There are many other beasts that one might once have thought
had a chance.
Some, like horses and deer, were not bold enough; or were
stupid, like buffaloes.
Some had over-trustful characters, like the seals; or exploitable
characters, like cows, and chickens, and sheep. Such creatures
sentence themselves to be captives, by their lack of ambition.
Dogs? They have more spirit. But they have lost their chance
of kingship through worshipping us. The dog's finer qualities
can't be praised too warmly; there is a purity about his devotion
which makes mere men feel speechless: but with all love for
dogs, one must grant they are vassals, not rulers. They are too
parasitic--the one willing servant class of the world. And we have
betrayed them by making under-simians of them. We have taught them
some of our own ways of behaving, and frowned upon theirs. Loving
us, they let us stop their developing in tune with their natures;
and they've patiently tried ever since to adopt ways of ours. They
have done it, too; but of course they can't get far: it's not their
own road. Dogs have more love than integrity. They've been true
to us, yes, but they haven't been true to themselves.
Pigs? The pig is remarkably intelligent and brave,--but he's
gross; and grossness delays one's achievement, it takes so much
time. The snake too, though wise, has a way of eating himself into
stupors. If super-snake-men had had banquets they would have been
too vast to describe. Each little snake family could have eaten a
herd of cattle at Christmas.
Goats, then? Bears or turtles? Wolves, whales, crows? Each had
brains and pride, and would have been glad to rule the world if
they could; but each had their defects, and their weaknesses for
such a position.
The elephant? Ah! Evolution has had its tragedies, hasn't it, as
well as its triumphs; and well should the elephant know it. He had
the best chance of all. Wiser even than the lion, or the wisest of
apes, his wisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister.
Consider his dignity, his poise and skill. He was plastic, too. He
had learned to eat many foods and endure many climates. Once, some
say, this race explored the globe. Their bones are found everywhere,
in South America even; so the elephants' Columbus may have found some
road here before ours. They are cosmopolitans, these suave and
well-bred beings. They have rich emotional natures, long memories,
loyalty; they are steady and sure; and not narrow, not self-absorbed,
for they seem interested in everything. What was it then, that put
them out of the race?
Could it have been a quite natural belief that they had already won?
And when they saw that they hadn't, and that the monkey-men were
getting ahead, were they too great-minded and decent to exterminate
their puny rivals?
It may have been their tolerance and patience that betrayed them.
They wait too long before they resent an imposition or insult.
Just as ants are too energetic and cats too shrewd for their own
highest good, so the elephants suffer from too much patience. Their
exhibitions of it may seem superb,--such power and such restraint,
combined, are noble,--but a quality carried to excess defeats
itself. Kings who won't lift their scepters must yield in the end;
and, the worst of it is, to upstarts who snatch at their crowns.
I fancy the elephants would have been gentler masters than we: more
live-and-let-live in allowing other species to stay here. Our way
is to kill good and bad, male and female and babies, till the few
last survivors lie hidden away from our guns. All species must
surrender unconditionally--those are our terms--and come and live
in barns alongside us; or on us, as parasites. The creatures that
want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no
matter how harmless we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who
are specially well brought up shoot them for fun. Some might be our
friends. We don't wish it. We keep them all terrorized. When one
of us conquering monkey-men enters the woods, most animals that scent
him slink away, or race off in a panic. It is not that we have
planned this deliberately: but they know what we're like. Race by
race they have been slaughtered. Soon all will be gone. We give
neither freedom nor life-room to those we defeat.
If we had been as strong as the elephants, we might have been kinder.
When great power comes naturally to people, it is used more urbanely.
We use it as parvenus do, because that's what we are. The elephant,
being born to it, is easy-going, confident, tolerant. He would have
been a more humane king.
A race descended from elephants would have had to build on a large
scale. Imagine a crowd of huge, wrinkled, slow-moving elephant-men
getting into a vast elephant omnibus.
And would they have ever tried airships?
The elephant is stupid when it comes to learning how to use tools.
So are all other species except our own. Isn't it strange? A
tool, in the most primitive sense, is any object, lying around,
that can obviously be used as an instrument for this or that
purpose. Many creatures use objects as _materials_, as birds use
twigs for nests. But the step that no animal takes is learning
freely to use things as instruments. When an elephant plucks off
a branch and swishes his flanks, and thus keeps away insects, he
is using a tool. But he does it only by a vague and haphazard
association of ideas. If he once became a conscious user of tools
he would of course go much further.
We ourselves, who are so good at it now, were slow enough in
beginning. Think of the long epochs that passed before it entered
our heads.
And all that while the contest for leadership blindly went on,
without any species making use of this obvious aid. The lesson
to be learned was simple: the reward was the rule of a planet.
Yet only one species, our own, has ever had that much brains.
It makes you wonder what other obvious lessons may still
be unlearned.
It is not necessarily stupid however, to fail to use tools. To
use tools involves using reason, instead of sticking to instinct.
Now, sticking to instinct has its disadvantages, but so has using
reason. Whichever faculty you use, the other atrophies, and partly
deserts you. We are trying to use both. But we still don't know
which has the more value.
A sudden vision comes to me of one of the first far-away ape-men who
tried to use reason instead of instinct as a guide for his conduct.
I imagine him, perched in his tree, torn between those two voices,
wailing loudly at night by a river, in his puzzled distress.
My poor far-off brother!