{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_6882/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_6882","id":"gutenberg_6882","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6882","summary":null,"tags":["American wit and humor","Category: American Literature","Category: Humour","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Evolution (Biology) -- Wit and humor"],"text":"Produced by Joyce Noverr\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis Simian World\n\nby: Clarence Day Jr.\n\n\n\"How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation,' with\nan ugly emphasis on _brute_....  As for me, I am proud of my\nclose kinship with other animals.  I take a jealous pride in my\nSimian ancestry.  I like to think that I was once a magnificent\nhairy fellow living in the trees, and that my frame has come down\nthrough geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus,\nFish, Dinosaurs, and Apes.  Who would exchange these for the\npallid couple in the Garden of Eden?\"\n\nW. N. P. Barbellion.\n\n\n\nI\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\njust strolling up and down, staring at each other, and talking.\nThere were thousands 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,\"\nI turned and asked, \"Why, what about them?\"  I wasn't sure whether\nhe had an 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\nget no sense whatever of individual worth, or of value in men as\na race, when I see them like this.  It makes one almost despair\nof civilization.\"\n\nI thought this over for awhile, to get in touch with his attitude.\nI myself feel differently at different times about us human-beings:\nsometimes I get pretty indignant when we are attacked (for there\nis altogether too much abuse of us by spectator philosophers) and\nyet at other times I too feel like a spectator, an alien: but even\nthen I had never felt so alien or despairing as Potter.  \"Let's\nremember,\" I said, \"it's a simian civilization.\"\n\nPotter was staring disgustedly at some vaudeville sign-boards.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"those for example are distinctively simian.  Why\nshould you feel disappointment at something inevitable?\"  And I\nwent on to argue that it wasn't as though we were descended from\neagles for instance, instead of (broadly speaking) from ape-like\nor monkeyish beings.  Being of simian stock, we had simian traits.\nOur development naturally bore the marks of our origin.  If we\nhad inherited our dispositions from eagles we should have loathed\nvaudeville.  But as cousins of the Bandarlog, we loved it.  What could\nyou expect?\n\n\n\nII\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\ngod, or some principle of growth, had gone that way to work with us,\nhe or it might have molded us in 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\nclay story.  Or who--unconsciously--still let it color their thinking.\n\n\nThere certainly seems to be a power at work in the world, by virtue\nof which every living thing grows and develops.  And it tends toward\nsplendor.  Seeds become trees, and weak little nations grow great.\nBut the push or the force that is doing this, the yeast as it were,\nhas to work in and on certain definite kinds of material.  Because\nthis yeast is in us there may be great and undreamed of possibilities\nawaiting mankind; but because of our line of descent there are also\nqueer limitations.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nIn those distant invisible epochs before men existed, before even\nthe proud missing link strutted around through the woods (little\nrealizing how we his greatgrandsons would smile wryly at him much\nas our own descendants may shudder at us, ages hence) the various\nanimals were desperately competing for power.  They couldn't or\ndidn't live as equals.  Certain groups sought the headship.\n\nMany strange forgotten dynasties rose, met defiance, and fell.\nIn the end it was our ancestors who won, and became simian kings,\nand bequeathed a whole planet to us--and have never been thanked\nfor it.  No monument has been raised to the memory of those first\nhairy conquerors; yet had they not fought well and wisely in those\nfar-off times, some other race would have been masters, and kept\nus in cages, or show us for sport in the forest while they ruled\nthe world.\n\n\nSo Potter and I, developing this train of thought, began to imagine\nwe had lived many ages ago, and somehow or other had alighted\nhere from some older planet.  Familiar with the ways of evolution\nelsewhere in the universe, we naturally should have wondered what\ncourse it would take on this earth.  \"Even in this out-of-the-way\ncorner of the Cosmos,\" we might have reflected, \"and on this tiny\nstar, it may be of interest to consider the trend of events.\"  We\nshould have tried to appraise the different species as they wandered\naround, each with its own set of good and bad characteristics.  Which\ngroup, we'd have wondered, would ever contrive to rule all the rest?\n\nAnd how great a development could they attain to thereafter?\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nIf we had landed here after the great saurians had been swept from\nthe scene, we might first have considered the lemurs or apes.\nThey had hands.  Aesthetically viewed, the poor simians were simply\ngrotesque; but travelers who knew other planets might have known what\nbeauty may spring from an uncouth beginning in this magic universe.\n\nStill--those frowsy, unlovely hordes of apes and monkeys were so\ncompletely lacking in signs of kingship; they were so flighty, too,\nin their ways, and had so little purpose, and so much love for\nabsurd and idle chatter, that they would have struck us, we thought,\nas unlikely material.  Such traits, we should have reminded ourselves,\npersist.  They are not easily left behind, even after long stages; and\nthey form a terrible obstacle to all high advancement.\n\n\n\nV\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.\nAnd in these orderly insects there are obviously a capacity for\nlabor, and co-operative labor at that, which could carry them far.\nWe all know that they have a marked genius: great gifts of their\nown.  In a civilization of super-ants or bees, there would have\nbeen no problem of the hungry unemployed, no poverty, no unstable\ngovernment, no riots, no strikes for short hours, no derision of\neugenics, no thieves, perhaps no 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.\nAn ant doesn't have the vote, apparently: he just has his duties.\n\nThis quality may have something to do with their having groups wars.\nThe egotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression,\nso the egotism of the groups is extremely ferocious and active.  Is\nthis one of the reasons why ants fight so much?  We have seen the same\nphenomenon occur in certain nations of men.  And the ants commit\natrocities in and after their battles that are--I wish I could truly\nsay--inhuman.\n\nBut conversely, ants are absolutely unselfish within the community.\nThey are skilful.  Ingenious.  Their nests and buildings are\nrelatively larger than man's.  The scientists speak of their paved\nstreets, vaulted halls, their hundreds of different domesticated\nanimals, their pluck and intelligence, their individual initiative,\ntheir chaste and industrious lives.  Darwin said the ant's brain\nwas \"one of the most marvelous atoms in the world, perhaps more so\nthan the brain of man\"--yes, of present-day man, who for thousands\nand thousands of years has had so much more chance to develop his\nbrain....  A thoughtful observer would have weighed all these\nexcellent qualities.\n\nWhen we think of these creatures as little men (which is all wrong\nof course) we see they have their faults.  To our eyes they seem\ntoo orderly, for instance.  Repressively so.  Their ways are more\nfixed than those of the old Egyptians, and their industry is painful\nto think of, it's hyper-Chinese.  But we must remember this is a\nsimian comment.  The instincts of the species that you and I belong\nto are of an opposite kind; and that makes it hard for us to judge\nants 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,\nthey also fight other ants.  The custom of plunder seems to be a\npart of most of their wars.  This has gone on for ages among them,\nand continues today.  Raids, ferocious combats, and loot are part\nof an ant's regular life.  Ant reformers, if there were any, might\nlay this to their property sense, and talk of abolishing property\nas a cure for the evil.  But that would not help for long unless\nthey could abolish the love of it.\n\nAnts seem to care even more for property than we do ourselves.  We\nmen are inclined to ease up a little when we have all we need.  But\nit no so with ants: they can't bear to stop: they keep right on\nworking.  This means that ants do not contemplate: they heed nothing\noutside of their own little rounds.  It is almost as though their\nfondness for labor had closed fast their minds.\n\nConceivably they might have developed inquiring minds.  But this\nwould have run against their strongest instincts.  The ant is\nknowing and wise; but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation.\nThe worshipper of energy is too physically energetic to see that\nhe cannot explore certain higher fields until he is still.\n\nEven if such a race had somehow achieved self-consciousness and\nreason, would they have been able therewith to rule their instincts,\nor to stop work long enough to examine themselves, or the universe,\nor to dream of any noble development?  Probably not.  Reason is\nseldom or never the ruler: it is the servant of instinct.  It would\ntherefore have told the ants that incessant toil was useful and good.