THE FUTURE TROGLODYTE.
Underground Man. By Gabriel Tarde. (Duckworth and Co. 3s. 6d.)—To more than one philosopher there has occurred the cheerful idea that mankind will spend its decaying years in caves and recesses within the actual body of the earth. Not, indeed, that a consciousness of guilt is expected to drive our descendants into hiding in the manner predicted by St. John; it is a physical cause which is invoked by our latter-day prophets for a possible revival of the cave-dwellers. In the first of the books by which Mr. Wells made his reputation he imagined the human race as ulti- mately splitting into two distinct stocks, one of which frisked gaily in the sunlight, whilst the other dwelt and slaved far down beneath the surface of the earth. This was partly Mr. Wells's fun, or rather his way of satirising our existing social con- ditions, which already drive a considerable number of the working classes to spend the greater part of their days out of reach of sunshine. In M. Tarde's interesting romance, which has been very ably translated by Mr. Cloudesley Brereton, a pseudo-scientific reason is invoked for the disappearance of man into the bowels of the earth. We all know that the sun is only one among the stars, and is liable to the same accidents as those which occasionally dim their brightness. There is no reason that we can see why our comparatively respectable luminary should not suddenly burst out into an unendurable blaze, like the new stars which every now and then make their appearance in the heavens, or, on the other hand, die rapidly into darkness, like the lost Pleiad. Of course, if either of these events were to happen human life would very rapidly come to an end. M. Tarde has adopted the latter hypothesis, and calculates that in about five hundred years from now the sun will suffer from a kind of astronomical anaemia which will make his rays quite inadequate to keep the whole world at a habitable temperature. In such a case, no doubt, the great majority of mankind would rapidly die off. Whether any escaped would depend upon the rapidity with which such a catastrophe afflicted the world. M. Tarde imagines that sufficient warning might be given for some of the most enterprising, and. consequently the fittest, to survive by taking refuge in the deep workings of mines, where the temperature is independent of the sun. His entertaining romance aims at showing how humanity would develop under such conditions, and it is written with a pleasing wit and a touch of satire which make it very good reading. Mr. Wells observes regretfully in the preface which he contributes that M. Tarde has not made as much as was possible of the idea of an inverted world, and the people seeking the dwindling heat of the interior, generation after generation, through gallery and tunnel to the earth's centre. But the conception, though perhaps it lacks the circumstantial reasoning with which Mr. Wells loves to adorn his ingenious fantasies, is very ably worked out, and will afford a very pleasant hour or two of entertainment and not a little food for thought to its readers.
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