ANTHROPOLOGY APPLIED… (1)
By:
July 11, 2025
An excerpt from Robert Gilbert Wells’ Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro (1905). Set in post-Reconstruction America, with numerous sf and fantastic elements, including invisibility, time travel and a drug that allows one to change skin color. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize an excerpt for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.
SAM HAS BECOME CONVINCED THAT MR. JONES IS TOO POLISHED A GENTLEMAN NOT TO BECOME A NEGRO.
Sam — Mr. Jones, old Sam has come over to exchange a few complicated thoughts with you.
Mr. Jones — Now where did that rhetoric spring from? It’s a kind of new mixture to me.
Sam — Say, Mr. Jones, if you will be quiet and let Sam talk, why I’ll promise you that you will be highly entertained by this old chap.
Mr. Jones — Alright Sam, just proceed.
Sam — First I wish to say that I’ve been a constant student of yours for forty-nine years. During those years I have made a diligent study of you, thus I am acquainted with your biography, yes, your most delicate ways, methods, habits, and every inclination, subjective and objective, has presented themselves before my mental vision. These sentiments and proclivities that make up your personality, has received from me many, yes, many diligent investigations. You understand this was to my own interest, that these qualities of yours should be noted. These agencies and attributes gave me my first idea of you, then I began to think upon them; later on I formed a conclusion of you.
Mr. Jones — Well, Sam, what is your conclusion; let me hear it, please?
Sam — Well, now, I have decided that the character that makes up your personality is identically the same as that which I saw eminating from a very cultured gentleman whom I chanced to meet last October while in the city of Chicago. He is a fine specimen of humanity, a man of an excellent quality and quantity of common, practical sense, though unlettered, but he possesses one of the best trained minds I have ever found emanating from a man’s head in the form of an eccentric wheel. He is as free from prejudice and caste as the sun is from darkness. His conversation is so simplified and practical that a child may understand or comprehend them. He is the benevolent, social, intellectual, commercial and spiritual friend of every body of matter that has taken on the form of a man. He is the most perfect form of matter and mind that I have ever beheld amidst the floating masses of mankind.
Mr. Jones — Say, Sam, old boy, I am an aged anthropologist, but the description that you have given of that man has inspired my mind with such zeal and asperation that a spirit of casual curiosity, mixed well with an interrogative inclination to meet the gentleman that I may converse with him awhile since you think that we lack so little of being the same man. I would like very much, indeed, to see my own personality focused in another body of matter. Just, think, I would be able to see myself once in life, I am satisfied that you are able to draw a pretty clear conception of my entire make-up, therefore you would be the proper one to judge, the same development in another form should you chance to see it. Furthermore, the gentleman that you have referred to must be composed of a quality of matter that makes up a quantity very similar to that which composes my body. Then to meet this man in person, would be simply to meet myself in person and character in a separate body of flesh, but the same quality of matter and mind. Now to have the pleasure of meeting this brilliant character would be quite a treat to your old friend. indeed. Now, Sam, would you mind telling me the color of his hair and eyes, height and complexion?
Sam — Why, no, I do not mind telling you, of course not. He has dark hair and eyes, skin a little tinged with color, but as smooth as a baby’s, and eyes filled with luster that bespeak intellect and wisdom; thin skin, fine silky hair, teeth as white as pearl, about five feet ten inches high, strong nose, but the lobes of it are a little flaired; of course you have seen many a nose like that.
Mr. Jones — Yes, many are like that, and you do not think there is any difference at all between us two?
Sam — Well, Mr. Jones, I must acknowledge there is a little shade of difference between your complexion. I have noticed you are of a paled white, while he is a shade darker.
Mr. Jones — Now, Sam, your discription of this wonderful prodigy of humanity reminds me of a brother of mine whom my parents would not own or acknowledge, simply because the sun had tanned his skin a little. I am of the opinion that this man is my long lost brother, whom my parents disinherited, the one that we boys and my sisters would not acknowledge when he came home tanned, ignorant, unpolished, without that culture and refinement that have entailed every member of the Jones’ family wherever they may be found. Well, Sam, what in the world is he doing for a living?
Sam — Why, he is a doctor.
Mr. Jones — How did he get his education?
Sam — By working hard upon the farm, saving his pennies studying at night, and playing the part of a servant in the land and homes of strangers.
Mr. Jones — I am satisfied that this man is my brother. We are of one parent, one blood and of one family. When he first left our home of wealth, intellect, culture, and refinement, he carried all of these blessings with him; when he returned, not the least trace of these family distinctions of honor and nobility could be discerned; all were lost; therefore, every member of the family turned him down. He was almost as black as a Negro, but since he has come back to his color, and has learned how to think and to accumulate property, why, of course, the family will acknowledge him once more. Now, Sam, I have often thought that God might place some curse upon my family for our conduct towards this brother. I have been uneasy about myself because I was conscious of the wrong when I did it. I have laid awake many a night thinking over it. When I would get down with my family at night to honor and reverence that Supreme Being, I would get up still feeling guilty and condemned before that Holy One who made US BOTH BROTHERS OF ONE BLOOD.
Sam — Mr. Jones, I have been thinking how I could bring about a meeting between you and your brother, a meeting that will bring such results in a practical way that the entire human family would be benefited thereby. Last night, after gliding off into the silent domains of slumber, I betook my psychological, invisible force into that wonderful evolutionary empire, from whence came the first parents of all mankind. Now, in this realm of science, I became acquainted with a mineral or fluid that will give you and your brother the same color and remove that little texture or hue which brought about that great family difference; that you may look upon your dear brother with that pride, honor, love and glory for both him and God which you had in that far off beginning when manhood first blossomed or
bloomed into the image of God, our Father.
Mr. Jones — Sam, is it possible that you can bring about such happy results as that? By the way, I am your man. If you can eradicate this old family trouble and remove that little difference which has made such a breach in our relationship, why, I say get at it.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.