\n\n\"Toil has brought you up from the ruck of things.\"  Reason would\nhave plausibly said, \"it's by virtue of feverish toil that you\nhave become what you are.  Being endlessly industrious is the best\nroad--for you--to the heights.\"  And, self-reassured, they would\nthen have had orgies of work; and thus, by devoted exertion, have\nblocked their advancement.  Work, and order and gain would have\nwithered their souls.\n\n\n\nVI\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\nof mind than the ants,--and a self-respect, we may note, unknown\nto primates.  Or consider the leopards, with hearts that no tyrant\ncould master.  What fearless and resolute leopard-men they could\nhave fathered!  How magnificently such a civilization would have\nmade its force tell!\n\nA race of civilized beings descended from these great cats would\nhave been rich in hermits and solitary thinkers.  The recluse would\nnot have been stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us simians.  They\nwould not have been a credulous people, or easily religious.  False\nprophets and swindlers would have found few dupes.  And what generals\nthey would have made! 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\nwe men are like monkeys.  Their development in appearance and\ncharacter would have been quite transforming.\n\nInstead of the small flat head of the tiger, they would have had\nclear smooth brows; and those who were not bald would have had\nneatly parted hair--perhaps striped.\n\nTheir mouths would have been smaller and more sensitive: their\nfaces most dignified.  Where now they express chiefly savageness,\nthey would have expressed fire and grace.\n\nThey would have been courteous and suave.  No vulgar crowding\nwould have occurred on the streets of their cities.  No mobs.\nNo ignominious subway-jams.\n\nImagine a cultivated coterie of such men and women, at a ball,\ndancing.  How few of us humans are graceful.  They would have\nall been Pavlowas.\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\nhave needed sanitariums: but fewer asylums.  And their asylums would\nhave been not for weak-minded souls, but for furies.\n\nThey would have been strong at slander.  They would have been far\nmore violent 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\nthan when they occur they are famous.  Friends as loyal as Damon\nand Pythias were, are exceptions.  Good fellowship is common, but\nunchanging affection is not.  We like those who like us, as a rule,\nand dislike those who don't.  Most of our ties have no better footing\nthan that; and those who have many such ties are called warm-hearted.\n\n\nThe super-cat-men would have rated cleanliness higher.  Some of\nus primates have learned to keep ourselves clean, but it's no\nlarge proportion; 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.\nJ. de 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\nlong dusty records of dead and gone quarrels.  We simians naturally\nadmire a profession full of wrangle and chatter.  But that is a\nmonkeyish way of deciding disputes, not feline.\n\nWe fight best in armies, gregariously, where the risk is reduced;\nbut we disapprove usually of murderers, and of almost all private\ncombat.  With the great cats, it would have been just the other way\nround.  (Lions and leopards fight each other singly, not in bands,\nas do monkeys.)\n\nAs a matter of fact, few of us delight in really serious fighting.\nWe do love to bicker; and we box and knock each other around, to\nexhibit our strength; but few normal simians are keen about bloodshed\nand killing; we do it in war only because of patriotism, revenge,\nduty, glory.  A feline civilization would have cared nothing for duty\nor glory, but they would have taken a far higher pleasure in gore.\nIf a planet of super-cat-men could look down upon ours, they would\nnot know which to think was the most amazing: the way we tamely live,\nfive million or so in a city, with only a few police to keep us\nquiet, while we commit only one or two murders a day, and hardly\nhave a respectable number of brawls; or the way great armies of us\nare trained to fight,--not liking it much, and yet doing more killing\nin wartime and shedding more blood than even the fiercest lion on his\ncruelest days.  Which would perplex a gentlemanly super-cat spectator\nthe more, our habits of wholesale slaughter in the field, or our\nspiritless making a fetish of \"order,\" at home?\n\n\nIt is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most\nfor.  Super-cat-men would have been outraged, had their right of\npersonal combat been questioned.  The simian submits with odd\nreadiness to the loss of this privilege.  What outrages him is\nto make him stop wagging his tongue.  He becomes most excited and\npassionate about the right of free speech, even going so far in his\nemotion as to declare it is sacred.\n\nHe looks upon other creatures pityingly because they are dumb.\nIf one of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy.\nEven that mere hesitation in speech, known as stammering, he deems\na 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\nto be silent.  It is felt that his punishment is entirely too cruel\nhowever and even the worst offenders should be allowed to talk part\nof each day.\n\nWhatever a simian does, there must always be some talking about it.\nHe can't even make peace without a kind of chatter called a peace\nconference.  Super-cats would not have had to \"make\" peace: they\nwould have just walked off and stopped fighting.\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\nfor swimming.  Cats hate getting wet, so men descended from them\nmight have hated it.  They would have felt that even going in\nwading was sign of great hardihood, and only the most daring young\nfellows, showing off, would have done it.\n\nAmong them there would have been no antivivisection societies:\n\nNo Young Cat 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\nhave entranced the old-time monkeys to foresee such a game!  A game\nwhere they'd all prance off on captured horses, tearing pell-mell\nthrough the woods in gay red coats, attended by yelping packs of\nservant-dogs.  It is excellent sport--but how cats would scorn to\nhunt in that way!\n\nThey would not have knighted explorers--they would have all been\nexplorers.\n\n\nImagine that you are strolling through a super-cat city at night.\nOver yonder is the business quarter, its evening shops blazing\nwith jewels.  The great stock-yards lie to the east where you hear\nthose sad sounds: that twittering as of innumerable birds, waiting\nslaughter.  Beyond lie the silent aquariums and the crates of fresh\nmice.  (They raise mice instead of hens in the country, in Super-cat\nLand.)  To the west is a beautiful but weirdly bacchanalian park,\nwith long groves of catnip, where young super-cats have their fling,\nand where a few crazed catnip addicts live on till they die, unable\nto break off their strangely undignified orgies.  And here where you\nstand is the sumptuous residence district.  Houses with spacious\ngrounds everywhere: no densely-packed buildings.  The streets have\nbeen swept up--or lapped up--until they are spotless.  Not a scrap\nof paper is lying around anywhere: no rubbish, no dust.  Few of the\npavements are left bare, as ours are, and those few are polished:\nthe rest have deep soft velvet carpets.  No footfalls are heard.\n\nThere are no lights in these streets, though these people are\nabroad much at night.  All you see are stars overhead and the\nglowing eyes of cat ladies, of lithe silken ladies who pass you,\nor of stiff-whiskered men.  Beware of those men and the gleam\nof the split-pupiled stare.  They are haughty, punctilious,\ninflammable: self-absorbed too, however.  They will probably not\neven notice you; but if they do, you are lost.  They take offense\nin a flash, abhor strangers, despise hospitality, and would think\nnothing of killing you or me on their way home to dinner.\n\nFollow one of them.  Enter this house.  Ah what splendor!  No\nservants, though a few abject monkeys wait at the back-doors, and\nsubmissively run little errands.  But of course they are never let\ninside: they would seem out of place.  Gorgeous couches, rich colors,\nsilken walls, an oriental magnificence.  In here is the ballroom.\nBut wait: what is this in the corner?  A large triumphal statue--of\na cat overcoming a dog.  And look at this dining-room, its exquisite\nappointments, its--daintiness: faucets for hot and cold milk in the\npantry, and a gold bowl of cream.\n\nSome one is entering.  Hush!  If I could but describe her!\nLanguorous, slender and passionate.  Sleepy eyes that see everything.\nAn indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace.  If you were _her_\nlover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious\nand sudden, how hostile, how ecstatic, how violent!\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\ncare little for fun.  In the circus, superlative acrobats.  No clowns.\n\nIn drama and singing they would have surpassed us probably.  Even\nin the state of arrested development as mere animals, in which we\nsee cats, they wail with a passionate intensity at night in our\nyards.  Imagine how 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\nfreer of cheap imitativeness of each other in manners and art, and\nhence more original in art; more clearly aware of what they really\ndesired; not cringingly watchful of what was expected of them; less\nwidely observant perhaps, more deeply thoughtful.\n\nTheir artists would have produced less however, even though they\nfelt more.  A super-cat artist would have valued the pictures he\ndrew for their effects on himself; he wouldn't have cared a rap\nwhether anyone else saw them or not.  