“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.