Imagine a prehistoric prophet observing these beings, and
forecasting what kind of civilizations their descendants would
build. Anyone could have foreseen certain parts of the simians'
history: could have guessed that their curiosity would unlock for
them, one by one, nature's doors, and--idly--bestow on them stray
bits of valuable knowledge: could have pictured them spreading
inquiringly all over the globe, stumbling on their inventions--and
idly passing on and forgetting them.
To have to learn the same thing over and over again wastes the time
of a race. But this is continually necessary, with simians, because
of their disorder. "Disorder," a prophet would have sighed: "that is
one of their handicaps; one that they will never get rid of, whatever
it costs. Having so much curiosity makes a race scatter-brained.
"Yes," he would have dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture:
these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that
is plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art,
in after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How
incredible it would seem on other planets to hear of lost arts.
"There is a strong streak of triviality in them, which you don't see
in cats. They won't have fine enough characters to concentrate on
the things of most weight. They will talk and think far more of
trifles than of what is important. Even when they are reasonably
civilized, this will be so. Great discoveries sometimes will fail
to be heard of, because too much else is; and many will thus
disappear, and these men will not know it."[1]
[1] We did rescue Mendel's from the dust heap; but perhaps it
was an exception.
Let me interrupt this lament to say a word for myself and my
ancestors. It is easy to blame us as undiscriminating, but we
are at least full of zest. And it's well to be interested, eagerly
and intensely, in so many things, because there is often no knowing
which may turn out important. We don't go around being interested
on purpose, hoping to profit by it, but a profit may come. And
anyway it is generous of us not to be too self-absorbed. Other
creatures go to the other extreme to an amazing extent. They are
ridiculously oblivious to what is going on. The smallest ant in
the garden will ignore the largest woman who visits it. She is a
huge and most dangerous super-mammoth in relation to him, and her
tread shakes the earth; but he has no time to be bothered,
investigating such-like phenomena. He won't even get out of her
way. He has his work to do, hang it.
Birds and squirrels have less of this glorious independence of
spirit. They watch you closely--if you move around. But not if
you keep still. In other words, they pay no more attention than
they can help, even to mammoths.
We of course observe everything, or try to. We could spend our lives
looking on. Consider our museums for instance: they are a sign of
our breed. It makes us smile to see birds, like the magpie, with a
mania for this collecting--but only monkeyish beings could reverence
museums as we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and quantities
in them.
Old furniture, egg-shells, watches, bits of stone.... And next
door, a "menagerie." Though our victory over all other animals is
now aeons old, we still bring home captives and exhibit them caged
in our cities. And when a species dies out--or is crowded (by us),
off the planet--we even collect the bones of the vanquished and show
them like trophies.
Curiosity is a valuable trait. It will make the simians learn many
things. But the curiosity of a simian is as excessive as the toil
of an ant. Each simian will wish to know more than his head can
hold, let alone ever deal with; and those whose minds are active
will wish to know everything going. It would stretch a god's skull
to accomplish such an ambition, yet simians won't like to think it's
beyond their powers. Even small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how
thrifty, will be eager to buy costly encyclopedias, or books of all
knowledge. Almost every simian family, even the dullest, will think
it is due to themselves to keep all knowledge handy.
Their idea of a liberal education will therefore be a great
hodge-pod only. He who narrows his field and digs deep will be
viewed as an alien. If more than one man in a hundred should thus
dare to concentrate, the ruinous effects of being a specialist will
be sadly discussed. It may make a man exceptionally useful, they
will have to admit; but still they will feel badly, and fear that
civilization will suffer.
One of their curious educational ideas--but a natural one--will
be shown in the efforts they will make to learn more than one
"language." They will set their young to spending a decade or
more of their lives in studying duplicate systems--whole systems--of
chatter. Those who thus learn several different ways to say the same
things, will command much respect, and those who learn many will be
looked on with awe--by true simians. And persons without this
accomplishment will be looked down on a little, and will actually
feel quite apologetic about it themselves.