He would not have bothered,\nusually, to give any form to his conceptions.  Simply to have had\nthe sensation would have for him been enough.  But since simians\nlove to be noticed, it does not content them to have a conception;\nthey must wrestle with it until it takes a form in which others\ncan see it.  They doom the artistic impulse to toil with its nose\nto the grindstone, until their idea is expressed in a book or a\nstatue.  Are they right?  I have doubts.  The artistic impulse\nseems not to wish to produce finished work.  It certainly deserts\nus half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor.\nWith the cats, art is joy.\n\n\nBut the dominant characteristic of this fine race is cunning.  And\nhence I think it would have been through their craftiness, chiefly,\nthat they would have felt the impulse to study, and the wish to\nadvance.  Craft is a cat's delight: craft they never can have too\nmuch of.  So it would have been from one triumph of cunning to\nanother that they would have marched.  That would have been the\ngreatest driving force of their civilization.\n\nThis would have meant great progress in invention and science--or\nin some fields of science, the economic for instance.  But it would\nhave retarded them in others.  Craft studies the world calculatingly,\nfrom without, instead of understandingly from within.  Especially\nwould it have cheapened the feline philosophies; for not simply how\nto know but how to circumvent the universe would have been their\ndesire.  Mankind's curiosity is disinterested; it seems purer by\ncontrast.  That is to say, made as we are, it seems purer to us.\nWhat we call disinterested, however, super-cats might call aimless.\n(Aimlessness is one of the regular simian traits.)\n\nI don't mean to be prejudiced in favor of the simian side.\nCuriosity may be as debasing, I grant you, as craft.  And craft\nmight turn into artifices of a kind which would be noble and fine.\nJust as the ignorant and fitful curiosity of some little monkey\nis hardly to be compared to the astronomer's magnificent search,\nso the craft and cunning we see in our pussies would bear small\nrelation to the high-minded planning of some ruler of the race\nwe are imagining.\n\nAnd yet--craft _is_ self-defeating in the end. Transmute it into\nits finest possible form, let it be as  subtle  and civilized as\nyou please, as yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets\nitself over against the wholeness of things; its role is that of\nthe part at war with the whole.  Milton's Lucifer had the mind of\na 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.\nThe trouble is, it would defeat itself in the beginning.  It would\nhave too bitterly stressed the struggle for existence.  Conflict and\nstruggle make civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves\nmake civilizations.  Mutual aid and support are needed for that.\nThere the felines are lacking.  They do not co-operate  well;\nthey have small group-devotion.  Their lordliness, their strong\nself-regard, and their coolness of heart, have somehow thwarted\nthe chance of their racial progress.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nThere are many other beasts that one might once have thought\nhad a chance.\n\nSome, like horses and deer, were not bold enough; or were\nstupid, like buffaloes.\n\nSome had over-trustful characters, like the seals; or exploitable\ncharacters, like cows, and chickens, and sheep.  Such creatures\nsentence themselves to be captives, by their lack of ambition.\n\nDogs?  They have more spirit.  But they have lost their chance\nof kingship through worshipping us.  The dog's finer qualities\ncan't be praised too warmly; there is a purity about his devotion\nwhich makes mere men feel speechless: but with all love for\ndogs, one must grant they are vassals, not rulers.  They are too\nparasitic--the one willing servant class of the world.  And we have\nbetrayed them by making under-simians of them.  We have taught them\nsome of our own ways of behaving, and frowned upon theirs.  Loving\nus, they let us stop their developing in tune with their natures;\nand they've patiently tried ever since to adopt ways of ours.  They\nhave done it, too; but of course they can't get far: it's not their\nown road.  Dogs have more love than integrity.  They've been true\nto us, yes, but they haven't been true to themselves.\n\nPigs?  The pig is remarkably intelligent and brave,--but he's\ngross; and grossness delays one's achievement, it takes so much\ntime.  The snake too, though wise, has a way of eating himself into\nstupors.  If super-snake-men had had banquets they would have been\ntoo vast to describe.  Each little snake family could have eaten a\nherd of cattle at Christmas.\n\nGoats, then?  Bears or turtles?  Wolves, whales, crows?  Each had\nbrains and pride, and would have been glad to rule the world if\nthey could; but each had their defects, and their weaknesses for\nsuch a position.\n\nThe elephant?  Ah!  Evolution has had its tragedies, hasn't it, as\nwell as its triumphs; and well should the elephant know it.  He had\nthe best chance of all.  Wiser even than the lion, or the wisest of\napes, his wisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister.\nConsider his dignity, his poise and skill.  He was plastic, too.  He\nhad learned to eat many foods and endure many climates.  Once, some\nsay, this race explored the globe.  Their bones are found everywhere,\nin South America even; so the elephants' Columbus may have found some\nroad here before ours.  They are cosmopolitans, these suave and\nwell-bred beings.  They have rich emotional natures, long memories,\nloyalty; they are steady and sure; and not narrow, not self-absorbed,\nfor they seem interested in everything.  What was it then, that put\nthem 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.\nThey wait too long before they resent an imposition or insult.\nJust as ants are too energetic and cats too shrewd for their own\nhighest good, so the elephants suffer from too much patience.  Their\nexhibitions of it may seem superb,--such power and such restraint,\ncombined, are noble,--but a quality carried to excess defeats\nitself.  Kings who won't lift their scepters must yield in the end;\nand, the worst of it is, to upstarts who snatch at their crowns.\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\nis to kill good and bad, male and female and babies, till the few\nlast survivors lie hidden away from our guns.  All species must\nsurrender unconditionally--those are our terms--and come and live\nin barns alongside us; or on us, as parasites.  The creatures that\nwant to live a life of their own, we call wild.  If wild, then no\nmatter how harmless we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who\nare specially well brought up shoot them for fun.  Some might be our\nfriends.  We don't wish it.  We keep them all terrorized.  When one\nof us conquering monkey-men enters the woods, most animals that scent\nhim slink away, or race off in a panic.  It is not that we have\nplanned this deliberately: but they know what we're like.  Race by\nrace they have been slaughtered.  Soon all will be gone.  We give\nneither 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\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.\nSo are all other species except our own.  Isn't it strange?  A\ntool, in the most primitive sense, is any object, lying around,\nthat can obviously be used as an instrument for this or that\npurpose.  Many creatures use objects as _materials_, as birds use\ntwigs for nests.  But the step that no animal takes is learning\nfreely to use things as instruments.  When an elephant plucks off\na branch and swishes his flanks, and thus keeps away insects, he\nis using a tool.  But he does it only by a vague and haphazard\nassociation of ideas.  If he once became a conscious user of tools\nhe would of course go much further.\n\nWe ourselves, who are so good at it now, were slow enough in\nbeginning.  Think of the long epochs that passed before it entered\nour heads.\n\nAnd all that while the contest for leadership blindly went on,\nwithout any species making use of this obvious aid.  The lesson\nto be learned was simple: the reward was the rule of a planet.\nYet only one species, our own, has ever had that much brains.\n\nIt makes you wonder what other obvious lessons may still\nbe unlearned.\n\n\nIt is not necessarily stupid however, to fail to use tools.  To\nuse tools involves using reason, instead of sticking to instinct.\nNow, sticking to instinct has its disadvantages, but so has using\nreason.  Whichever faculty you use, the other atrophies, and partly\ndeserts you.  We are trying to use both. But we still don't know\nwhich has the more value.\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.\nI imagine 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\n\nVIII\n\n\nWe have been considering which species was on the whole most finely\nequipped to be rulers, and thereafter achieve a high civilization;\nbut that 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.\nWe talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the\nfact is we respectfully adapt ourselves first, to her ways.  \"We\nattain no power over nature till we learn natural laws, and our\nlordship depends on the adroitness 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\nthem forward, in defeat and in darkness.  All creatures wish to live,\nand to perpetuate their species, of course; but those two wishes\nalone evidently do not carry any race far.  In addition to these, a\nrace, to be great, needs some hunger, some itch, to spur it up the\nhard path we lately have learned to call evolution.  