{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_26260/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_26260","id":"gutenberg_26260","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26260","summary":null,"tags":["American wit and humor","Category: Humour","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Evolution (Biology) -- Wit and humor"],"text":"Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\nALSO BY _CLARENCE DAY_\n\nTHE CROW'S NEST\nTHOUGHTS WITHOUT WORDS\nGOD AND MY FATHER\nIN THE GREEN MOUNTAIN COUNTRY\nSCENES FROM THE MESOZOIC\nLIFE WITH FATHER\n\n\n\n\nTHIS SIMIAN _WORLD_\n\n\n\n_by_\n\nCLARENCE DAY\n\n\n\n_With Illustrations by the Author_\n\n\n\n_New York & London_\nALFRED.A.KNOPF\n1936\n\nCOPYRIGHT 1920, BY CLARENCE DAY\n\n_All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any\nform without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a\nreviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a\nmagazine or newspaper._\n\n_Published May 22, 1920_\n_Reprinted Nine Times_\n_Eleventh Printing, March, 1936_\n\n_Manufactured in the United States of America_\n\n\n\n\n\"How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation,' with an ugly\nemphasis on _brute_.... As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with\nother animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to\nthink that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees,\nand that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly\nand worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange\nthese for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?\"\n\nW. N. P. BARBELLION.\n\n\n\n\n_THIS SIMIAN WORLD_\n\n\n\n\n_ONE_\n\n\nLast Sunday, Potter took me out driving along upper Broadway, where\nthose long rows of tall new apartment houses were built a few years\nago. It was a mild afternoon and great crowds of people were out.\nSunday afternoon crowds. They were not going anywhere,--they were just\nstrolling up and down, staring at each other, and talking. There were\nthousands and thousands of them.\n\n\"Awful, aren't they!\" said Potter.\n\nI didn't know what he meant. When he added, \"Why, these crowds,\" I\nturned and asked, \"Why, what about them?\" I wasn't sure whether he had\nan idea or a headache.\n\n\"Other creatures don't do it,\" he replied, with a discouraged\nexpression. \"Are any other beings ever found in such masses, but\nvermin? Aimless, staring, vacant-minded,--look at them! I can get no\nsense whatever of individual worth, or of value in men as a race, when\nI see them like this. It makes one almost despair of civilization.\"\n\nI thought this over for awhile, to get in touch with his attitude. I\nmyself feel differently at different times about us human-beings:\nsometimes I get pretty indignant when we are attacked (for there is\naltogether too much abuse of us by spectator philosophers) and yet at\nother times I too feel like a spectator, an alien: but even then I had\nnever felt so alien or despairing as Potter. I cast about for the\nprobable cause of our difference. \"Let's remember,\" I said, \"it's a\nsimian civilization.\"\n\nPotter was staring disgustedly at some vaudeville sign-boards.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"those for example are distinctively simian. Why should\nyou feel disappointment at something inevitable?\" And I went on to\nargue that it wasn't as though we were descended from eagles for\ninstance, instead of (broadly speaking) from ape-like or monkeyish\nbeings. Being of simian stock, we had simian traits. Our development\nnaturally bore the marks of our origin. If we had inherited our\ndispositions from eagles we should have loathed vaudeville. But as\ncousins of the Bandarlog, we loved it. What could you expect?\n\n[Illustration: Descended from eagles]\n\n\n\n\n_TWO_\n\n\nIf we had been made directly from clay, the way it says in the Bible,\nand had therefore inherited no intermediate characteristics,--if a god,\nor some principle of growth, had gone that way to work with us, he or\nit might have molded us into much more splendid forms.\n\nBut considering our simian descent, it has done very well. The only\npeople who are disappointed in us are those who still believe that clay\nstory. Or who--unconsciously--still let it color their thinking.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nThere certainly seems to be a power at work in the world, by virtue of\nwhich every living thing grows and develops. And it tends toward\nsplendor. Seeds become trees, and weak little nations grow great. But\nthe push or the force that is doing this, the yeast as it were, has to\nwork in and on certain definite kinds of material. Because this yeast\nis in us, there may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting\nmankind; but because of our line of descent there are also queer\nlimitations.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Strange forgotten dynasties]\n\n_THREE_\n\n\nIn those distant invisible epochs before men existed, before even the\nproud missing link strutted around through the woods (little realizing\nhow we his greatgrandsons would smile wryly at him, much as our own\ndescendants may shudder at us, ages hence) the various animals were\ndesperately competing for power. They couldn't or didn't live as\nequals. Certain groups sought the headship.\n\nMany strange forgotten dynasties rose, met defiance, and fell. In the\nend it was our ancestors who won, and became simian kings, and\nbequeathed a whole planet to us--and have never been thanked for it. No\nmonument has been raised to the memory of those first hairy conquerors;\nyet had they not fought well and wisely in those far-off times, some\nother race would have been masters, and kept us in cages, or shot us\nfor sport in the forests while they ruled the world.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nSo Potter and I, developing this train of thought, began to imagine we\nhad lived many ages ago, and somehow or other had alighted here from\nsome older planet. Familiar with the ways of evolution elsewhere in the\nuniverse, we naturally should have wondered what course it would take\non this earth. \"Even in this out-of-the-way corner of the Cosmos,\" we\nmight have reflected, \"and on this tiny star, it may be of interest to\nconsider the trend of events.\" We should have tried to appraise the\ndifferent species as they wandered around, each with its own set of\ngood and bad characteristics. Which group, we'd have wondered, would\never contrive to rule all the rest?\n\nAnd how great a development could they attain to thereafter?\n\n\n\n\n_FOUR_\n\n\nIf we had landed here after the great saurians had been swept from the\nscene, we might first have considered the lemurs or apes. They had\nhands. Aesthetically viewed, the poor simians were simply grotesque;\nbut travelers who knew other planets might have known what beauty may\nspring from an uncouth beginning in this magic universe.\n\nStill--those frowzy, unlovely hordes of apes and monkeys were so\ncompletely lacking in signs of kingship; they were so flighty, too, in\ntheir ways, and had so little purpose, and so much love for absurd and\nidle chatter, that they would have struck us, we thought, as unlikely\nmaterial. Such traits, we should have reminded ourselves, persist. They\nare not easily left behind, even after long stages; and they form a\nterrible obstacle to all high advancement.\n\n\n\n\n_FIVE_\n\n\nThe bees or the ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their\nsmallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They\ncould have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And\nin these orderly insects there was obviously a capacity for labor, and\nco-operative labor at that, which could carry them far. We all know\nthat they have a marked genius: great gifts of their own. In a\ncivilization of super-ants or bees, there would have been no problem of\nthe hungry unemployed, no poverty, no unstable government, no riots, no\nstrikes for short hours, no derision of eugenics, no thieves, perhaps\nno crime at all.\n\nAnts are good citizens: they place group interests first.\n\nBut they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant\ndoesn't have the vote, apparently: he just has his duties.\n\nThis quality may have something to do with their having group wars. The\negotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression, so the\negotism of the group is extremely ferocious and active. Is this one of\nthe reasons why ants fight so much? They go in for State Socialism,\nyes, but they are not internationalists. And ants commit atrocities in\nand after their battles that are--I wish I could truly say--inhuman.\n\nBut conversely, ants are absolutely unselfish within the community.\nThey are skilful. Ingenious. Their nests and buildings are relatively\nlarger than man's. The scientists speak of their paved streets, vaulted\nhalls, their hundreds of different domesticated animals, their pluck\nand intelligence, their individual initiative, their chaste and\nindustrious lives. Darwin said the ant's brain was \"one of the most\nmarvelous atoms in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of\nman\"--yes, of present-day man, who for thousands and thousands of years\nhas had so much more chance to develop his brain.... A thoughtful\nobserver would have weighed all these excellent qualities.\n\nWhen we think of these creatures as little men (which is all wrong of\ncourse) we see they have their faults. To our eyes they seem too\norderly, for instance. Repressively so. Their ways are more fixed than\nthose of the old Egyptians, and their industry is painful to think of,\nit's hyper-Chinese. But we must remember this is a simian comment. The\ninstincts of the species that you and I belong to are of an opposite\nkind; and that makes it hard for us to judge ants fairly.\n\nBut we and the ants are alike in one matter: the strong love of\nproperty. And instead of merely struggling with Nature for it, they\nalso fight other ants. The custom of plunder seems to be a part of most\nof their wars. This has gone on for ages among them, and continues\ntoday. Raids, ferocious combats, and loot are part of an ant's regular\nlife. Ant reformers, if there were any, might lay this to their\nproperty sense, and talk of abolishing property as a cure for the evil.\nBut that would not help for long unless they could abolish the love of\nit.\n\nAnts seem to care even more for property than we do ourselves. We men\nare inclined to ease up a little when we have all we need. But it is\nnot so with ants: they can't bear to stop: they keep right on working.\nThis means that ants do not contemplate: they heed nothing outside of\ntheir own little rounds. It is almost as though their fondness for\nlabor had closed fast their minds.\n\nConceivably they might have developed inquiring minds. But this would\nhave run against their strongest instincts. The ant is knowing and\nwise; but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation. The worshipper of\nenergy is too physically energetic to see that he cannot explore\ncertain higher fields until he is still.\n\nEven if such a race had somehow achieved self-consciousness and reason,\nwould they have been able therewith to rule their instincts, or to stop\nwork long enough to examine themselves, or the universe, or to dream of\nany noble development? Probably not. Reason is seldom or never the\nruler: it is the servant of instinct. It would therefore have told the\nants that incessant toil was useful and good.\n\n\"Toil has brought you up from the ruck of things,\" Reason would have\nplausibly said. \"It's by virtue of feverish toil that you have become\nwhat you are. Being endlessly industrious is the best road--for you--to\nthe heights.