Consider how enormously complicated a complete language must be,
with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of
sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if
they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the
idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues
these simians have![1] Where another race, after the most frightful
discord and pains, might have slowly constructed one language before
this earth grew cold, this race will create literally hundreds, each
complete in itself, and many of them with quaint little systems of
writing attached. And the owners of this linguistic gift are so
humble about it, they will marvel at bees, for their hives, and at
beavers' mere dams.
[1] You remember what Kipling says in the Jungle Books, about how
disgusted the quiet animals were with the Bandarlog, because they
were eternally chattering, would never keep still. Well, this is
the good side of it.
To return, however, to their fear of being too narrow, in going
to the other extreme they will run to incredible lengths. Every
civilized simian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever
older facts he has picked up, will wish to know all the news of
all the world. If he felt any true concern to know it, this
would be rather fine of him: it would imply such a close solidarity
on the part of this genus. (Such a close solidarity would seem
crushing, to others; but that is another matter.) It won't be
true concern, however, it will be merely a blind inherited instinct.
He'll forget what he's read, the very next hour, or moment. Yet
there he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature, reading of
bombs in Spain or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting on all
the news he can get of the kind our race loved when they scampered
and fought in the forest, news that will stir his most primitive
simian feelings,--wars, accidents, love affairs, and family quarrels.
To feed himself with this largely purposeless provender, he will pay
thousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night;
and they will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother
or obscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets
will be read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this
lazy race will not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't
like to eat in the morning without their papers, such slaves they
will be to this droll greed for knowing. They won't even think it
is droll, it is so in their blood.
Their swollen desire for investigating everything about them,
including especially other people's affairs, will be quenchless.
Few will feel that they really are "fully informed"; and all will
give much of each day all their lives to the news.
Books too will be used to slake this unappeasable thirst. They
will actually hold books in deep reverence. Books! Bottled
chatter! things that some other simian has formerly said. They
will dress them in costly bindings, keep them under glass, and
take an affecting pride in the number they read. Libraries
--store-houses of books,--will dot their world. The destruction
of one will be a crime against civilization. (Meaning, again, a
simian civilization.) Well, it is an offense to be sure--a barbaric
offense. But so is defacing forever a beautiful landscape; and they
won't even notice that sometimes; they won't shudder anyway, the way
they instinctively do at the loss of a "library."
All this is inevitable and natural, and they cannot help it. There
even are ways one can justify excesses like this. If their hunger
for books ever seems indiscriminate to them when they themselves
stop to examine it, they will have their excuses. They will argue
that some bits of knowledge they once had thought futile, had later
on come in most handy, in unthought of ways. True enough! For their
scientists. But not for their average men: they will simply be like
obstinate housekeepers who clog up their homes, preserving odd boxes
and wrappings, and stray lengths of string, to exult if but one is
of some trifling use ere they die. It will be in this spirit that
simians will cherish their books, and pile them up everywhere into
great indiscriminate mounds; and these mounds will seem signs of
culture and sagacity to them.
Those who know many facts will feel wise! They will despise those
who don't. They will even believe, many of them, that knowledge
is power. Unfortunate dupes of this saying will keep on reading,
ambitiously, till they have stunned their native initiative, and
made their thoughts weak; and will then wonder dazedly what in the
world is the matter, and why the great power they were expecting to
gain fails to appear. Again, if they ever forget what they read,
they'll be worried. Those who _can_ forget--those with fresh eyes
who have swept from their minds such facts as the exact month and
day that their children were born, or the numbers on houses, or the
names (the mere meaningless labels) of the people they meet,--will
be urged to go live in sanitariums or see memory doctors!