The love of toil\nin the ants, and of craft in cats, are examples (imaginary or not).\nWhat other such lust 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\nin but few is it one of the master passions.  By a master passion,\nI mean a passion that is really your master: some appetite which\nhabitually, day in, day out, makes its subjects forget fatigue or\ndanger, and sacrifice their ease to its gratification.  That is the\nkind of hold that curiosity has on the monkeys.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nImagine  a prehistoric prophet observing these beings, and\nforecasting what kind of civilizations their descendants would\nbuild.  Anyone could have foreseen certain parts of the simians'\nhistory: could have guessed that their curiosity would unlock for\nthem, one by one, nature's doors, and--idly--bestow on them stray\nbits of valuable knowledge: could have pictured them spreading\ninquiringly all over the globe, stumbling on their inventions--and\nidly passing on and forgetting them.\n\nTo have to learn the same thing over and over again wastes the time\nof a race.  But this is continually necessary, with simians, because\nof their disorder.  \"Disorder,\" a prophet would have sighed: \"that is\none of their handicaps; one that they will never get rid of, whatever\nit costs.  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\nis plain.  But after spending centuries groping to discover some art,\nin after-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\nin cats.  They won't have fine enough characters to concentrate on\nthe things of most weight.  They will talk and think far more of\ntrifles than of what is important.  Even when they are reasonably\ncivilized, this will be so.  Great discoveries sometimes will fail\nto be heard of, because too much else is; and many will thus\ndisappear, and these men will not know it.\"[1]\n\n[1] We did rescue Mendel's from the dust heap; but perhaps it\nwas an exception.\n\n\nLet me interrupt this lament to say a word for myself and my\nancestors.  It is easy to blame us as undiscriminating, but we\nare at least full of zest.  And it's well to be interested, eagerly\nand intensely, in so many things, because there is often no knowing\nwhich may turn out important.  We don't go around being interested\non purpose, hoping to profit by it, but a profit may come.  And\nanyway it is generous of us not to be too self-absorbed.  Other\ncreatures go to the other extreme to an amazing extent.  They are\nridiculously oblivious to what is going on.  The smallest ant in\nthe garden will ignore the largest woman who visits it.  She is a\nhuge and most dangerous super-mammoth in relation to him, and her\ntread shakes the earth; but he has no time to be bothered,\ninvestigating such-like phenomena.  He won't even get out of her\nway.  He has his work to do, hang it.\n\nBirds and squirrels have less of this glorious independence of\nspirit.  They watch you closely--if you move around.  But not if\nyou keep still.  In other words, they pay no more attention than\nthey can help, even to mammoths.\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\nour breed.  It makes us smile to see birds, like the magpie, with a\nmania for this collecting--but only monkeyish beings could reverence\nmuseums as we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and quantities\nin them.\n\n\nOld furniture, egg-shells, watches, bits of stone....  And next\ndoor,  a \"menagerie.\"  Though our victory over all other animals is\nnow aeons old, we still bring home captives and exhibit them caged\nin our cities.  And when a species dies out--or is crowded (by us),\noff the planet--we even collect the bones of the vanquished and show\nthem like trophies.\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\nof an ant.  Each simian will wish to know more than his head can\nhold, let alone ever deal with; and those whose minds are active\nwill wish to know everything going.  It would stretch a god's skull\nto accomplish such an ambition, yet simians won't like to think it's\nbeyond their powers.  Even small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how\nthrifty, will be eager to buy costly encyclopedias, or books of all\nknowledge.  Almost every simian family, even the dullest, will think\nit is due to themselves to keep all knowledge handy.\n\nTheir idea of a liberal education will therefore be a great\nhodge-pod only.  He who narrows his field and digs deep will be\nviewed as an alien.  If more than one man in a hundred should thus\ndare to concentrate, the ruinous effects of being a specialist will\nbe sadly discussed.  It may make a man exceptionally useful, they\nwill have to admit; but still they will feel badly, and fear that\ncivilization will suffer.\n\n\nOne of their curious educational ideas--but a natural one--will\nbe shown in the efforts they will make to learn more than one\n\"language.\"  They will set their young to spending a decade or\nmore of their lives in studying duplicate systems--whole systems--of\nchatter.  Those who thus learn several different ways to say the same\nthings, will command much respect, and those who learn many will be\nlooked on with awe--by true simians.  And persons without this\naccomplishment will be looked down on a little, and will actually\nfeel quite apologetic about it themselves.\n\nConsider how enormously complicated a complete language must be,\nwith its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of\nsounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if\nthey are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the\nidioms, slang and inflections.  Heavens, what a genius for tongues\nthese simians have![1]  Where another race, after the most frightful\ndiscord and pains, might have slowly constructed one language before\nthis earth grew cold, this race will create literally hundreds, each\ncomplete in itself, and many of them with quaint little systems of\nwriting attached.  And the owners of this linguistic gift are so\nhumble about it, they will marvel at bees, for their hives, and at\nbeavers' mere dams.\n\n[1] You remember what Kipling says in the Jungle Books, about how\ndisgusted the quiet animals were with the Bandarlog, because they\nwere eternally chattering, would never keep still.  Well, this is\nthe good side of it.\n\n\nTo return, however, to their fear of being too narrow, in going\nto the other extreme they will run to incredible lengths.  Every\ncivilized simian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever\nolder facts he has picked up, will wish to know all the news of\nall the world.  If he felt any true concern to know it, this\nwould be rather fine of him: it would imply such a close solidarity\non the part of this genus.  (Such a close solidarity would seem\ncrushing, to others; but that is another matter.)  It won't be\ntrue concern, however, it will be merely a blind inherited instinct.\nHe'll forget what he's read, the very next hour, or moment.  Yet\nthere he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature, reading of\nbombs in Spain or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting on all\nthe news he can get of the kind our race loved when they scampered\nand fought in the forest, news that will stir his most primitive\nsimian feelings,--wars, accidents, love affairs, and family quarrels.\n\nTo feed himself with this largely purposeless provender, he will pay\nthousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night;\nand they will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother\nor obscure more significant news altogether.  Great printed sheets\nwill be read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this\nlazy race will not think it labor to perform this toil.  They won't\nlike to eat in the morning without their papers, such slaves they\nwill be to this droll greed for knowing.  They won't even think it\nis droll, it is so in their blood.\n\nTheir swollen desire for investigating everything about them,\nincluding especially other people's affairs, will be quenchless.\nFew will feel that they really are \"fully informed\"; and all will\ngive much of each day all their lives to the news.\n\nBooks too will be used to slake this unappeasable thirst.  They\nwill actually hold books in deep reverence.  Books!  Bottled\nchatter! things that some other simian has formerly said.  They\nwill dress them in costly bindings, keep them under glass, and\ntake an affecting pride in the number they read.  Libraries\n--store-houses of books,--will dot their world.  The destruction\nof one will be a crime against civilization.  (Meaning, again, a\nsimian civilization.)  Well, it is an offense to be sure--a barbaric\noffense.  But so is defacing forever a beautiful landscape; and they\nwon't even notice that sometimes; they won't shudder anyway, the way\nthey instinctively do at the loss of a \"library.\"\n\n\nAll this is inevitable and natural, and they cannot help it.  There\neven are ways one can justify excesses like this.  If their hunger\nfor books ever seems indiscriminate to them when they themselves\nstop to examine it, they will have their excuses.  They will argue\nthat some bits of knowledge they once had thought futile, had later\non come in most handy, in unthought of ways.  True enough!  For their\nscientists.  But not for their average men: they will simply be like\nobstinate housekeepers who clog up their homes, preserving odd boxes\nand wrappings, and stray lengths of string, to exult if but one is\nof some trifling use ere they die.  It will be in this spirit that\nsimians will cherish their books, and pile them up everywhere into\ngreat indiscriminate mounds; and these mounds will seem signs of\nculture and sagacity to them.\n\nThose who know many facts will feel wise!  