1928. Human evolution was a staple topic in the early volumes of the To-day and To-morrow series, from the ‘ectogenetically optimistic’ series inauguration Daedalus (1923) by J.B.S. Haldane, through to the “indeniably pessimistic” prophecy of doom through racial degeneration in F.C.S. Schiller’s Tantalus (1924), and the racially-loaded anthropology of F.G. Crookshank’s The Mongol in our Midst (1924). All were central figures in British eugenics at that time and could be described as typical hereditarians, that is Neo-Darwinian disciples of Charles Darwin, as clarified by August Weismann, rather than followers of Jean Baptiste Lamarck. The advent of a strong environmentalist thrust in the series came with the release of H.S. Jennings’ rather agnostic Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man (1925), the first volume by an American author; and fully extended by the overtly Lamarckian, Galatea, or the Future of Darwinism (1927), by Dr. Walter Russell Brain – see entries on these works on this website. These authors and volumes were in turn succeeded by Scottish doctor, poet, and science popularizer, Dr. Ronald Campbell Macfie’s (1867 – 1931) Metanthropos, or the Body of the Future (1928). Macfie’s contribution focuses on the evolution of the body, and especially the neopallium (or neo-cortex) of the brain. See title-page and promotional review for Metanthropos in the accompanying picture.

Dr. Macfie received his medical degree in 1897 at Aberdeen, and eventually specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis, one of the secular demons of both euthenics and eugenics. Macfie was one of the senior authors of the series; already having several euthenic and popular-science books, volumes of poetry and many journal and popular magazine articles to his credit before Metanthropos (Bowler, 2009). The list included the rather like-minded ancestor Heredity, Evolution, and Vitalism (1912) in which Macfie propounded a form of neo-vitalism, positing an unknown cosmic force guiding evolution in a sort of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ or ‘evolution by saltation’ that would later recur as a scientific debate in the 1970s, as recapitulated and popularized by Stephen Jay Gould. Metanthropos offered yet another viewpoint on human evolution to the series, one that included a limited tolerance for, and discussion of eugenics (both negative and positive), but Macfie focused much more on euthenic improvements and past/future mental evolution, rather than simply harping on physical or moral degeneration. It was not the final word on the subject in the series either; that honour was to be relegated to Sir Arthur Keith – the premier of British physical anthropologists and oft cited authority by numerous To-day and To-morrow series authors – in his 1931 series addition: Ethnos; or the Problem of Race considered from an Anthropological Standpoint.

-Michael Kohlman

• Bowler, P.J. (2009). Science for all: the popularization of science in early twentieth-century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Brain, W.R. (1927). Galatea, or the future of Darwinism. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Crookshanks, F.G. (1925). The mongol in our midst. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Haldane, J.B.S. (1923). Daedalus, or science and the future. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Jennings, H.S. (1925). Prometheus, or biology and the advancement of man. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.

• Keith, A. (1931). Ethnos; or the problem of race considered from an anthropological standpoint. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Ludovici, A.M. (1925). Lysistrata, or womans future and the future woman. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.

• Macfie, R.C. (1912). Heredity, evolution, and vitalism: some of the discoveries of modern research into these matters, their trend and significance. New York: W. Wood.

• Macfie, R.C. (1928). Metanthropos, or the body of the future. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Schiller, F.C.S. (1924). Tantalus, or the future of man. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.