\" And, self-reassured, they would then have had orgies of\nwork; and thus, by devoted exertion, have blocked their advancement.\nWork, and order and gain would have withered their souls.\n\n\n\n\n_SIX_\n\n\nLet us take the great cats. They are free from this talent for\nslave-hood. Stately beasts like the lion have more independence of mind\nthan the ants,--and a self-respect, we may note, unknown to primates.\nOr consider the leopards, with hearts that no tyrant could master. What\nfearless and resolute leopard-men they could have fathered! How\nmagnificently such a civilization would have made its force tell!\n\nA race of civilized beings descended from these great cats would have\nbeen rich in hermits and solitary thinkers. The recluse would not have\nbeen stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us simians. They would not\nhave been a credulous people, or easily religious. False prophets and\nswindlers would have found few dupes. And what generals they would have\nmade! what consummate politicians!\n\nDon't imagine them as a collection of tigers walking around on their\nhind-legs. They would have only been like tigers in the sense that we\nmen are like monkeys. Their development in appearance and character\nwould have been quite transforming.\n\nInstead of the small flat head of the tiger, they would have had clear\nsmooth brows; and those who were not bald would have had neatly parted\nhair--perhaps striped.\n\nTheir mouths would have been smaller and more sensitive: their faces\nmost dignified. Where now they express chiefly savageness, they would\nhave expressed fire and grace.\n\nThey would have been courteous and suave. No vulgar crowding would have\noccurred on the streets of their cities. No mobs. No ignominious\nsubway-jams.\n\nImagine a cultivated coterie of such men and women, at a ball, dancing.\nHow few of us humans are graceful. They would have all been Pavlovas.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nLike ants and bees, the cat race is nervous. Their temperaments are\nhigh-strung. They would never have become as poised or as placid\nas--say--super-cows. Yet they would have had less insanity, probably,\nthan we. Monkeys' (and elephants') minds seem precariously balanced,\nunstable. The great cats are saner. They are intense, they would have\nneeded sanitariums: but fewer asylums. And their asylums would have\nbeen not for weak-minded souls, but for furies.\n\nThey would have been strong at slander. They would have been far more\nviolent than we, in their hates, and they would have had fewer\nfriendships. Yet they might not have been any poorer in real\nfriendships than we. The real friendships among men are so rare that\nwhen they occur they are famous. Friends as loyal as Damon and Pythias\nwere, are exceptions. Good fellowship is common, but unchanging\naffection is not. We like those who like us, as a rule, and dislike\nthose who don't. Most of our ties have no better footing than that; and\nthose who have many such ties are called warm-hearted.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe super-cat-men would have rated cleanliness higher. Some of us\nprimates have learned to keep ourselves clean, but it's no large\nproportion; and even the cleanest of us see no grandeur in\nsoap-manufacturing, and we don't look to manicures and plumbers for\nsocial prestige. A feline race would have honored such occupations. J.\nde Courcy Tiger would have felt that nothing _but_ making soap, or\nbeing a plumber, was compatible with a high social position; and the\nrich Vera Pantherbilt would have deigned to dine only with manicures.\n\nNone but the lowest dregs of such a race would have been lawyers\nspending their span of life on this mysterious earth studying the long\ndusty records of dead and gone quarrels. We simians naturally admire a\nprofession full of wrangle and chatter. But that is a monkeyish way of\ndeciding disputes, not a feline.\n\nWe fight best in armies, gregariously, where the risk is reduced; but\nwe disapprove usually of murderers, and of almost all private combat.\nWith the great cats, it would have been just the other way round.\n(Lions and leopards fight each other singly, not in bands, as do\nmonkeys.)\n\nAs a matter of fact, few of us delight in really serious fighting. We\ndo love to bicker; and we box and knock each other around, to exhibit\nour strength; but few normal simians are keen about bloodshed and\nkilling; we do it in war only because of patriotism, revenge, duty,\nglory. A feline civilization would have cared nothing for duty or\nglory, but they would have taken a far higher pleasure in gore. If a\nplanet of super-cat-men could look down upon ours, they would not know\nwhich to think was the most amazing: the way we tamely live, five\nmillion or so in a city, with only a few police to keep us quiet, while\nwe commit only one or two murders a day, and hardly have a respectable\nnumber of brawls; or the way great armies of us are trained to\nfight,--not liking it much, and yet doing more killing in war-time and\nshedding more blood than even the fiercest lion on his cruelest days.\nWhich would perplex a gentlemanly super-cat spectator the more, our\nhabits of wholesale slaughter in the field, or our spiritless making a\nfetish of \"order,\" at home?\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIt is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most for.\nSuper-cat-men would have been outraged, had their right of personal\ncombat been questioned. The simian submits with odd readiness to the\nloss of this privilege. What outrages him is to make him stop wagging\nhis tongue. He becomes most excited and passionate about the right of\nfree speech, even going so far in his emotion as to declare it is\nsacred.\n\nHe looks upon other creatures pityingly because they are dumb. If one\nof his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy. Even that\nmere hesitation in speech, known as stammering, he deems a misfortune.\n\nSo precious to a simian is the privilege of making sounds with his\ntongue, that when he wishes to punish severely those men he calls\ncriminals, he forbids them to chatter, and forces them by threats to be\nsilent. It is felt that this punishment is entirely too cruel however,\nand that even the worst offenders should be allowed to talk part of\neach day.\n\nWhatever a simian does, there must always be some talking about it. He\ncan't even make peace without a kind of chatter called a peace\nconference. Super-cats would not have had to \"make\" peace: they would\nhave just walked off and stopped fighting.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIn a world of super-cat-men, I suppose there would have been fewer\nsailors; and people would have cared less for seaside resorts, or for\nswimming. Cats hate getting wet, so men descended from them might have\nhated it. They would have felt that even going in wading was a sign of\ngreat hardihood, and only the most daring young fellows, showing off,\nwould have done it.\n\nAmong them there would have been no anti-vivisection societies:\n\nNo Young Cats Christian Associations or Red Cross work:\n\nNo vegetarians:\n\nNo early closing laws:\n\nMuch more hunting and trapping:\n\nNo riding to hounds; that's pure simian. Just think how it would have\nentranced the old-time monkeys to foresee such a game! A game where\nthey'd all prance off on captured horses, tearing pell-mell through the\nwoods in gay red coats, attended by yelping packs of servant-dogs. It\nis excellent sport--but how cats would scorn to hunt in that way!\n\nThey would not have knighted explorers--they would have all been\nexplorers.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nImagine that you are strolling through a super-cat city at night. Over\nyonder is the business quarter, its evening shops blazing with jewels.\nThe great stock-yards lie to the east where you hear those sad sounds:\nthat low mooing as of innumerable herds, waiting slaughter. Beyond lie\nthe silent aquariums and the crates of fresh mice. (They raise mice\ninstead of hens in the country, in Super-cat Land.) To the west is a\nbeautiful but weirdly bacchanalian park, with long groves of catnip,\nwhere young super-cats have their fling, and where a few crazed catnip\naddicts live on till they die, unable to break off their strangely\nundignified orgies. And here where you stand is the sumptuous residence\ndistrict. Houses with spacious grounds everywhere: no densely-packed\nbuildings. The streets have been swept up--or lapped up--until they are\nspotless. Not a scrap of paper is lying around anywhere: no rubbish, no\ndust. Few of the pavements are left bare, as ours are, and those few\nare polished: the rest have deep soft velvet carpets. No footfalls are\nheard.\n\n[Illustration: Punctilious, haughty, inflammable]\n\nThere are no lights in these streets, though these people are abroad\nmuch at night. All you see are stars overhead and the glowing eyes of\ncat ladies, of lithe silken ladies who pass you, or of stiff-whiskered\nmen. Beware of those men and the gleam of their split-pupiled stare.\nThey are haughty, punctilious, inflammable: self-absorbed too, however.\nThey will probably not even notice you; but if they do, you are lost.\nThey take offense in a flash, abhor strangers, despise hospitality, and\nwould think nothing of killing you or me on their way home to dinner.\n\nFollow one of them. Enter this house. Ah what splendor! No servants,\nthough a few abject monkeys wait at the back-doors, and submissively\nrun little errands. But of course they are never let inside: they would\nseem out of place. Gorgeous couches, rich colors, silken walls, an\noriental magnificence. In here is the ballroom. But wait: what is this\nin the corner? A large triumphal statue--of a cat overcoming a dog. And\nlook at this dining-room, its exquisite appointments, its daintiness:\nfaucets for hot and cold milk in the pantry, and a gold bowl of cream.\n\nSome one is entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous,\nslender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent\npurposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were _her_ lover, my\nboy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden,\nhow hostile, how ecstatic, how violent!\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nThink what the state of the arts would have been in such cities.\n\nThey would have had few comedies on their stage; no farces. Cats care\nlittle for fun. In the circus, superlative acrobats. No clowns.\n\n[Illustration: One of their poets]\n\nIn drama and singing they would have surpassed us probably. Even in the\nstage of arrested development as mere animals, in which we see cats,\nthey wail with a passionate intensity at night in our yards. Imagine\nhow a Caruso descended from such beings would sing.\n\nIn literature they would not have begged for happy endings.\n\nThey would have been personally more self-assured than we, far freer of\ncheap imitativeness of each other in manners and art, and hence more\noriginal in art; more clearly aware of what they really desired, not\ncringingly watchful of what was expected of them; less widely observant\nperhaps, more deeply thoughtful.\n\nTheir artists would have produced less however, even though they felt\nmore. A super-cat artist would have valued the pictures he drew for\ntheir effects on himself; he wouldn't have cared a rap whether anyone\nelse saw them or not. He would not have bothered, usually, to give any\nform to his conceptions. Simply to have had the sensation would have\nfor him been enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it does not\ncontent them to have a conception; they must wrestle with it until it\ntakes a form in which others can see it. They doom the artistic impulse\nto toil with its nose to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed\nin a book or a statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic\nimpulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly\ndeserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is\nlabor. With the cats, art is joy.