They will despise those\nwho don't.  They will even believe, many of them, that knowledge\nis power.  Unfortunate dupes of this saying will keep on reading,\nambitiously, till they have stunned their native initiative, and\nmade their thoughts weak; and will then wonder dazedly what in the\nworld is the matter, and why the great power they were expecting to\ngain fails to appear.  Again, if they ever forget what they read,\nthey'll be worried.  Those who _can_ forget--those with fresh eyes\nwho have swept from their minds such facts as the exact month and\nday that their children were born, or the numbers on houses, or the\nnames (the mere meaningless labels) of the people they meet,--will\nbe urged to go live in sanitariums or see memory doctors!\n\n\nBy nature their itch is rather for knowing, than for understanding\nor thinking.  Some of them will learn to think, doubtless, and even\nto concentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those accomplishments\nwill not be strong or insistent.  Creatures whose mainspring is\ncuriosity will enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than the\npausing at times to reflect on those facts.  If they do not reflect\non them, of course they'll be slow to find out about the ideas and\nrelationships lying behind them; and they will be curious about\nthose ideas; so you would suppose they'd reflect.  But deep thinking\nis painful.  It means they must channel the spready rivers of their\nattention.  That cannot be done without discipline and drills for the\nmind; and they will abhor doing that; their minds will work better\nwhen they are left free to run off 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\nbe torture, to cows.  Cows could dwell on one idea, week by week,\nwithout trying at all; but they'd all have brain-fever in an hour at\na simian tea.  A super-cow people would revel in long thoughtful books\non abstruse 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\ntoo jumpy 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\nto make valuable explosives at a stage in their growth, when they\nwill use them not only in industries, but for killing brave men.\nThey will devise ways to mine coal efficiently, in enormous amounts,\nat a stage when they won't know enough to conserve it, and will waste\ntheir few stores.  They will use up a lot of it in a simian habit[1]\ncalled travel.  This will consist in queer little hurried runs over\nthe globe, to see ten thousand things in the hope of thus filling\ntheir minds.\n\n[1] Even in a wild state, the monkey is restless and does not live\nin lairs.\n\nTheir minds will be full enough.  Their intelligence will be active\nand keen.  It will have a constant tendency however to outstrip\ntheir wisdom.  Their intelligence will enable them to build great\nindustrial systems before they have the wisdom and goodness to run\nthem aright.  They will form greater political empires than they\nwill have strength to guide.  They will endlessly quarrel about which\nis the best scheme of government, without stopping to realize that\nlearning to govern comes first.  (The average simian will imagine\nhe knows without learning.)\n\nThe natural result will be industrial and political wars.  In a world\nof unmanageable structures, wild smashes must come.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nInventions will come so easily to simians (in comparison with all\nother creatures) and they will take such childish pleasure in\nmonkeying around, making inventions, that their many devices will\nbe more of a care than a comfort.  In their homes a large part of\ntheir time will have to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities\nin good working order--their elaborate bell-ringing arrangements,\ntheir locks and their clocks.  In the field of science to be sure,\nthis fertility in invention will lead to a long list of important\nand beautiful discoveries: telescopes and the calculus, radiographs,\nand the spectrum.  Discoveries great enough, almost, to make angels\nof them.  But here again their simian-ness will cheat them of half\nof their dues, for they will neglect great discoveries of the truest\nimportance, and honor extravagantly those of less value and splendor\nif only they cater especially 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\nthis class.  The lightning when harnessed and tamed will be made to\ntrot round, 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\nwill be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay\nto go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter\nfor hours.  Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet\nvery few subjects will be counted important enough for the average\nman to do any _thinking_ on them, off by himself.\n\nIn their futurist books they will dream of an even worse state,\na more dreadful indulgence in communication than the one just\ndescribed.  This they'll hope to achieve by a system called mental\ntelepathy.  They will long to communicate wordlessly, mind impinging\non mind, until all their minds are awash with messages every moment,\nand withdrawal from the stream is impossible anywhere on earth.\nThis will foster the brotherhood of man.  (Conglomerateness being\ntheir ideal.)  Super-cats would have invented more barriers instead\nof 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\nthe great 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\ngrow fat.  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\nonce the simians  swung high through forests, or scampered like\ndeer, their descendants will plod around farms, or mince along city\nstreets, moving constrictedly, 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.\nIn spite of her wonders they will regard Nature as somehow too humble\nto be the true parent of such prominent people as simians.  They will\nlose all respect for the dignity of fair Mother Earth, and whisper to\neach other she is an evil and indecent old person.  They will snatch\nat her gifts, pry irreverently into her mysteries, and ignore half\nthe warnings 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\ncold blood, they will systematically infect other animals with their\nown rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and\ndissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of\nthemselves.  Conditions among them will be such that this will really\nbe necessary.  Few besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore\noppose it.  But the idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a\ntrick, instead of by 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\nopen when ill; and thousands of zealous young pharmacists will mix\nlittle drugs, which thousands of wise-looking simians will firmly\nprescribe.  Each generation will change its mind as to these drugs,\nand laugh at all former opinions; but each will use some of them, and\neach will feel assured that in this respect they know the last word.\n\nAnd, in obstinate blindness, this people will wag their poor heads,\nand attribute their diseases not to simian-ness but to civilization.\n\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\nharmful.  The simians will do so many things with their hands, it\nwill be bad for their bodies.  Instead of roaming far and wide over\nthe country,  getting vigorous  exercise, they will use their hands\nto catch and tame horses, build carriages, motors, and then when\nthey want a good outing they will \"go for a ride,\" with their bodies\nslumped down, limp and sluggish, 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\nthat they will insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it\ntoo free a rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating.  This\norgan, this outgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active,\nand its many fears and fancies will naturally injure the body.  The\ninteradjustment is delicate and intimate, the strain is continuous.\nWhen the brain fails to act with the body, or, worse, works against\nit, the body will sicken no matter what cures doctors try.\n\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\nthat is not the same thing.  That will make them angry when simians\nof one color mate with those of another.  But a general deterioration\nin physique 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\na new discovery makes life less hard, for example, these heedless\nbeings will seldom preserve this advantage, or use their new wealth\nto take more time thereafter for thought, or to gain health and\nstrength or do anything else to make the race better.  Instead, they\nwill use the new ease just to increase in numbers; and they will keep\non at this until misery once more has checked them.  Life will then\nbe as hard as ever, naturally, and the chance will be gone.\n\nThey will have a proverb, \"The poor ye have always with you,\"--said\nby one who knew simians.\n\nTheir ingenious minds will have an answer to this.  They will argue\nit is well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the\ndiscipline and its strengthening effects on the character.  But\nthe good effects of this sort of discipline will be mixed with sad\nwreckage.  And only creatures incapable of disciplining themselves\ncould thus argue.  It is an odd expedient to get yourself into\ntrouble just for discipline's sake.\n\nThe fact is, however, the argument won't be sincere.  When their\nnations grow so over-populous and their families so large it means\nmisery, that will not be a sign of their having felt ready for\ndiscipline.  It will be a sign of their not having practised it\nin their sexual lives.\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nThe simians are always being stirred by desire and passion.