Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/29

Rh working along other lines. The Coming Man is to be noseless—that is settled; and there are not wanting those who support with enthusiasm the doctrine that he is to be hairless as well.

It is to be observed that these two effects, planing down of the human nose and uproot- ing of the human hair, are to be brought about differently—at least the main agency in the one case is different from that in the other. The nose is departing from among us because of its high sense of duty. Most of the odors of civilization being distinctly disagreeable, and in the selection of our food chemical analysis having taken the place of olfactory investigation, there is little for the modern nose to do that the modern nose-owner is willing to have done.

One of the most useful of all our natural endowments is what I may venture to call the conscience of the organs. None of the bodily organs is willing to be maintained in a state of idleness and dependence—to eat the bread of charity, so to speak. Whenever for any cause one of them is put upon the retired list and deprived of its functions and just influence in the physical economy it begins to withdraw from the scheme of things by atrophy.