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nBut the dominant characteristic of this fine race is cunning. And hence\nI think it would have been through their craftiness, chiefly, that they\nwould have felt the impulse to study, and the wish to advance. Craft is\na cat's delight: craft they never can have too much of. So it would\nhave been from one triumph of cunning to another that they would have\nmarched. That would have been the greatest driving force of their\ncivilization.\n\nThis would have meant great progress in invention and science--or in\nsome fields of science, the economic for instance. But it would have\nretarded them in others. Craft studies the world calculatingly, from\nwithout, instead of understandingly from within. Especially would it\nhave cheapened the feline philosophies; for not simply how to know but\nhow to circumvent the universe would have been their desire. Mankind's\ncuriosity is disinterested; it seems purer by contrast. That is to say,\nmade as we are, it seems purer to us. What we call disinterested,\nhowever, super-cats might call aimless. (Aimlessness is one of the\nregular simian traits.)\n\nI don't mean to be prejudiced in favor of the simian side. Curiosity\nmay be as debasing, I grant you, as craft. And craft might turn into\nartifices of a kind which would be noble and fine. Just as the ignorant\nand fitful curiosity of some little monkey is hardly to be compared to\nthe astronomer's magnificent search, so the craft and cunning we see in\nour pussies would bear small relation to the high-minded planning of\nsome ruler of the race we are imagining.\n\nAnd yet--craft _is_ self-defeating in the end. Transmute it into its\nfinest possible form, let it be as subtle and civilized as you please,\nas yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets itself over\nagainst the wholeness of things; its role is that of the part at war\nwith the whole. Milton's Lucifer had the mind of a fine super-cat.\n\nThat craft may defeat itself in the end, however, is not the real\npoint. That doesn't explain why the lions aren't ruling the planet. The\ntrouble is, it would defeat itself in the beginning. It would have too\nbitterly stressed the struggle for existence. Conflict and struggle\nmake civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves make\ncivilizations. Mutual aid and support are needed for that. There the\nfelines are lacking. They do not co-operate well; they have small\ngroup-devotion. Their lordliness, their strong self-regard, and their\ncoolness of heart, have somehow thwarted the chance of their racial\nprogress.\n\n\n\n\n_SEVEN_\n\n\nThere are many other beasts that one might once have thought had a\nchance.\n\nSome, like horses and deer, were not bold enough; or were stupid, like\nbuffaloes.\n\nSome had over-trustful characters, like the seals; or exploitable\ncharacters, like cows, and chickens, and sheep. Such creatures sentence\nthemselves to be captives, by their lack of ambition.\n\nDogs? They have more spirit. But they have lost their chance of\nkingship through worshipping us. The dog's finer qualities can't be\npraised too warmly; there is a purity about his devotion which makes\nmere men feel speechless: but with all love for dogs, one must grant\nthey are vassals, not rulers. They are too parasitic--the one willing\nservant class of the world. And we have betrayed them by making\nunder-simians of them. We have taught them some of our own ways of\nbehaving, and frowned upon theirs. Loving us, they let us stop their\ndeveloping in tune with their natures; and they've patiently tried ever\nsince to adopt ways of ours. They have done it, too; but of course they\ncan't get far: it's not their own road. Dogs have more love than\nintegrity. They've been true to us, yes, but they haven't been true to\nthemselves.\n\nPigs? The pig is remarkably intelligent and brave,--but he's gross; and\ngrossness delays one's achievement, it takes so much time. The snake\ntoo, though wise, has a way of eating himself into stupors. If\nsuper-snake-men had had banquets they would have been too vast to\ndescribe. Each little snake family could have eaten a herd of cattle at\nChristmas.\n\nGoats, then? Bears or turtles? Wolves, whales, crows? Each had brains\nand pride, and would have been glad to rule the world if they could;\nbut each had their defects, and their weaknesses for such a position.\n\nThe elephant? Ah! Evolution has had its tragedies, hasn't it, as well\nas its triumphs; and well should the elephant know it. He had the best\nchance of all. Wiser even than the lion, or the wisest of apes, his\nwisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister. Consider his\ndignity, his poise and skill. He was plastic, too. He had learned to\neat many foods and endure many climates. Once, some say, this race\nexplored the globe. Their bones are found everywhere, in South America\neven; so the elephants' Columbus may have found some road here before\nours. They are cosmopolitans, these suave and well-bred beings. They\nhave rich emotional natures, long memories, loyalty; they are steady\nand sure; and not narrow, not self-absorbed, for they seem interested\nin everything. What was it then, that put them out of the race?\n\nCould it have been a quite natural belief that they had already won?\n\nAnd when they saw that they hadn't, and that the monkey-men were\ngetting ahead, were they too great-minded and decent to exterminate\ntheir puny rivals?\n\nIt may have been their tolerance and patience that betrayed them. They\nwait too long before they resent an imposition or insult. Just as ants\nare too energetic and cats too shrewd for their own highest good, so\nthe elephants suffer from too much patience. Their exhibitions of it\nmay seem superb,--such power and such restraint, combined, are\nnoble,--but a quality carried to excess defeats itself. Kings who won't\nlift their scepters must yield in the end; and, the worst of it is, to\nupstarts who snatch at their crowns.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nI fancy the elephants would have been gentler masters than we: more\nlive-and-let-live in allowing other species to stay here. Our way is to\nkill good and bad, male and female and babies, till the few last\nsurvivors lie hidden away from our guns. All species must surrender\nunconditionally--those are our terms--and come and live in barns\nalongside us; or on us, as parasites. The creatures that want to live a\nlife of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless\nwe treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are specially well\nbrought up shoot them for fun. Some might be our friends. We don't wish\nit. We keep them all terrorized. When one of us conquering monkey-men\nenters the woods, most animals that scent him slink away, or race off\nin a panic. It is not that we have planned this deliberately: but they\nknow what we're like. Race by race they have been slaughtered. Soon all\nwill be gone. We give neither freedom nor life-room to those we defeat.\n\nIf we had been as strong as the elephants, we might have been kinder.\nWhen great power comes naturally to people, it is used more urbanely.\nWe use it as parvenus do, because that's what we are. The elephant,\nbeing born to it, is easy-going, confident, tolerant. He would have\nbeen a more humane king.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nA race descended from elephants would have had to build on a large\nscale. Imagine a crowd of huge, wrinkled, slow-moving elephant-men\ngetting into a vast elephant omnibus.\n\nAnd would they have ever tried airships?\n\nThe elephant is stupid when it comes to learning how to use tools. So\nare all other species except our own. Isn't it strange? A tool, in the\nmost primitive sense, is any object, lying around, that can obviously\nbe used as an instrument for this or that purpose. Many creatures use\nobjects as _materials_, as birds use twigs for nests. But the step that\nno animal takes is learning freely to use things as instruments. When\nan elephant plucks off a branch and swishes his flanks, and thus keeps\naway insects, he is using a tool. But he does it only by a vague and\nhaphazard association of ideas. If he once became a conscious user of\ntools he would of course go much further.\n\nWe ourselves, who are so good at it now, were slow enough in beginning.\nThink of the long epochs that passed before it entered our heads.\n\nAnd all that while the contest for leadership blindly went on, without\nany species making use of this obvious aid. The lesson to be learned\nwas simple: the reward was the rule of a planet. Yet only one species,\nour own, has ever had that much brains.\n\nIt makes you wonder what other obvious lessons may still be unlearned.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIt is not necessarily stupid however, to fail to use tools. To use\ntools involves using reason, instead of sticking to instinct. Now,\nsticking to instinct has its disadvantages, but so has using reason.\nWhichever faculty you use, the other atrophies, and partly deserts you.\nWe are trying to use both. But we still don't know which has the more\nvalue.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nA sudden vision comes to me of one of the first far-away ape-men who\ntried to use reason instead of instinct as a guide for his conduct. I\nimagine him, perched in his tree, torn between those two voices,\nwailing loudly at night by a river, in his puzzled distress.\n\nMy poor far-off brother!\n\n[Illustration: The First Thinker.]\n\n\n\n_EIGHT_\n\n\nWe have been considering which species was on the whole most finely\nequipped to be rulers, and thereafter achieve a high civilization; but\nthat wasn't the problem. The real problem was which would _do_\nit:--a different matter.\n\nTo do it there was need of a species that had at least these two\nqualities: some quenchless desire, to urge them on and on; and also\nadaptability of a thousand kinds to their environment.\n\nThe rhinoceros cares little for adaptability. He slogs through the\nworld. But we! we are experts. Adaptability is what we depend on. We\ntalk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is\nwe respectfully adapt ourselves first, to her ways. \"We attain no power\nover nature till we learn natural laws, and our lordship depends on the\nadroitness with which we learn and conform.\"\n\nAdroitness however is merely an ability to win; back of it there must\nbe some spur to make us use our adroitness. Why don't we all die or\ngive up when we're sick of the world? Because the love of life is\nreenforced, in most energized beings, by some longing that pushes them\nforward, in defeat and in darkness. All creatures wish to live, and to\nperpetuate their species, of course; but those two wishes alone\nevidently do not carry any race far. In addition to these, a race, to\nbe great, needs some hunger, some itch, to spur it up the hard path we\nlately have learned to call evolution. The love of toil in the ants,\nand of craft in cats, are examples (imaginary or not). What other such\nlust could exert great driving force?\n\nWith us is it curiosity? endless interest in one's environment?\n\nMany animals have some curiosity, but \"some\" is not enough; and in but\nfew is it one of the master passions. By a master passion, I mean a\npassion that is really your master: some appetite which habitually, day\nin, day out, makes its subjects forget fatigue or danger, and sacrifice\ntheir ease to its gratification. That is the kind of hold that\ncuriosity has on the monkeys.