\nIt constantly excites them, constantly runs through their minds.\nWild or tame, primitive or cultured, this is a brand of the\nbreed.  Other species have times and seasons for sexual matters,\nbut the simian-folk are 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\ntheir religions.  It will lend a little interest to even their dull\nsocial functions.  It will keep alive degrading social evils in all\ntheir great towns.  Through these latter evils, too, their politics\nwill be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts\nat self-government.  Self-government works best among those who have\nlearned to self-govern.\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\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\nbeing to call or charm one's mate.  Hence--perhaps--only animals\nthat were continuously concerned with their matings would be at all\nlikely to form an elaborate language.  And without an elaborate\nlanguage, growth is 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\nXII\n\n\nA doctor, who was making a study of monkeys, once told me that he\nwas trying experiments that bore on the polygamy question.  He had\na young monkey named Jack who had mated with a female named Jill;\nand in another cage another newly-wedded pair, Arabella and Archer.\nEach pair seemed absorbed in each other, and devoted and happy.\nThey even bugged each 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,\nthough, and when Arabella cuddled beside him he would more or less\nperfunctorily embrace her.  But when he forgot, she grew cross.\n\nThe same thing occurred a little later in the Jack and Jill cage,\nonly there it was Jill who became a little tired of Jack.\n\nSoon each pair was quarreling.  They usually made up, pretty\nsoon, and started loving again.  But it petered out; each time\nmore quickly.\n\nMeanwhile the two families had become interested in watching each\nother.  When Jill had repulsed Jack, and he had moped about it\nawhile, he would begin staring at Arabella, over opposite, and\ntrying to attract her attention.  This got Jack in trouble all\naround.  Arabella indignantly made faces at him and then turned\nher back; and as for Jill, she grew furious, and tore out his fur.\n\nBut in the next stage, they even stopped hating each other.  Each\npair grew indifferent.\n\nThen the doctor put Jack in with Arabella, and Archer with Jill.\nArabella  promptly yielded to Jack.  New devotion.  More transports.\nJill  and  Archer were  shocked.  Jill clung to the bars of her\ncage, quivering, and screaming  remonstrance; and even blase Archer\nchattered angrily at some of the scenes.  Then the doctor hung\ncurtains between the cages to shut out the view.  Jill and Archer,\nleft to each other, grew interested.  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,\nlike faithful souls re-united.  And when they were tired, they\naffectionately curled up together; and hugged each other even at\nmealtime, and exchanged bits of food.\n\n\nThis was as far as the doctor had gotten, at the time that I met\nhim; and as I have lost touch with him since, I don't know how\nthings were afterward.  His theory at the time was, that variety\nwas good for fidelity.\n\n\"So how can _we_ help being that way?  It's in the blood,\" he\nconcluded.  \"Some creatures, such as wolves, are more serious;\nor perhaps more cold-blooded.  Never mate but once. Well--we're\nnot wolves.  We can't make wolves our models.  If we want to know\nhow to behave, according to the way nature made us, if we want to\nknow what is good for our instincts, we must study the monkeys.\"\n\nTo be sure, these particular monkeys were living in idleness.\nThis corresponds to living in high social circles with us, where\nmen do not have to work, and lack some of the common incentives to\nhome-building.  The experiment was not conclusive.\n\nStill, even in low social circles--\n\n\n\nXIII\n\n\nAre we or are we not simians?  It is no use for any man to try to\nthink anything else out until he has decided first of all where he\nstands on that question.  It is not only in love affairs: let us\nlay all that aside for the moment.  It is in ethics, economics,\nart, education, philosophy, what-not.  If we are fallen angels,\nwe should go this road: if 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\nis no end to the beings we can imagine different  from  ourselves;\nbut they do not exist,\" and we cannot be sure they would be better\nthan we if they did.  For, when we imagine them, we must imagine\ntheir entire environment; they would have to be a part of some\nwhole that does not now exist.  And that new whole, that new reality,\nbeing merely a figment of our little minds, \"would probably be\ninferior to the reality that is.  For there is this to be said in\nfavor of reality: that we have nothing to compare it with.  Our\nfantasies are always incomplete, because they are fantasies.  And\nreality is complete.  We cannot compare their incompleteness with\nits completeness.\"[1]\n\n[1] From an anonymous article entitled \"Tolstoy and Russia\" in the\nLondon Times, Sept. 26,1918.\n\nToo many moralists begin with a dislike of reality: a dislike of men\nas they are.  They are free to dislike them--but not at the same time\nto be moralists.  Their feeling leads them to ignore the obligation\nwhich should rest on all teachers, \"to discover the best that man\ncan do, not to set impossibilities before him and tell him that if\nhe does not perform them he is damned.\"\n\nMan is moldable; very; and it is desirable that he should aspire.\nBut he 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\nthat occur to him, is that he has swallowed a number that strongly\nconflict.  Any ideal whatever strains our digestions if it is hard\nto assimilate: but when two at once act on us in different ways, it\nis unbearable.  In such a case, the poets will prefer the ideal\nthat's idealest: the hard-headed instinctively choose the one adapted\nto 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\nthem forever.  The other will declare that we are not merely simians,\nnever were just plain animals; or, if we were, souls were somehow\nsmuggled in to us, since which time we have been different.  We have\nall been perfect at heart since that date, equipped with beautiful\nspirits, which only a strange perverse obstinacy leads us to soil.\n\nWhat this obstinacy is, is the problem that confronts theologians.\nThey won't think of it as simian-ness; they call it original sin.\nThey regard it as the voice of some devil, and say good men should\nnot listen to it.  The scientists say it isn't a devil, it is part\nof our nature, which should of course be civilized and guided, but\nshould not be stamped out.  (It might mutilate  us  dangerously to\nbecome under-simianized.  Look at Mrs. Humphry Ward and George\nWashington.  Worthy souls, but no flavor.)\n\n\nIn every field of thought then, two schools appear, that are divided\non this: Must we forever be at heart high-grade simians?  Or are we\nat heart something else?\n\nFor example, in education, we have in the main two great systems.\nOne depends upon discipline.  The other on exciting the interest.\nThe teacher who does not recognize or allow for our simian nature,\nkeeps little children at work for long periods at dull and dry\ntasks.  Without some such discipline, he fears that his boys will\nlack strength.  The other system believes they will learn more when\ntheir interest is roused; and when their minds, which are mobile by\nnature, are allowed to keep moving.\n\nOr in politics: the best government for simians seems to be based\non a parliament: a talk-room, where endless vague thoughts can be\nwarmly expressed.  This is the natural child of those primeval\nsessions that gave pleasure to apes.  It is neither an ideal nor\na rational arrangement, of course.  Small executive committees would\nbe 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\nthat is the way men are made.  To preach to such beings about the\ndignity of labor is futile.  The dignity of labor is not a simian\nconception at all.  True simians hate to have to work steadily: they\ncall it grind and confinement.  They are always ready to pity the\ntoilers who are condemned to this fate, and to congratulate those\nwho escape it, or who can do something else.  When they see some\nperformer in spangles risk his life, at a circus, swinging around\non trapezes, high up in the air, and when they are told he must do\nit daily, do they pity _him?_  No!  Super-elephants would say, and\nquite properly, \"What a horrible life!\"  But it naturally seems\nstimulating to simians.  Boys envy the fellow.  On the other hand\nwhenever we are told about factory life, we instinctively shudder\nto think of enduring such evils.  We see some old work-man, filling\ncans with a whirring machine; and we hear the humanitarians telling\nus, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice,\nwarm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with\nnothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: \"How deadly!  What\nmonotonous toil!  Shorten his hours!\"  His work would seem blissful to\nsuper-spiders,--but to us it's intolerable.  \"Grind and confinement?\"\nThat's the strong monkey-blood in our veins.\n\nOur monkey-blood is also apparent in our judgments of crime.  If a\ncrime is committed on impulse, we partly forgive it.  Why?  Because,\nbeing simians, with a weakness for yielding to impulses, we like to\nexcuse ourselves by feeling not accountable for them.  Elephants\nwould have probably taken an opposite stand. They aren't creatures\nof impulse, and would be shocked at crimes due to such causes; their\nfault is the opposite one of pondering too long over injuries, and\nbecoming vindictive in the end, out of all due proportion.  