By nature their itch is rather for knowing, than for understanding
or thinking. Some of them will learn to think, doubtless, and even
to concentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those accomplishments
will not be strong or insistent. Creatures whose mainspring is
curiosity will enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than the
pausing at times to reflect on those facts. If they do not reflect
on them, of course they'll be slow to find out about the ideas and
relationships lying behind them; and they will be curious about
those ideas; so you would suppose they'd reflect. But deep thinking
is painful. It means they must channel the spready rivers of their
attention. That cannot be done without discipline and drills for the
mind; and they will abhor doing that; their minds will work better
when they are left free to run off at tangents.
Compare them in this with other species. Each has its own kind of
strength. To be compelled to be so quick-minded as the simians would
be torture, to cows. Cows could dwell on one idea, week by week,
without trying at all; but they'd all have brain-fever in an hour at
a simian tea. A super-cow people would revel in long thoughtful books
on abstruse philosophical subjects, and would sit up late reading them.
Most of the ambitious simians who try it--out of pride--go to sleep.
The typical simian brain is supremely distractable, and it's really
too jumpy by nature to endure much reflection.
Therefore many more of them will be well-informed than sagacious.
This will result in their knowing most things far too soon, at too
early a stage of civilization to use them aright. They will learn
to make valuable explosives at a stage in their growth, when they
will use them not only in industries, but for killing brave men.
They will devise ways to mine coal efficiently, in enormous amounts,
at a stage when they won't know enough to conserve it, and will waste
their few stores. They will use up a lot of it in a simian habit[1]
called travel. This will consist in queer little hurried runs over
the globe, to see ten thousand things in the hope of thus filling
their minds.
[1] Even in a wild state, the monkey is restless and does not live
in lairs.
Their minds will be full enough. Their intelligence will be active
and keen. It will have a constant tendency however to outstrip
their wisdom. Their intelligence will enable them to build great
industrial systems before they have the wisdom and goodness to run
them aright. They will form greater political empires than they
will have strength to guide. They will endlessly quarrel about which
is the best scheme of government, without stopping to realize that
learning to govern comes first. (The average simian will imagine
he knows without learning.)
The natural result will be industrial and political wars. In a world
of unmanageable structures, wild smashes must come.
X
Inventions will come so easily to simians (in comparison with all
other creatures) and they will take such childish pleasure in
monkeying around, making inventions, that their many devices will
be more of a care than a comfort. In their homes a large part of
their time will have to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities
in good working order--their elaborate bell-ringing arrangements,
their locks and their clocks. In the field of science to be sure,
this fertility in invention will lead to a long list of important
and beautiful discoveries: telescopes and the calculus, radiographs,
and the spectrum. Discoveries great enough, almost, to make angels
of them. But here again their simian-ness will cheat them of half
of their dues, for they will neglect great discoveries of the truest
importance, and honor extravagantly those of less value and splendor
if only they cater especially to simian traits.
To consider examples: A discovery that helps them to talk, just to
talk, more and more, will be hailed by these beings as one of the
highest of triumphs. Talking to each other over wires will come in
this class. The lightning when harnessed and tamed will be made to
trot round, conveying the most trivial cacklings all day and night.
Huge seas of talk of every sort and kind, in print, speech, and
writing, will roll unceasingly over their civilized realms, involving
an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence
talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls
will be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay
to go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter
for hours. Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet
very few subjects will be counted important enough for the average
man to do any _thinking_ on them, off by himself.
In their futurist books they will dream of an even worse state,
a more dreadful indulgence in communication than the one just
described. This they'll hope to achieve by a system called mental
telepathy. They will long to communicate wordlessly, mind impinging
on mind, until all their minds are awash with messages every moment,
and withdrawal from the stream is impossible anywhere on earth.
This will foster the brotherhood of man. (Conglomerateness being
their ideal.) Super-cats would have invented more barriers instead
of more channels.
Discoveries in surgery and medicine will also be over-praised. The
reason will be that the race will so need these discoveries. Unlike
the great cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Having less
self-respect, less proper regard for their egos, they care less than
the cats do for the casing of the ego,--the body. The more civilized
they grow the more they will let their bodies deteriorate. They will
let their shoulders stoop, their lungs shrink, and their stomachs
grow fat. No other species will be quite so deformed and distorted.