\n\n\n\n\n_NINE_\n\n\nImagine a prehistoric prophet observing these beings, and forecasting\nwhat kind of civilizations their descendants would build. Anyone could\nhave foreseen certain parts of the simians' history: could have guessed\nthat their curiosity would unlock for them, one by one, nature's doors,\nand--idly--bestow on them stray bits of valuable knowledge: could have\npictured them spreading inquiringly all over the globe, stumbling on\ntheir inventions--and idly passing on and forgetting them.\n\nTo have to learn the same thing over and over again wastes the time of\na race. But this is continually necessary, with simians, because of\ntheir disorder. \"Disorder,\" a prophet would have sighed: \"that is one\nof their handicaps; one that they will never get rid of, whatever it\ncosts. Having so much curiosity makes a race scatter-brained.\n\n\"Yes,\" he would have dismally continued, \"it will be a queer mixture:\nthese simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is\nplain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in\nafter-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How\nincredible it would seem on other planets to hear of lost arts.\n\n\"There is a strong streak of triviality in them, which you don't see in\ncats. They won't have fine enough characters to concentrate on the\nthings of most weight. They will talk and think far more of trifles\nthan of what is important. Even when they are reasonably civilized,\nthis will be so. Great discoveries sometimes will fail to be heard of,\nbecause too much else is; and many will thus disappear, and these men\nwill not know it.\"[1]\n\n      [1] We did rescue Mendel's from the dust heap; but perhaps it was\n      an exception.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nLet me interrupt this lament to say a word for myself and my ancestors.\nIt is easy to blame us as undiscriminating, but we are at least full of\nzest. And it's well to be interested, eagerly and intensely, in so many\nthings, because there is often no knowing which may turn out important.\nWe don't go around being interested on purpose, hoping to profit by it,\nbut a profit may come. And anyway it is generous of us not to be too\nself-absorbed. Other creatures go to the other extreme to an amazing\nextent. They are ridiculously oblivious to what is going on. The\nsmallest ant in the garden will ignore the largest woman who visits it.\nShe is a huge and most dangerous super-mammoth in relation to him, and\nher tread shakes the earth; but he has no time to be bothered,\ninvestigating such-like phenomena. He won't even get out of her way. He\nhas his work to do, hang it.\n\nBirds and squirrels have less of this glorious independence of spirit.\nThey watch you closely--if you move around. But not if you keep still.\nIn other words, they pay no more attention than they can help, even to\nmammoths.\n\nWe of course observe everything, or try to. We could spend our lives\nlooking on. Consider our museums for instance: they are a sign of our\nbreed. It makes us smile to see birds, like the magpie, with a mania\nfor this collecting--but only monkeyish beings could reverence museums\nas we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and quantities in them.\nOld furniture, egg-shells, watches, bits of stone.... And next door, a\n\"menagerie.\" Though our victory over all other animals is now aeons\nold, we still bring home captives and exhibit them caged in our cities.\nAnd when a species dies out--or is crowded (by us) off the planet--we\neven collect the bones of the vanquished and show them like trophies.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nCuriosity is a valuable trait. It will make the simians learn many\nthings. But the curiosity of a simian is as excessive as the toil of an\nant. Each simian will wish to know more than his head can hold, let\nalone ever deal with; and those whose minds are active will wish to\nknow everything going. It would stretch a god's skull to accomplish\nsuch an ambition, yet simians won't like to think it's beyond their\npowers. Even small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how thrifty, will be\neager to buy costly encyclopedias, or books of all knowledge. Almost\nevery simian family, even the dullest, will think it is due to\nthemselves to keep all knowledge handy.\n\nTheir idea of a liberal education will therefore be a great\nhodge-podge; and he who narrows his field and digs deep will be viewed\nas an alien. If more than one man in a hundred should thus dare to\nconcentrate, the ruinous effects of being a specialist will be sadly\ndiscussed. It may make a man exceptionally useful, they will have to\nadmit; but still they will feel badly, and fear that civilization will\nsuffer.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nOne of their curious educational ideas--but a natural one--will be\nshown in the efforts they will make to learn more than one \"language.\"\nThey will set their young to spending a decade or more of their lives\nin studying duplicate systems--whole systems--of chatter. Those who\nthus learn several different ways to say the same things, will command\nmuch respect, and those who learn many will be looked on with awe--by\ntrue simians. And persons without this accomplishment will be looked\ndown on a little, and will actually feel quite apologetic about it\nthemselves.\n\nConsider how enormously complicated a complete language must be, with\nits long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the\nmany forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs;\nthe rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and\ninflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![2]\nWhere another race, after the most frightful discord and pains, might\nhave slowly constructed _one_ language before this earth grew cold,\nthis race will create literally hundreds, each complete in itself, and\nmany of them with quaint little systems of writing attached. And the\nowners of this linguistic gift are so humble about it, they will marvel\nat bees, for their hives, and at beavers' mere dams.\n\n      [2] You remember what Kipling says in the Jungle Books, about how\n      disgusted the quiet animals were with the Bandarlog, because they\n      were eternally chattering, would never keep still. Well, this is\n      the good side of it.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nTo return, however, to their fear of being too narrow, in going to the\nother extreme they will run to incredible lengths. Every civilized\nsimian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever older facts he\nhas picked up, will wish to know all the news of all the world. If he\nfelt any true concern to know it, this would be rather fine of him: it\nwould imply such a close solidarity on the part of this genus. (Such a\nclose solidarity would seem crushing, to others; but that is another\nmatter.) It won't be true concern, however, it will be merely a blind\ninherited instinct. He'll forget what he's read, the very next hour, or\nmoment. Yet there he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature,\nreading of bombs in Spain or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting\non all the news he can get of the kind our race loved when they\nscampered and fought in the forest, news that will stir his most\nprimitive simian feelings,--wars, accidents, love affairs, and family\nquarrels.\n\nTo feed himself with this largely purposeless provender, he will pay\nthousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night; and\nthey will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother or\nobscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets will be\nread by every one every day; and even the laziest of this lazy race\nwill not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't like to eat in\nthe morning without their papers, such slaves they will be to this\ndroll greed for knowing. They won't even think it is droll, it is so in\ntheir blood.\n\nTheir swollen desire for investigating everything about them, including\nespecially other people's affairs, will be quenchless. Few will feel\nthat they really are \"fully informed\"; and all will give much of each\nday all their lives to the news.\n\nBooks too will be used to slake this unappeasable thirst. They will\nactually hold books in deep reverence. Books! Bottled chatter! things\nthat some other simian has formerly said. They will dress them in\ncostly bindings, keep them under glass, and take an affecting pride in\nthe number they read. Libraries,--store-houses of books,--will dot\ntheir world. The destruction of one will be a crime against\ncivilization. (Meaning, again, a simian civilization.) Well, it is an\noffense to be sure--a barbaric offense. But so is defacing forever a\nbeautiful landscape; and they won't even notice that sometimes; they\nwon't shudder anyway, the way they instinctively do at the loss of a\n\"library.\"\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nAll this is inevitable and natural, and they cannot help it. There even\nare ways one can justify excesses like this. If their hunger for books\never seems indiscriminate to them when they themselves stop to examine\nit, they will have their excuses. They will argue that some bits of\nknowledge they once had thought futile, had later on come in most\nhandy, in unthought of ways. True enough! For their scientists. But not\nfor their average men: they will simply be like obstinate housekeepers\nwho clog up their homes, preserving odd boxes and wrappings, and stray\nlengths of string, to exult if but one is of some trifling use ere they\ndie. It will be in this spirit that simians will cherish their books,\nand pile them up everywhere into great indiscriminate mounds; and these\nmounds will seem signs of culture and sagacity to them.\n\nThose who know many facts will feel wise! They will despise those who\ndon't. They will even believe, many of them, that knowledge is power.\nUnfortunate dupes of this saying will keep on reading, ambitiously,\ntill they have stunned their native initiative, and made their thoughts\nweak; and will then wonder dazedly what in the world is the matter, and\nwhy the great power they were expecting to gain fails to appear. Again,\nif they ever forget what they read, they'll be worried. Those who _can_\nforget--those with fresh eyes who have swept from their minds such\nfacts as the exact month and day that their children were born, or the\nnumbers on houses, or the names (the mere meaningless labels) of the\npeople they meet,--will be urged to go live in sanitariums or see\nmemory doctors!\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nBy nature their itch is rather for knowing, than for understanding or\nthinking. Some of them will learn to think, doubtless, and even to\nconcentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those accomplishments will\nnot be strong or insistent. Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity\nwill enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than the pausing at\ntimes to reflect on those facts. If they do not reflect on them, of\ncourse they'll be slow to find out about the ideas and relationships\nlying behind them; and they will be curious about those ideas; so you\nwould suppose they'd reflect. But deep thinking is painful. It means\nthey must channel the spready rivers of their attention. That cannot be\ndone without discipline and drills for the mind; and they will abhor\ndoing that; their minds will work better when they are left free to run\noff at tangents.