all other directions. A few years ago there was exhibited in Englanda beautiful model of a ship, pronounced by competent judges to be a perfect specimen q£ naval architecture, every detail being proportioned and finished with the nicest exactness. It was made by the imbecile son of a gardener in an interior county. Up to that time, it is claimed, he had never seen the sea or a ship,,his pattern being a print d ship pn an old pocket handkerchief. When his work was nearly finished, he visited a dockyard, and made a few changes in his work. Four years werespent o'n this, his second attempt at shipbuilding, his first having failed through ignorance of the fact that wood could be bent after immersion in hot water, a trick which he is said to have discovered by himself. He was taught to copy drawings, which ; he did with surprising. exactness; yet after all, at the age of twenty-four he was described as a small-headed, large-pupilled we might go dVer the whole list of human faculties, finding illustrations of enormous developments of each combined with the total lack or non-development of all Other mental powers. The entire force ofi «uch individuals seems, as we said, to be turned into a single channel.

Imagine an organism capable of sending an equal amount of force to each and all tbe faculties : a type of humanity itjpsHrich the average man should have the memory of some idiots, the -swift and certain calculation of others, the linguistic, musical, constructive,, . and artistic faculties of others. Such a type of man is by no meats impossible, by no means impro bable. hap been prodigies in in darcqfotionf in irihsic, | In Snvwtiy© power, who were’

“®P to " the' "aWrage "all other excessive, the development of their faculties in one direction, it did not greatly impoverish-' themin the. rest. 'And as, during the millehiums past, the. human race has been slowly lifted from the low intellectual level of prehistoric savage?, so we may reasonably infer that the race will go On increasing in mental power until those prophetic hints of what man may be are all achieved and overpassed.