Athletics they will watch, yes, but on the whole sparingly practise.
Their snuffy old scholars will even be proud to decry them. Where
once the simians swung high through forests, or scampered like
deer, their descendants will plod around farms, or mince along city
streets, moving constrictedly, slowly, their litheness half gone.
They will think of Nature as "something to go out and look at." They
will try to live wholly apart from her and forget they're her sons.
Forget? They will even deny it, and declare themselves sons of God.
In spite of her wonders they will regard Nature as somehow too humble
to be the true parent of such prominent people as simians. They will
lose all respect for the dignity of fair Mother Earth, and whisper to
each other she is an evil and indecent old person. They will snatch
at her gifts, pry irreverently into her mysteries, and ignore half
the warnings they get from her about how to live.
Ailments of every kind will abound among such folk, inevitably, and
they will resort to extraordinary expedients in their search for
relief. Although squeamish as a race about inflicting much pain in
cold blood, they will systematically infect other animals with their
own rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and
dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of
themselves. Conditions among them will be such that this will really
be necessary. Few besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore
oppose it. But the idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a
trick, instead of by taking the trouble to live healthy lives.
Strange barrack-like buildings called hospitals will stand in their
cities, where their trick-men, the surgeons, will slice them right
open when ill; and thousands of zealous young pharmacists will mix
little drugs, which thousands of wise-looking simians will firmly
prescribe. Each generation will change its mind as to these drugs,
and laugh at all former opinions; but each will use some of them, and
each will feel assured that in this respect they know the last word.
And, in obstinate blindness, this people will wag their poor heads,
and attribute their diseases not to simian-ness but to civilization.
The advantages that any man or race has, can sometimes be handicaps.
Having hands, which so aids a race, for instance, can also be
harmful. The simians will do so many things with their hands, it
will be bad for their bodies. Instead of roaming far and wide over
the country, getting vigorous exercise, they will use their hands
to catch and tame horses, build carriages, motors, and then when
they want a good outing they will "go for a ride," with their bodies
slumped down, limp and sluggish, and losing their spring.
Then too their brains will do harm, and great harm, to their bodies.
The brain will give them such an advantage over all other animals
that they will insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it
too free a rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating. This
organ, this outgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active,
and its many fears and fancies will naturally injure the body. The
interadjustment is delicate and intimate, the strain is continuous.
When the brain fails to act with the body, or, worse, works against
it, the body will sicken no matter what cures doctors try.
As in bodily self-respect, so in racial self-respect, they'll be
wanting. They will have plenty of racial pride and prejudice, but
that is not the same thing. That will make them angry when simians
of one color mate with those of another. But a general deterioration
in physique will cause much less excitement.
They will _talk_ about improving the race--they will talk about
everything--but they won't use their chances to _do_ it. Whenever
a new discovery makes life less hard, for example, these heedless
beings will seldom preserve this advantage, or use their new wealth
to take more time thereafter for thought, or to gain health and
strength or do anything else to make the race better. Instead, they
will use the new ease just to increase in numbers; and they will keep
on at this until misery once more has checked them. Life will then
be as hard as ever, naturally, and the chance will be gone.
They will have a proverb, "The poor ye have always with you,"--said
by one who knew simians.
Their ingenious minds will have an answer to this. They will argue
it is well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the
discipline and its strengthening effects on the character. But
the good effects of this sort of discipline will be mixed with sad
wreckage. And only creatures incapable of disciplining themselves
could thus argue. It is an odd expedient to get yourself into
trouble just for discipline's sake.
The fact is, however, the argument won't be sincere. When their
nations grow so over-populous and their families so large it means
misery, that will not be a sign of their having felt ready for
discipline. It will be a sign of their not having practised it
in their sexual lives.