\n\nCompare them in this with other species. Each has its own kind of\nstrength. To be compelled to be so quick-minded as the simians would be\ntorture, to cows. Cows could dwell on one idea, week by week, without\ntrying at all; but they'd all have brain-fever in an hour at a simian\ntea. A super-cow people would revel in long thoughtful books on\nabstruse philosophical subjects, and would sit up late reading them.\nMost of the ambitious simians who try it--out of pride--go to sleep.\nThe typical simian brain is supremely distractable, and it's really too\njumpy by nature to endure much reflection.\n\nTherefore many more of them will be well-informed than sagacious.\n\nThis will result in their knowing most things far too soon, at too\nearly a stage of civilization to use them aright. They will learn to\nmake valuable explosives at a stage in their growth, when they will use\nthem not only in industries, but for killing brave men. They will\ndevise ways to mine coal efficiently, in enormous amounts, at a stage\nwhen they won't know enough to conserve it, and will waste their few\nstores. They will use up a lot of it in a simian habit[3] called\ntravel. This will consist in queer little hurried runs over the globe,\nto see ten thousand things in the hope of thus filling their minds.\n\n      [3] Even in a wild state, the monkey is restless and does not\n      live in lairs.\n\nTheir minds will be full enough. Their intelligence will be active and\nkeen. It will have a constant tendency however to outstrip their\nwisdom. Their intelligence will enable them to build great industrial\nsystems before they have the wisdom and goodness to run them aright.\nThey will form greater political empires than they will have strength\nto guide. They will endlessly quarrel about which is the best scheme of\ngovernment, without stopping to realize that learning to govern comes\nfirst. (The average simian will imagine he knows without learning.)\n\nThe natural result will be industrial and political wars. In a world of\nunmanageable structures, wild smashes must come.\n\n\n\n\n_TEN_\n\n\nInventions will come so easily to simians (in comparison with all other\ncreatures) and they will take such childish pleasure in monkeying\naround, making inventions, that their many devices will be more of a\ncare than a comfort. In their homes a large part of their time will\nhave to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities in good working\norder--their elaborate bell-ringing arrangements, their locks and their\nclocks. In the field of science to be sure, this fertility in invention\nwill lead to a long list of important and beautiful discoveries:\ntelescopes and the calculus, radiographs, and the spectrum. Discoveries\ngreat enough, almost, to make angels of them. But here again their\nsimian-ness will cheat them of half of their dues, for they will\nneglect great discoveries of the truest importance, and honor\nextravagantly those of less value and splendor if only they cater\nespecially to simian traits.\n\nTo consider examples: A discovery that helps them to talk, just to\ntalk, more and more, will be hailed by these beings as one of the\nhighest of triumphs. Talking to each other over wires will come in this\nclass. The lightning when harnessed and tamed will be made to trot\nround, conveying the most trivial cacklings all day and night.\n\nHuge seas of talk of every sort and kind, in print, speech, and\nwriting, will roll unceasingly over their civilized realms, involving\nan unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence\ntalk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will\nbe erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go\ninside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter for\nhours. Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet very few\nsubjects will be counted important enough for the average man to do any\n_thinking_ on them, off by himself.\n\nIn their futurist books they will dream of an even worse state, a more\ndreadful indulgence in communication than the one just described. This\nthey'll hope to achieve by a system called mental telepathy. They will\nlong to communicate wordlessly, mind impinging on mind, until all their\nminds are awash with messages every moment, and withdrawal from the\nstream is impossible anywhere on earth. This will foster the\nbrotherhood of man. (Conglomerateness being their ideal.) Super-cats\nwould have invented more barriers instead of more channels.\n\nDiscoveries in surgery and medicine will also be over-praised. The\nreason will be that the race will so need these discoveries. Unlike the\ngreat cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Having less\nself-respect, less proper regard for their egos, they care less than\nthe cats do for the casing of the ego,--the body. The more civilized\nthey grow the more they will let their bodies deteriorate. They will\nlet their shoulders stoop, their lungs shrink, and their stomachs grow\nfat. No other species will be quite so deformed and distorted.\nAthletics they will watch, yes, but on the whole sparingly practise.\nTheir snuffy old scholars will even be proud to decry them. Where once\nthe simians swung high through forests, or scampered like deer, their\ndescendants will plod around farms, or mince along city streets, moving\nconstrictedly, slowly, their litheness half gone.\n\nThey will think of Nature as \"something to go out and look at.\" They\nwill try to live wholly apart from her and forget they're her sons.\nForget? They will even deny it, and declare themselves sons of God. In\nspite of her wonders they will regard Nature as somehow too humble to\nbe the true parent of such prominent people as simians. They will lose\nall respect for the dignity of fair Mother Earth, and whisper to each\nother she is an evil and indecent old person. They will snatch at her\ngifts, pry irreverently into her mysteries, and ignore half the\nwarnings they get from her about how to live.\n\nAilments of every kind will abound among such folk, inevitably, and\nthey will resort to extraordinary expedients in their search for\nrelief. Although squeamish as a race about inflicting much pain in cold\nblood, they will systematically infect other animals with their own\nrank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and dissect\nthem, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves.\nConditions among them will be such that this will really be necessary.\nFew besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore oppose it. But\nthe idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a trick, instead of\nby taking the trouble to live healthy lives.\n\nStrange barrack-like buildings called hospitals will stand in their\ncities, where their trick-men, the surgeons, will slice them right open\nwhen ill; and thousands of zealous young pharmacists will mix little\ndrugs, which thousands of wise-looking simians will firmly prescribe.\nEach generation will change its mind as to these drugs, and laugh at\nall former opinions; but each will use some of them, and each will feel\nassured that in this respect they know the last word.\n\nAnd, in obstinate blindness, this people will wag their poor heads, and\nattribute their diseases not to simian-ness but to civilization.\n\nThe advantages that any man or race has, can sometimes be handicaps.\nHaving hands, which so aids a race, for instance, can also be harmful.\nThe simians will do so many things with their hands, it will be bad for\ntheir bodies. Instead of roaming far and wide over the country, getting\nvigorous exercise, they will use their hands to catch and tame horses,\nbuild carriages, motors, and then when they want a good outing they\nwill \"go for a ride,\" with their bodies slumped down, limp and\nsluggish, and losing their spring.\n\nThen too their brains will do harm, and great harm, to their bodies.\nThe brain will give them such an advantage over all other animals that\nthey will insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it too free\na rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating. This organ, this\noutgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active, and its many\nfears and fancies will naturally injure the body. The interadjustment\nis delicate and intimate, the strain is continuous. When the brain\nfails to act with the body, or, worse, works against it, the body will\nsicken no matter what cures doctors try.\n\nAs in bodily self-respect, so in racial self-respect, they'll be\nwanting. They will have plenty of racial pride and prejudice, but that\nis not the same thing. That will make them angry when simians of one\ncolor mate with those of another. But a general deterioration in\nphysique will cause much less excitement.\n\nThey will _talk_ about improving the race--they will talk about\neverything--but they won't use their chances to _do_ it. Whenever a new\ndiscovery makes life less hard, for example, these heedless beings will\nseldom preserve this advantage, or use their new wealth to take more\ntime thereafter for thought, or to gain health and strength or do\nanything else to make the race better. Instead, they will use the new\nease just to increase in numbers; and they will keep on at this until\nmisery once more has checked them. Life will then be as hard as ever,\nnaturally, and the chance will be gone.\n\nThey will have a proverb, \"The poor ye have always with you,\"--said by\none who knew simians.\n\nTheir ingenious minds will have an answer to this. They will argue it\nis well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the discipline\nand its strengthening effects on the character. But the good effects of\nthis sort of discipline will be mixed with sad wreckage. And only\ncreatures incapable of disciplining themselves could thus argue. It is\nan odd expedient to get yourself into trouble just for discipline's\nsake.\n\nThe fact is, however, the argument won't be sincere. When their nations\ngrow so over-populous and their families so large it means misery, that\nwill not be a sign of their having felt ready for discipline. It will\nbe a sign of their not having practised it in their sexual lives.\n\n\n\n\n_ELEVEN_\n\n\nThe simians are always being stirred by desire and passion. It\nconstantly excites them, constantly runs through their minds. Wild or\ntame, primitive or cultured, this is a brand of the breed. Other\nspecies have times and seasons for sexual matters, but the simian-folk\nare thus preoccupied all the year round.\n\nThis super-abundance of desire is not necessarily good or bad, of\nitself. But to shape it for the best it will have to be studied--and\nfaced. This they will not do. Some of them won't like to study it,\ndeeming it bad--deeming it bad yet yielding constantly to it. Others\nwill hesitate because they will deem it so sacred, or will secretly\nfear that study might show them it ought to be curbed.\n\nMeantime, this part of their nature will be coloring all their\nactivities. It will beautify their arts, and erotically confuse their\nreligions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social\nfunctions. It will keep alive degrading social evils in all their great\ntowns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be\ncorrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at\nself-government. Self-government works best among those who have\nlearned to self-govern.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIn the far distant ages that lie before us what will be the result of\nthis constant preoccupation with desire? Will it kill us or save us?\nWill this trait and our insatiable curiosity interact on each other?\nThat might further eugenics. That might give us a better chance to\nbreed finely than all other species.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nWe already owe a great deal to passion: more than men ever realize.