Who is the last man?

Everyone talks about the last man, but no one ever does anything about himknows who he is.  Well, I do.  And I'm going to tell you.

The key, of course, is to start our researches off on the right foot.  The last man—well, how can we determine who that is?  Clearly, we have to look at the latter men and proceed from there.  So, who are the latter men?  We don't really know much about that, either; we sense that they must be closer to us than the last man, whoever he might be, but they're still pretty obscure.  So we bring the problem closer: who are the late men?  Now we've hit upon something solid: the late men are the recently deceased.  Clearly, then, the latter men are the "more late" men.  Those who've been dead longer.  And the last man is the one who's been dead the longest—Abel.

Pretty surprising, huh?  The other interesting thing that comes out of this analysis is that we're always on improving, always on the way up, just getting better and better, for the current generation—always the first—constantly gets closer and closer to the generation after which there shall be no other, the foremost generation.

Comments

[standpipe b]

Pose, poser, post.

[teofilo]

If this theory is correct then somebody did something about the last man, and that somebody was Cain.

[ben wolfson]

On the contrary! Death is not an event in life, and Abel wasn't the last man until his death; thus, nothing Cain could have done to Abel could count as doing something about the last man per se. Cain can be said to have brought it about that Abel, and not someone else, was the last man, but he did not affect the last man qua last man.

[teofilo]

He did, however, effect the last man.

[ben wolfson]

Quite.