If a\nyoung super-elephant were to murder another on impulse, they would\nconsider him a dangerous character and string him right up.  But if\nhe could prove that he had long thought of doing it, they would tend\nto forgive him.  \"Poor fellow, he brooded,\" they would say.  \"That's\nupsetting to any 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\nfor our worst, when we as we say let ourselves go, we dirty the\nlife-force unspeakably, with chuckles and leers.  But a race so\nindecent by nature as the simians are would naturally have a hard\ntime behaving as though they were not: and the strain of pretending\nthat their thoughts were all pretty and sweet, would naturally send\nthem to smutty extremes for relief.  The standards of purity we have\nadopted are far too strict--for simians.\n\n\n\nXIV\n\n\nWe were speaking a while ago of the fertility with which simians\nbreed.  This is partly due to the constant love interest they\ntake in each other, but it is also reenforced by their reliance\non numbers.  That reliance will be deep, since, to their numbers,\nthey will owe much success.  It will be thus that they will drive\nout other species, and garrison the globe.  Such a race would\nnaturally come to esteem fertility.  It will seem profane not to.\n\nAs time goes on, however, the advantage of numbers will end; and\nin their 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\nto them to think of ever checking their increase.  They will bring\nmore young into existence than they can either keep well or feed.\nThe earth will be covered with them everywhere, as far as eye can\nsee.  North and south, east and west, there will always be simians\nhuddling.  Their cities will be far more distressing than cities of\nvermin,--for vermin are healthy and calm and successful in life.\n\nAh, those masses of people--unintelligent, superstitious,\nuncivilized!  What a dismal drain they will be on the race's\nstrength!  Not merely will they lessen its ultimate chance of\nachievement; their hardships will always distress and preoccupy\nminds,--fine, generous minds,--that might have done great things\nif free: that might have done something constructive at least,\nfor their era, instead of being burned out attacking mere\nanodyne-problems.\n\nNature will do what it can to lessen the strain, providing an\nappropriate remedy for their bad behavior in plagues.  Many\nepochs will pass before the simians will learn or dare to\ncontrol them--for they won't think they can, any more than\nthey dare control propagation.  They will reverently call\ntheir propagation and plagues \"acts of God.\"  When they get\ntired of reverence and stop their plagues, it will be too soon.\nTheir inventiveness will be--as usual--ahead of their wisdom;\nand they will unfortunately end the good effects of plagues\n(as a check) before they are advanced enough to keep down their\nnumbers 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\noften be right: for though some regulation of the birth-rate is an\nobvious good, and its diminution often desirable in any planet's\nhistory, yet among simians it will be apt to come from second-rate\nmotives.  Greed, selfishness or fear-thoughts will be the incentives,\nthe bribes.  Contrivances, rather than continence,  will be the\nmethod.  How audacious, and how disconcerting to Nature, to baffle\nher thus!  Even into her shrine they must thrust their bold paws to\ncontrol her.  Another race viewing them in the garlanded chambers of\nlove, unpacking their singular devices, might think them grotesque:\nbut the busy little simians will be blind to such quaint incongruities.\n\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\nlittle they ever will learn about love.  Other animals have little\nromance: there is none in the rut: that seasonal madness that drives\nthem to mate with perhaps the first comer.  But the simians will\nattain to a fine descrimination in love, and this will be their path\nto  the only spiritual heights they can reach.  For, in love, their\ninmost selves will draw near, in the silence of truth; learning\nlittle by little what the deepest sincerity means, and what clean\nhearts and minds and what crystal-clear sight it demands.  Such\nintercommunication of spirit with spirit is at the beginning of all\ntrue understanding.  It is the beginning of silent cosmic wisdom: it\nmay lead to knowing the ways of that power called God.\n\n\n\nXV\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\nof these tiny beings, who sit and peer out at the night from their\nsmall whirling globe, considering deeply the huge cold seas of space,\nand learning with wonderful skill to measure the stars.\n\nIn studies so vast, however, they are tested to the core.  In these\ngreat journeys  the traveller must pay dear for his flaws.  For it\nalways is when you most finely are exerting your strength that every\nweakness you have most tells against you.\n\nOne weakness of the primates is the character of their\nself-consciousness.  This useful faculty, that can probe so-deep,\nhas one naive defect--it relies too readily on its own findings.\nIt doesn't suspect enough its own unconfessed predilections.\nIt assumes that it can be completely impartial--but isn't.  To\ninstance an obvious way in which it will betray them: beings that\nare intensely self-conscious and aware of their selves, will also\ninstinctively feel that their universe is.  What active principle\nanimates the world, they will ask.  A great blind force?  It is\npossible.  But they will recoil from admitting any such possibility.\nA self-aware purposeful force then?  That is better!  (More simian.)\n\"A blind force can't have been the creator of all.  It's unthinkable.\"\nAny theory _their_ brains find \"unthinkable\" cannot be true.\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\nA second typical weakness of this race will come from their fears.\nThey are not either self-sufficing or gallant enough to travel great\nroads without cringing,--clear-eyed, unafraid. They are finely made,\nbut not nobly made,--in that sense.  They will therefore have a too\nurgent need of religion.  Few primates have the courage to\nface--alone--the still inner mysteries: Infinity, Space and Time.  They\nwill think it too terrible, they will feel it would turn them to\nwater, to live through unearthly moments of vision without creeds\nor beliefs.  So they'll get beliefs first.  Ah, poor creatures! The\ncart before the horse!  Ah, the blasphemy (pitiful!) of their seeking\nhigh spiritual temples, with god-maps or bibles about them, made\nbelow in advance!  Think of their entering into the presence of\nTruth, declaring so loudly and boldly they know her already, yet\nfar from willing to stand or fall by her flames--to rise like a\nphoenix or die as an honorable cinder!--but creeping in, clad in\ntheir queer blindfolded beliefs, designed to shield them from her\nstern, bright tests!  Think of Truth sadly--or merrily--eyeing\nsuch worms!\n\n\n\nXVI\n\n\nImagine you are watching the Bandarlog at play in the forest.  As\nyou behold 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\ngreater animal, not happy indeed unless noticed,--is it not plain\nthey are bound to invent things called gods?  Don't think for the\nmoment of whether there are gods or not; think of how sure these\nbeings would be to invent them.  (Not wait to find them.)  Having\nsmall self-reliance they can not bear to face life alone.  With no\nself-sufficingness, they must have the countenance of others.  It\nis these pressing needs that will hurry the primates to build, out\nof each shred of truth they can possibly twist to their purpose, and\nout of imaginings that will impress them because they are vast, deity\nafter deity to prop up their souls.\n\nWhat a strange company they will be, these gods, in their day, each\nof them an old bearded simian up in the sky, who begins by fishing\nthe universe out of a void, like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of\na hat.  (A hat which, if it resembled a void, wasn't there.)  And\nafter creating enormous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest\nheavens with vaster stars, one god will turn back and long for the\nsmell of roast flesh, another will call desert tribes to \"holy\"\nwars, and a third will grieve about 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\nmatter how much they may differ, will have one trait in common:\na readiness to drop any cosmic affair at short notice, focus their\nminds on the far-away pellet called Earth, and become immediately\nwholly concerned, aye, engrossed, with any individual worshipper's\nwoes or desires,--a readiness to notice a fellow when he is going\nto bed.  This will bring indescribable comfort to simian hearts;\nand a god that neglects this duty won't last very long, no matter\nhow competent he may be in other respects.\n\nBut one must reciprocate.  For the maker of the Cosmos, as they see\nhim, wants noticing too; he is fond of the deference and attention\nthat simians pay him, and naturally he will be angry if it is\nwithheld;--or if he is not, it will be most magnanimous of him.\nHence prayers and hymns.  Hence queer vague attempts at communing\nwith 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\nin material form.  They will have beliefs, for example, as to the\nfurnishings and occupations in heaven.  And why?  Why, to help men\nto have religious conceptions without themselves being seers,--which\nin any true sense of \"religious\" is an impossible plan.\n\n\nIn their efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly\nsimian.  Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls\non Olympus.  Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first\npair?  