\nWasn't it Darwin who once even risked the conjecture that the vocal\norgans themselves were developed for sexual purposes, the object being\nto call or charm one's mate. Hence--perhaps--only animals that were\ncontinuously concerned with their matings would be at all likely to\nform an elaborate language. And without an elaborate language, growth\nis apt to be slow.\n\nIf we owe this to passion, what follows? Does it mean, for example,\nthat the more different mates that each simian once learned to charm,\nthe more rapidly language, and with it civilization, advanced?\n\n\n\n\n_TWELVE_\n\n\nA doctor, who was making a study of monkeys, once told me that he was\ntrying experiments that bore on the polygamy question. He had a young\nmonkey named Jack who had mated with a female named Jill; and in\nanother cage another newly-wedded pair, Arabella and Archer. Each pair\nseemed absorbed in each other, and devoted and happy. They even hugged\neach other at mealtime and exchanged bits of food.\n\nAfter a time their transports grew less fiery, and their affections\nless fixed. Archer got a bit bored. He was decent about it, though, and\nwhen Arabella cuddled beside him he would more or less perfunctorily\nembrace her. But when he forgot, she grew cross.\n\nThe same thing occurred a little later in the Jack and Jill cage, only\nthere it was Jill who became a little tired of Jack.\n\nSoon each pair was quarreling. They usually made up, pretty soon, and\nstarted loving again. But it petered out; each time more quickly.\n\n[Illustration: Archer felt bored]\n\nMeanwhile the two families had become interested in watching each\nother. When Jill had repulsed Jack, and he had moped about it awhile,\nhe would begin staring at Arabella, over opposite, and trying to\nattract her attention. This got Jack in trouble all around. Arabella\nindignantly made faces at him and then turned her back; and as for\nJill, she grew furious, and tore out his fur.\n\nBut in the next stage, they even stopped hating each other. Each pair\ngrew indifferent.\n\nThen the doctor put Jack in with Arabella, and Archer with Jill.\nArabella promptly yielded to Jack. New devotion. More transports. Jill\nand Archer were shocked. Jill clung to the bars of her cage, quivering,\nand screaming remonstrance; and even blase Archer chattered angrily at\nsome of the scenes. Then the doctor hung curtains between the cages to\nshut out the view. Jill and Archer, left to each other, grew\ninterested. They soon were inseparable.\n\nThe four monkeys, thus re-distributed, were now happy once more, and\nfull of new liveliness and spirit. But before very long, each pair\nquarreled--and made up--and quarreled--and then grew indifferent, and\nhad cynical thoughts about life.\n\nAt this point, the doctor put them back with their original mates.\n\nAnd--they met with a rush! Gave cries of recognition and joy, like\nfaithful souls reunited. And when they were tired, they affectionately\ncurled up together; and hugged each other even at mealtime, and\nexchanged bits of food.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nThis was as far as the doctor had gotten, at the time that I met him;\nand as I have lost touch with him since, I don't know how things were\nafterward. His theory at the time was, that variety was good for\nfidelity.\n\n\"So many of us feel this way, it may be in the blood,\" he concluded.\n\"Some creatures, such as wolves, are more serious; or perhaps more\ncold-blooded. Never mate but once. Well--we're not wolves. We can't\nmake wolves our models. Of course we are not monkeys either, but at any\nrate they are our cousins. Perhaps wolves can be continent without any\ntrouble at all, but it's harder for simians: it may affect their\nnervous systems injuriously. If we want to know how to behave,\naccording to the way Nature made us, I say that with all due allowances\nwe should study the monkeys.\"\n\nTo be sure, these particular monkeys were living in idleness. This\ncorresponds to living in high social circles with us, where men do not\nhave to work, and lack some of the common incentives to home-building.\nThe experiment was not conclusive.\n\nStill, even in low social circles--\n\n\n\n\n_THIRTEEN_\n\n\nAre we or are we not simians? It is no use for any man to try to think\nanything else out until he has decided first of all where he stands on\nthat question. It is not only in love affairs: let us lay all that\naside for the moment. It is in ethics, economics, art, education,\nphilosophy, what-not. If we are fallen angels, we should go this road:\nif we are super-apes, that.\n\n\"Our problem is not to discover what we ought to do if we were\ndifferent, but what we ought to do, being what we are. There is no end\nto the beings we can imagine different from ourselves; but they do not\nexist,\" and we cannot be sure they would be better than we if they did.\nFor, when we imagine them, we must imagine their entire environment;\nthey would have to be a part of some whole that does not now exist. And\nthat new whole, that new reality, being merely a figment of our little\nminds, \"would probably be inferior to the reality that is. For there is\nthis to be said in favor of reality: that we have nothing to compare it\nwith. Our fantasies are always incomplete, because they are fantasies.\nAnd reality is complete. We cannot compare their incompleteness with\nits completeness.\"[4]\n\n      [4] From an anonymous article entitled \"Tolstoy and Russia\" in\n      the _London Times_, Sept. 26, 1918.\n\nToo many moralists begin with a dislike of reality: a dislike of men as\nthey are. They are free to dislike them--but not at the same time to be\nmoralists. Their feeling leads them to ignore the obligation which\nshould rest on all teachers, \"to discover the best that man can do, not\nto set impossibilities before him and tell him that if he does not\nperform them he is damned.\"\n\nMan is moldable; very; and it is desirable that he should aspire. But\nhe is apt to be hasty about accepting any and all general ideals\nwithout figuring out whether they are suitable for simian use.\n\nOne result of his habit of swallowing whole most of the ideals that\noccur to him, is that he has swallowed a number that strongly conflict.\nAny ideal whatever strains our digestions if it is hard to assimilate:\nbut when two at once act on us in different ways, it is unbearable. In\nsuch a case, the poets will prefer the ideal that's idealest: the\nhard-headed instinctively choose the one adapted to simians.\n\nWhenever this is argued, extremists spring up on each side. One\nextremist will say that being mere simians we cannot transcend much,\nand will seem to think that having limitations we should preserve them\nforever. The other will declare that we are not merely simians, never\nwere just plain animals; or, if we were, souls were somehow smuggled in\nto us, since which time we have been different. We have all been\nperfect at heart since that date, equipped with beautiful spirits,\nwhich only a strange perverse obstinacy leads us to soil.\n\nWhat this obstinacy is, is the problem that confronts theologians. They\nwon't think of it as simian-ness; they call it original sin. They\nregard it as the voice of some devil, and say good men should not\nlisten to it. The scientists say it isn't a devil, it is part of our\nnature, which should of course be civilized and guided, but should not\nbe stamped out. (It might mutilate us dangerously to become\nunder-simianized. Look at Mrs. Humphry Ward and George Washington.\nWorthy souls, but no flavor.)\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIn every field of thought then, two schools appear, that are divided on\nthis: Must we forever be at heart high-grade simians? Or are we at\nheart something else?\n\nFor example, in education, we have in the main two great systems. One\ndepends upon discipline. The other on exciting the interest. The\nteacher who does not recognize or allow for our simian nature, keeps\nlittle children at work for long periods at dull and dry tasks. Without\nsome such discipline, he fears that his boys will lack strength. The\nother system believes they will learn more when their interest is\nroused; and when their minds, which are mobile by nature, are allowed\nto keep moving.\n\nOr in politics: the best government for simians seems to be based on a\nparliament: a talk-room, where endless vague thoughts can be expressed.\nThis is the natural child of those primeval sessions that gave pleasure\nto apes. It is neither an ideal nor a rational arrangement of course.\nSmall executive committees would be better. But not if we are simians.\n\nOr in industry: Why do factory workers produce more in eight hours a\nday than in ten? It is absurd. Super-sheep could not do it. But that\nis the way men are made. To preach to such beings about the dignity of\nlabor is futile. The dignity of labor is not a simian conception at\nall. True simians hate to have to work steadily: they call it grind\nand confinement. They are always ready to pity the toilers who are\ncondemned to this fate, and to congratulate those who escape it, or\nwho can do something else. When they see some performer in spangles\nrisk his life, at a circus, swinging around on trapezes, high up in\nthe air, and when they are told he must do it daily, do they pity\n_him_? No! Super-elephants would say, and quite properly, \"What a\nhorrible life!\" But it naturally seems stimulating to simians. Boys\nenvy the fellow. On the other hand whenever we are told about factory\nlife, we instinctively shudder to think of enduring such evils. We see\nsome old workman, filling cans with a whirring machine; and we hear\nthe humanitarians telling us, indignant and grieving, that he actually\nmust stand in that nice, warm, dry room every day, safe from storms\nand wild beasts, and with nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we\ngroan: \"How deadly! What monotonous toil! Shorten his hours!\" His work\nwould seem blissful to super-spiders,--but to us it's intolerable. The\nfactory system is meant for other species than ours.\n\nOur monkey-blood is also apparent in our judgments of crime. If a crime\nis committed on impulse, we partly forgive it. Why? Because, being\nsimians, with a weakness for yielding to impulses, we like to excuse\nourselves by feeling not accountable for them. Elephants would have\nprobably taken an opposite stand. They aren't creatures of impulse, and\nwould be shocked at crimes due to such causes; their fault is the\nopposite one of pondering too long over injuries, and becoming\nvindictive in the end, out of all due proportion. If a young\nsuper-elephant were to murder another on impulse, they would consider\nhim a dangerous character and string him right up. But if he could\nprove that he had long thought of doing it, they would tend to forgive\nhim. \"Poor fellow, he brooded,\" they would say. \"That's upsetting to\nany one.\"\n\nAs to modesty and decency, if we are simians we have done well,\nconsidering: but if we are something else--fallen angels--we have\nindeed fallen far. Not being modest by instinct we invent artificial\nideals, which are doubtless well-meaning but are inherently of course\nsecond-rate, so that even at our best we smell prudish. And as for our\nworst, when we as we say let ourselves go, we dirty the life-force\nunspeakably, with chuckles and leers. But a race so indecent by nature\nas the simians are would naturally have a hard time behaving as though\nthey were not: and the strain of pretending that their thoughts were\nall pretty and sweet, would naturally send them to smutty extremes for\nrelief. The standards of purity we have adopted are far too strict--for\nsimians.\n\n\n\n\n_FOURTEEN_\n\n\nWe were speaking a while ago of the fertility with which simians breed.\nThis is partly due to the constant love interest they take in each\nother, but it is also reenforced by their reliance on numbers. That\nreliance will be deep, since, to their numbers, they will owe much\nsuccess. It will be thus that they will drive out other species, and\ngarrison the globe. Such a race would naturally come to esteem\nfertility. It will seem profane not to.\n\nAs time goes on, however, the advantage of numbers will end; and in\ntheir higher stages, large numbers will be a great drawback. The\nresources of a planet are limited, at each stage of the arts. Also,\nthere is only a limited space on a planet. Yet it will come hard to\nthem to think of ever checking their increase. They will bring more\nyoung into existence than they can either keep well or feed. The earth\nwill be covered with them everywhere, as far as eye can see. North and\nsouth, east and west, there will always be simians huddling. Their\ncities will be far more distressing than cities of vermin,--for vermin\nare healthy and calm and successful in life.\n\nAh, those masses of people--unintelligent, superstitious, uncivilized!\nWhat a dismal drain they will be on the race's strength! Not merely\nwill they lessen its ultimate chance of achievement; their hardships\nwill always distress and preoccupy minds,--fine, generous minds,--that\nmight have done great things if free: that might have done something\nconstructive at least, for their era, instead of being burned out\nattacking mere anodyne-problems.\n\nNature will do what it can to lessen the strain, providing an\nappropriate remedy for their bad behavior in plagues. Many epochs will\npass before the simians will learn or dare to control them--for they\nwon't think they can, any more than they dare control propagation. They\nwill reverently call their propagation and plagues \"acts of God.\" When\nthey get tired of reverence and stop their plagues, it will be too\nsoon. Their inventiveness will be--as usual--ahead of their wisdom; and\nthey will unfortunately end the good effects of plagues (as a check)\nbefore they are advanced enough to keep down their numbers themselves.\n\nMeanwhile, when, owing to the pressure of other desires, any group of\nprimates does happen to become less prolific, they will feel ashamed,\ntalk of race suicide, and call themselves decadent. And they will often\nbe right: for though some regulation of the birth-rate is an obvious\ngood, and its diminution often desirable in any planet's history, yet\namong simians it will be apt to come from second-rate motives. Greed,\nselfishness or fear-thoughts will be the incentives, the bribes.\nContrivances, rather than continence, will be the method. How\naudacious, and how disconcerting to Nature, to baffle her thus! Even\ninto her shrine they must thrust their bold paws to control her.\nAnother race viewing them in the garlanded chambers of love, unpacking\ntheir singular devices, might think them grotesque: but the busy little\nsimians will be blind to such quaint incongruities.\n\nStill, there is a great gift that their excess of passion will bestow\non this race: it will give them romance. It will teach them what little\nthey ever will learn about love. Other animals have little romance:\nthere is none in the rut: that seasonal madness that drives them to\nmate with perhaps the first comer. But the simians will attain to a\nfine discrimination in love, and this will be their path to the only\nspiritual heights they can reach. For, in love, their inmost selves\nwill draw near, in the silence of truth; learning little by little what\nthe deepest sincerity means, and what clean hearts and minds and what\ncrystal-clear sight it demands. Such intercommunication of spirit with\nspirit is at the beginning of all true understanding. It is the\nbeginning of silent cosmic wisdom: it may lead to knowing the ways of\nthat power called God.\n\n\n\n\n_FIFTEEN_\n\n\nNot content with the whole of a planet and themselves too, to study,\nthis race's children will also study the heavens. How few kinds of\ncreatures would ever have felt that impulse, and yet how natural it\nwill seem to these! How boundless and magnificent is the curiosity of\nthese tiny beings, who sit and peer out at the night from their small\nwhirling globe, considering deeply the huge cold seas of space, and\nlearning with wonderful skill to measure the stars.\n\nIn studies so vast, however, they are tested to the core. In these\ngreat journeys the traveler must pay dear for his flaws. For it always\nis when you most finely are exerting your strength that every weakness\nyou have most tells against you.\n\nOne weakness of the primates is the character of their self-consciousness.\nThis useful faculty, that can probe so deep, has one naive defect--it\nrelies too readily on its own findings. It doesn't suspect enough its\nown unconfessed predilections. It assumes that it can be completely\nimpartial--but isn't. To instance an obvious way in which it will\nbetray them: beings that are intensely self-conscious and aware of\ntheir selves, will also instinctively feel that their universe is. What\nactive principle animates the world, they will ask. A great blind\nforce? It is possible. But they will recoil from admitting any such\npossibility. A self-aware purposeful force then? That is better! (More\nsimian.) \"A blind force can't have been the creator of all. It's\nunthinkable.\" Any theory _their_ brains find \"unthinkable\" cannot be\ntrue.\n\n(This is not to argue that it really is a blind force--or the opposite.\nIt is merely an instance of how little impartial they are.)\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nA second typical weakness of this race will come from their fears. They\nare not either self-sufficing or gallant enough to travel great roads\nwithout cringing,--clear-eyed, unafraid. They are finely made, but not\nnobly made,--in that sense. They will therefore have a too urgent need\nof religion. Few primates have the courage to face--alone--the still\ninner mysteries: Infinity, Space and Time. They will think it too\nterrible, they will feel it would turn them to water, to live through\nunearthly moments of vision without creeds or beliefs. So they'll get\nbeliefs first. Ah, poor creatures! The cart before the horse! Ah, the\nblasphemy (pitiful!) of their seeking high spiritual temples, with\ngod-maps or bibles about them, made below in advance! Think of their\nentering into the presence of Truth, declaring so loudly and boldly\nthey know her already, yet far from willing to stand or fall by her\nflames--to rise like a phoenix or die as an honorable cinder!--but\ncreeping in, clad in their queer blindfolded beliefs, designed to\nshield them from her stern, bright tests! Think of Truth sadly--or\nmerrily--eyeing such worms!\n\n\n\n\n_SIXTEEN_\n\n\nImagine you are watching the Bandarlog at play in the forest. As you\nbehold them and comprehend their natures, now hugely brave and\nboastful, now full of dread, the most weakly emotional of any\nintelligent species, ever trying to attract the notice of some greater\nanimal, not happy indeed unless noticed,--is it not plain they are\nbound to invent things called gods? Don't think for the moment of\nwhether there are gods or not; think of how sure these beings would be\nto invent them. (Not wait to find them.) Having small self-reliance\nthey can not bear to face life alone. With no self-sufficingness, they\nmust have the countenance of others. It is these pressing needs that\nwill hurry the primates to build, out of each shred of truth they can\npossibly twist to their purpose, and out of imaginings that will\nimpress them because they are vast, deity after deity to prop up their\nsouls.\n\nWhat a strange company they will be, these gods, in their day, each of\nthem an old bearded simian up in the sky, who begins by fishing the\nuniverse out of a void, like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat.\n(A hat which, if it resembled a void, wasn't there.) And after creating\nenormous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest heavens with vaster\nstars, one god will turn back and long for the smell of roast flesh,\nanother will call desert tribes to \"holy\" wars, and a third will grieve\nabout divorce or dancing.\n\nAll gods that any groups of simians ever conceive of, from the\nwoodenest little idol in the forest to the mightiest Spirit, no matter\nhow much they may differ, will have one trait in common: a readiness to\ndrop any cosmic affair at short notice, focus their minds on the\nfar-away pellet called Earth, and become immediately wholly concerned,\naye, engrossed, with any individual worshipper's woes or desires,--a\nreadiness to notice a fellow when he is going to bed. This will bring\nindescribable comfort to simian hearts; and a god that neglects this\nduty won't last very long, no matter how competent he may be in other\nrespects.\n\nBut one must reciprocate. For the maker of the Cosmos, as they see him,\nwants noticing too; he is fond of the deference and attention that\nsimians pay him, and naturally he will be angry if it is withheld;--or\nif he is not, it will be most magnanimous of him. Hence prayers and\nhymns. Hence queer vague attempts at communing with this noble kinsman.\n\nTo desire communion with gods is a lofty desire, but hard to attain\nthrough an ignobly definite creed. Dealing with the highest, most\nwordless states of being, the simians will attempt to conceive them in\nmaterial form. They will have beliefs, for example, as to the\nfurnishings and occupations in heaven. And why? Why, to help men to\nhave religious conceptions without themselves being seers,--which in\nany true sense of \"religious\" is an impossible plan.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIn their efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly\nsimian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on\nOlympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair?\nThe Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their\nnature, and who could control _that_!\n\nAnd Satan in the Bible is distinctly a simian's devil. The snake, it is\nknown, is the animal monkeys most dread. Hence when men give their\ndevil a definite form they make him a snake. A race of super-chickens\nwould have pictured their devil a hawk.\n\n\n\n\n_SEVENTEEN_\n\n\nWhat are the handicaps this race will have in building religions? The\ngreatest is this: they have such small psychic powers. The\nover-activity of their minds will choke the birth of such powers, or\ndull them. The race will be less in touch with Nature, some day, than\nits dogs. It will substitute the compass for its once innate sense of\ndirection. It will lose its gifts of natural intuition, premonition,\nand rest, by encouraging its use of the mind to be cheaply incessant.\n\nThis lack of psychic power will cheat them of insight and poise; for\nminds that are wandering and active, not receptive and still, can\nseldom or never be hushed to a warm inner peace.\n\nOne service these restless minds however will do: they eventually will\nsee through the religions they themselves invented.\n\nBut ages will be thrown away in repeating this process.\n\nA simian creed will not be very hard thus to pierce. When forming a\nreligion, they will be in far too much haste, to wait to apply a strict\ntest to their holy men's visions. Furthermore they will have so few\nvisions, that any will awe them; so naturally they will accept any\nvision as valid. Then their rapid and fertile inventiveness will come\ninto play, and spin the wildest creeds from each vision living dust\never dreamed.