The Tree of Knowledge, of course.  It appealed to the\ncuriosity of their nature, and who could control _that!_\n\nAnd Satan in the Bible is distinctly a simian's devil.  The snake, it\nis known, 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\nXVII\n\n\nWhat are the handicaps this race will have in building religions?\nThe greatest is this: they have such small psychic powers.  The\nover-activity of their minds will choke the birth of such powers,\nor dull them.  The race will be less in touch with Nature, some\nday, than its dogs.  It will substitute the compass for its once\ninnate sense of direction.  It will lose its gifts of natural\nintuition, premonition, and rest, by encouraging its use of the\nmind to be cheaply incessant.\n\nThis lack of psychic power will cheat them of insight and poise;\nfor minds that are wandering and active, not receptive and still,\ncan seldom or never be hushed to a warm inner peace.\n\nOne service these restless minds however will do: they eventually will\nuncritically through the religions they themselves have invented.\n\nBut ages will be thrown away in repeating this process.\n\n\nA simian creed will not be very hard thus to pierce.  When forming\na religion, they will be in far too much haste, to wait to apply a\nstrict test to their holy men's visions.   Furthermore they will\nhave so few visions, that any will awe them; so naturally they\nwill accept any vision as valid.  Then their rapid and fertile\ninventiveness will come into play, and spin the wildest creeds\nfrom each vision living dust ever 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,\nyou will then feel  it's true.  Such religions are vicarious; their\nprophets alone will see God, and the rest will be supposed to be\nintroduced to him by the prophets.  These \"believers\" will have no\nwhite insight at all of their own.\n\nNow, a second-hand believer who is warmed at one remove--if at all\n--by the breath of the spirit, will want to have exact definitions\nin the beliefs he accepts.  Not having had a vision to go by, he\nneeds plain commandments.  He will always try to crystallize creeds.\nAnd that, plainly, is fatal.  For as time goes on, new and remoter\naspects of truth are discovered, which can seldom or never be fitted\ninto creeds that are changeless.\n\n\nOver and over again, this will be the process: A spiritual\npersonality will be born; see new truth; and be killed.  His new\ntruth not only will not fit into too rigid creeds, but whatever\nfalse finality is in them it must contradict.  So, the seer will\nbe 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.\nBut his priests will feel that is not enough: he must be honored\nuncritically: so uncritically that, whatever his message, it must\nbe deemed the Whole Truth.  Some of his message they themselves will\nhave garbled; and it was not, at best, final; but still it will be\nmade into a fixed creed and given his name.  Truth will be given his\nname.  All men who thereafter seek truth must find only his kind,\nelse they won't be his \"followers.\"  (To be his co-seekers won't do.)\nPriests will always hate any new seers who seek further for truth.\nTheir feeling will be that their seer found it, and thus ended all\nthat.  Just believe what he says. The job's over.  No more truth\nneed 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\nbut break  it.  Then men will feel distraught and disillusioned, and\ncivilizations will fall.\n\nThus each cycle will run.  So long as men interwine falsehoods with\nevery seer's visions, both perish, and every civilization that is\nbuilt on them must perish too.\n\n\n\nXVIII\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\nseeds with great certainty, though, when they're put there, by the\nvery race, too, that will later deplore the results.  Why shouldn't\ncreeds totter when 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\ngrow out of nobly developed psychic powers that have put their\npossessors in tune with cosmic music; and where no cheap hallucinations\ndiscredit their truths; they perhaps run a finer, more beautiful course\nthan the simians', and open the eyes of the soul to far loftier visions.\n\n\n\nXIX\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\nstill.  Our hold on the planet is not absolute.  Our descendants\nmay lose it.\n\nGerms may do them out of it.  A chestnut fungus springs up, defies\nus, and kills all our chestnuts.  The boll weevil very nearly baffles\nus.   The  fly  seems  unconquerable.  Only  a strong civilization,\nwhen such foes are about, can preserve us.  And our present efforts\nto cope with such beings 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\nwere always \"intended\" to rule, and that no other outcome could even\nbe considered by Nature.  This is one of the remnants of ignorance\ncertain religions have left: but it's odd that men who don't believe\nin Easter should still believe this.  For the facts are of course\nthis is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and\ninfirmity must be paid for in full.\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\nwith a kind of warm suddenness only today, as I finished these\ndreamings and drove through the gates of the park.  I had been\nshutting my modern surroundings out of my thoughts, so completely,\nand living as it were in the wild world of ages ago, that when I\nlet myself come back suddenly to the twentieth century, and stare\nat the park and the people, the change was tremendous.  All around\nme were the well-dressed  descendants of primitive animals, whizzing\nabout in bright motors, past tall, soaring buildings.  What gifted,\nenergetic achievers they suddenly seemed!\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\ngreat ship, even while sinking, was so mighty, and those atoms so\nhelpless.  Yet, it was those tiny beings that had created that ship.\nThey had planned it and built it and guided its bulk through the\nwaves.  They had also invented a torpedo that could rend it asunder.\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\na hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians!\nIt is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent.  A\nuniverse capable of giving birth to many such accidents is--blind\nor not--a good world to live in, a promising universe.\n\nAnd if there are no other such accidents, if we stand alone, if all\nthe uncountable armies of planets are empty, or peopled by animals\nonly, with no keys to thought, then we have done something so mighty,\nwhat may it not lead to!  What powers may we not develop before the\nSun dies!  We once thought we lived on God's footstool: it may be\na 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\nread Kant and play symphonies.  Will those grandsons in turn have\ndescendants who will sail  through the void, discover the foci of\nforces, the means to control them, and learn how to marshal the\nplanets and grapple with space?  Would it after all be any more\nstartling than our rise from the slime?\n\nNo sensible amoeba would have ever believed for a minute that any\nof his most remote children would build and run dynamos.  Few\nsensible men of today stop to feel, in their hearts, that we live\nin the very same world where that miracle happened.\n\nThis world, and our racial adventure, are magical still.\n\n\n\nXX\n\n\nYet although for high-spirited marchers the march is sufficient,\nthere still is that other way of looking at it that we dare not\nforget.  Our adventure may satisfy _us:_ does it satisfy Nature?\nShe is letting us camp for awhile here among the wrecked graveyards\nof mightier dynasties, not one of which met her tests.  Their bones\nare the message the epochs she murdered have left us: we have learned\nto decipher their sickening warning at last.\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\ntelescopes may some day disclose to us the hills of Arcturus, but\nhow will that help us if we cannot find the soul of the world?  Is\nthat soul alive and loving? 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\nto us.  There are whole realms of splendor, it may be, of which\nwe are heedless; and which we are as blind to as ants to the call\nof 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\nwise St. Bernards and the selfish toy lap-dogs are brothers, and\nsome things are possible for them and others are not.  So with us.\nThere are definite limits to simian civilizations, due in part to\nsome primitive traits that help keep us alive, and in part to the\nmere fact that every being has to be something, and when one is a\nsimian one is not also everything else.  Our main-springs are fixed,\nand our principal traits are deep-rooted.  We cannot now re-live\nthe 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,\nhad we cared above all for creativeness, beauty, or love.\n\n\nSo we run about, busy and active, marooned on this star, always\nviolently struggling, yet with no clearly seen goal before us.\nMen, animals, insects--what tribe of us asks any object, except\nto keep trying to satisfy its own master appetite?  If the ants\nwere earth's lords they would make no more use of their lordship\nthan to learn and enforce every possible method of foiling.  Cats\nwould spend their span of life, say, trying new kinds of guile.\nAnd we, who crave so much to know, crave so little but knowing.\nSome of us wish to know Nature most; those are the scientists.\nOthers, the saints and philosophers, wish to know God.  Both are\nalike in their hearts, yes, in spite of their quarrels.  Both\nseek to assuage to no end, the old simian thirst.\n\nIf we wanted to _be_ Gods--but ah, can we grasp that ambition?","title":"This Simian World","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15267}