\n\nThey will next expect everybody to believe whatever a few men have\nseen, on the slippery ground that if you simply try believing it, you\nwill then feel it's true. Such religions are vicarious; their prophets\nalone will see God, and the rest will be supposed to be introduced to\nhim by the prophets. These \"believers\" will have no white insight at\nall of their own.\n\nNow, a second-hand believer who is warmed at one remove--if at all--by\nthe breath of the spirit, will want to have exact definitions in the\nbeliefs he accepts. Not having had a vision to go by, he needs plain\ncommandments. He will always try to crystallize creeds. And that,\nplainly, is fatal. For as time goes on, new and remoter aspects of\ntruth are discovered, which can seldom or never be fitted into creeds\nthat are changeless.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nOver and over again, this will be the process: A spiritual personality\nwill be born; see new truth; and be killed. His new truth not only will\nnot fit into too rigid creeds, but whatever false finality is in them\nit must contradict. So, the seer will be killed.\n\nHis truth being mighty, however, it will kill the creeds too.\n\nThere will then be nothing left to believe in--except the dead seer.\n\nFor a few generations he may then be understandingly honored. But his\npriests will feel that is not enough: he must be honored uncritically:\nso uncritically that, whatever his message, it must be deemed the Whole\nTruth. Some of his message they themselves will have garbled; and it\nwas not, at best, final; but still it will be made into a fixed creed\nand given his name. Truth will be given his name. All men who\nthereafter seek truth must find only his kind, else they won't be his\n\"followers.\" (To be his co-seekers won't do.) Priests will always hate\nany new seers who seek further for truth. Their feeling will be that\ntheir seer found it, and thus ended all that. Just believe what he\nsays. The job's over. No more truth need be sought.\n\nIt's a comforting thing to believe cosmic search nicely settled.\n\nThus the mold will be hardened. So new truths, when they come, can but\nbreak it. Then men will feel distraught and disillusioned, and\ncivilizations will fall.\n\nThus each cycle will run. So long as men intertwine falsehoods with\nevery seer's visions, both perish, and every civilization that is built\non them must perish too.\n\n\n\n\n_EIGHTEEN_\n\n\nIf men can ever learn to accept all their truths as not final, and if\nthey can ever learn to build on something better than dogma, they may\nnot be found saying, discouragedly, every once in so often, that every\ncivilization carries in it the seeds of decay. It will carry such seeds\nwith great certainty, though, when they're put there, by the very race,\ntoo, that will later deplore the results. Why shouldn't creeds totter\nwhen they are jerry-built creeds?\n\nOn stars where creeds come late in the life of a race; where they\nspring from the riper, not cruder, reactions of spirit; where they grow\nout of nobly developed psychic powers that have put their possessors in\ntune with cosmic music; and where no cheap hallucinations discredit\ntheir truths; they perhaps run a finer, more beautiful course than the\nsimians', and open the eyes of the soul to far loftier visions.\n\n\n\n\n_NINETEEN_\n\n\nIt has always been a serious matter for men when a civilization\ndecayed. But it may at some future day prove far more serious still.\nOur hold on the planet is not absolute. Our descendants may lose it.\n\nGerms may do them out of it. A chestnut fungus springs up, defies us,\nand kills all our chestnuts. The boll weevil very nearly baffles us.\nThe fly seems unconquerable. Only a strong civilization, when such foes\nare about, can preserve us. And our present efforts to cope with such\nbeings are fumbling and slow.\n\nWe haven't the habit of candidly facing this danger. We read our\nbiological history but we don't take it in. We blandly assume we were\nalways \"intended\" to rule, and that no other outcome could even be\nconsidered by Nature. This is one of the remnants of ignorance certain\nreligions have left: but it's odd that men who don't believe in Easter\nshould still believe this. For the facts are of course this is a hard\nand precarious world, where every mistake and infirmity must be paid\nfor in full.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIf mankind ever is swept aside as a failure however, what a brilliant\nand enterprising failure he at least will have been. I felt this with a\nkind of warm suddenness only today, as I finished these dreamings and\ndrove through the gates of the park. I had been shutting my modern\nsurroundings out of my thoughts, so completely, and living as it were\nin the wild world of ages ago, that when I let myself come back\nsuddenly to the twentieth century, and stare at the park and the\npeople, the change was tremendous. All around me were the well-dressed\ndescendants of primitive animals, whizzing about in bright motors, past\ntall, soaring buildings. What gifted, energetic achievers they suddenly\nseemed!\n\nI thought of a photograph I had once seen, of a ship being torpedoed.\nThere it was, the huge, finely made structure, awash in the sea, with\ntiny black spots hanging on to its side--crew and passengers. The great\nship, even while sinking, was so mighty, and those atoms so helpless.\nYet, it was those tiny beings that had created that ship. They had\nplanned it and built it and guided its bulk through the waves. They had\nalso invented a torpedo that could rend it asunder.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nIt is possible that our race may be an accident, in a meaningless\nuniverse, living its brief life uncared-for, on this dark, cooling\nstar: but even so--and all the more--what marvelous creatures we are!\nWhat fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a\nhundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is\nso much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe\ncapable of giving birth to many such accidents is--blind or not--a good\nworld to live in, a promising universe.\n\nAnd if there are no other such accidents, if we stand alone, if all the\nuncountable armies of planets are empty, or peopled by animals only,\nwith no keys to thought, then we have done something so mighty, what\nmay it not lead to! What powers may we not develop before the Sun dies!\nWe once thought we lived on God's footstool: it may be a throne.\n\nThis is no world for pessimists. An amoeba on the beach, blind and\nhelpless, a mere bit of pulp,--that amoeba has grandsons today who read\nKant and play symphonies. Will those grandsons in turn have descendants\nwho will sail through the void, discover the foci of forces, the means\nto control them, and learn how to marshal the planets and grapple with\nspace? Would it after all be any more startling than our rise from the\nslime?\n\nNo sensible amoeba would have ever believed for a minute that any of\nhis most remote children would build and run dynamos. Few sensible men\nof today stop to feel, in their hearts, that we live in the very same\nworld where that miracle happened.\n\nThis world, and our racial adventure, are magical still.\n\n\n\n\n_TWENTY_\n\n\nYet although for high-spirited marchers the march is sufficient, there\nstill is that other way of looking at it that we dare not forget. Our\nadventure may satisfy _us_: does it satisfy Nature? She is letting us\ncamp for awhile here among the wrecked graveyards of mightier\ndynasties, not one of which met her tests. Their bones are the message\nthe epochs she murdered have left us: we have learned to decipher their\nsickening warning at last.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nYes, and even if we are permitted to have a long reign, and are not\nlaid away with the failures, are we a success?\n\nWe need so much spiritual insight, and we have so little. Our airships\nmay some day float over the hills of Arcturus, but how will that help\nus if we cannot find the soul of the world? Is that soul alive and\nloving? or cruel? or callous? or dead?\n\nWe have no sure vision. Hopes, guesses, beliefs--that is all.\n\nThere are sounds we are deaf to, there are strange sights invisible to\nus. There are whole realms of splendor, it may be, of which we are\nheedless; and which we are as blind to as ants to the call of the sea.\n\nLife is enormously flexible--look at all that we've done to our\ndogs,--but we carry our hairy past with us wherever we go. The wise St.\nBernards and the selfish toy lap-dogs are brothers, and some things are\npossible for them and others are not. So with us. There are definite\nlimits to simian civilizations, due in part to some primitive traits\nthat help keep us alive, and in part to the mere fact that every being\nhas to be something, and when one is a simian one is not also\neverything else. Our main-springs are fixed, and our principal traits\nare deep-rooted. We cannot now re-live the ages whose imprint we bear.\n\nWe have but to look back on our past to have hope in our future:\nbut--it will be only _our_ future, not some other race's. We shall\nwin our own triumphs, yet know that they would have been different, had\nwe cared above all for creativeness, beauty, or love.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nSo we run about, busy and active, marooned on this star, always\nviolently struggling, yet with no clearly seen goal before us. Men,\nanimals, insects--what tribe of us asks any object, except to keep\ntrying to satisfy its own master appetite? If the ants were earth's\nlords they would make no more use of their lordship than to learn and\nenjoy every possible method of toiling. Cats would spend their span of\nlife, say, trying new kinds of guile. And we, who crave so much to\nknow, crave so little but knowing. Some of us wish to know Nature most;\nthose are the scientists. Others, the saints and philosophers, wish to\nknow God. Both are alike in their hearts, yes, in spite of their\nquarrels. Both seek to assuage, to no end, the old simian thirst.\n\nIf we wanted to _be_ Gods--but ah, can we grasp that ambition?\n\n\n\n\nA NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET\n\n_The text of this book was set on the linotype in Baskerville. The\npunches for this face were cut under the supervision of George W.\nJones, an eminent English printer. Linotype Baskerville is a facsimile\ncutting from type cast from the original matrices of a face designed by\nJohn Baskerville. The original face was the forerunner of the \"modern\"\ngroup of type faces.\n\nJohn Baskerville (1706-75), of Birmingham, England, a writing-master,\nwith a special renown for cutting inscriptions in stone, began\nexperimenting about 1750 with punch-cutting and making typographical\nmaterial. It was not until 1757 that he published his first work, a\nVirgil in royal quarto, with great-primer letters. This was followed by\nhis famous editions of Milton, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer,\nand several Latin classic authors. His types, at first criticized as\nunnecessarily slender, delicate, and feminine, in time were recognized\nas both distinct and elegant, and both his types and his printing were\ngreatly admired. Printers, however, preferred the stronger types of\nCaslon, and Baskerville before his death repented of having attempted\nthe business of printing. For four years after his death his widow\ncontinued to conduct his business. She then sold all his punches and\nmatrices to the Societe Litteraire-typographique, which used some of\nthe types for the sumptuous Kehl edition of Voltaire's works in seventy\nvolumes.--_\n\nCOMPOSED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY\nH. WOLFF, NEW YORK. PAPER MADE\nBY P. F. GLATFELTER & CO.,\nSPRING GROVE, PA.","title":"This Simian World","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15853}