Are we or are we not simians? It is no use for any man to try to
think anything else out until he has decided first of all where he
stands on that question. It is not only in love affairs: let us
lay all that aside for the moment. It is in ethics, economics,
art, education, philosophy, what-not. If we are fallen angels,
we should go this road: if we are super-apes, that.
"Our problem is not to discover what we ought to do if we were
different, but what we ought to do, being what we are. There
is no end to the beings we can imagine different from ourselves;
but they do not exist," and we cannot be sure they would be better
than we if they did. For, when we imagine them, we must imagine
their entire environment; they would have to be a part of some
whole that does not now exist. And that new whole, that new reality,
being merely a figment of our little minds, "would probably be
inferior to the reality that is. For there is this to be said in
favor of reality: that we have nothing to compare it with. Our
fantasies are always incomplete, because they are fantasies. And
reality is complete. We cannot compare their incompleteness with
its completeness."[1]
[1] From an anonymous article entitled "Tolstoy and Russia" in the
London Times, Sept. 26,1918.
Too many moralists begin with a dislike of reality: a dislike of men
as they are. They are free to dislike them--but not at the same time
to be moralists. Their feeling leads them to ignore the obligation
which should rest on all teachers, "to discover the best that man
can do, not to set impossibilities before him and tell him that if
he does not perform them he is damned."
Man is moldable; very; and it is desirable that he should aspire.
But he is apt to be hasty about accepting any and all general ideals
without figuring out whether they are suitable for simian use.
One result of his habit of swallowing whole most of the ideals
that occur to him, is that he has swallowed a number that strongly
conflict. Any ideal whatever strains our digestions if it is hard
to assimilate: but when two at once act on us in different ways, it
is unbearable. In such a case, the poets will prefer the ideal
that's idealest: the hard-headed instinctively choose the one adapted
to simians.
Whenever this is argued, extremists spring up on each side. One
extremist will say that being mere simians we cannot transcend much,
and will seem to think that having limitations we should preserve
them forever. The other will declare that we are not merely simians,
never were just plain animals; or, if we were, souls were somehow
smuggled in to us, since which time we have been different. We have
all been perfect at heart since that date, equipped with beautiful
spirits, which only a strange perverse obstinacy leads us to soil.
What this obstinacy is, is the problem that confronts theologians.
They won't think of it as simian-ness; they call it original sin.
They regard it as the voice of some devil, and say good men should
not listen to it. The scientists say it isn't a devil, it is part
of our nature, which should of course be civilized and guided, but
should not be stamped out. (It might mutilate us dangerously to
become under-simianized. Look at Mrs. Humphry Ward and George
Washington. Worthy souls, but no flavor.)
In every field of thought then, two schools appear, that are divided
on this: Must we forever be at heart high-grade simians? Or are we
at heart something else?
For example, in education, we have in the main two great systems.
One depends upon discipline. The other on exciting the interest.
The teacher who does not recognize or allow for our simian nature,
keeps little children at work for long periods at dull and dry
tasks. Without some such discipline, he fears that his boys will
lack strength. The other system believes they will learn more when
their interest is roused; and when their minds, which are mobile by
nature, are allowed to keep moving.
Or in politics: the best government for simians seems to be based
on a parliament: a talk-room, where endless vague thoughts can be
warmly expressed. This is the natural child of those primeval
sessions that gave pleasure to apes. It is neither an ideal nor
a rational arrangement, of course. Small executive committees would
be better. But not if we are simians.
Or in industry: Why do factory workers produce more in eight hours a
day than in ten? It is absurd. Super-sheep could not do it. But
that is the way men are made. To preach to such beings about the
dignity of labor is futile. The dignity of labor is not a simian
conception at all. True simians hate to have to work steadily: they
call it grind and confinement. They are always ready to pity the
toilers who are condemned to this fate, and to congratulate those
who escape it, or who can do something else. When they see some
performer in spangles risk his life, at a circus, swinging around
on trapezes, high up in the air, and when they are told he must do
it daily, do they pity _him?_ No! Super-elephants would say, and
quite properly, "What a horrible life!" But it naturally seems
stimulating to simians. Boys envy the fellow. On the other hand
whenever we are told about factory life, we instinctively shudder
to think of enduring such evils. We see some old work-man, filling
cans with a whirring machine; and we hear the humanitarians telling
us, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice,
warm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with
nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: "How deadly! What
monotonous toil! Shorten his hours!" His work would seem blissful to
super-spiders,--but to us it's intolerable. "Grind and confinement?"
That's the strong monkey-blood in our veins.
Our monkey-blood is also apparent in our judgments of crime. If a
crime is committed on impulse, we partly forgive it. Why? Because,
being simians, with a weakness for yielding to impulses, we like to
excuse ourselves by feeling not accountable for them. Elephants
would have probably taken an opposite stand. They aren't creatures
of impulse, and would be shocked at crimes due to such causes; their
fault is the opposite one of pondering too long over injuries, and
becoming vindictive in the end, out of all due proportion. If a
young super-elephant were to murder another on impulse, they would
consider him a dangerous character and string him right up. But if
he could prove that he had long thought of doing it, they would tend
to forgive him. "Poor fellow, he brooded," they would say. "That's
upsetting to any one."
As to modesty and decency, if we are simians we have done well,
considering: but if we are something else--fallen angels--we have
indeed fallen far. Not being modest by instinct we invent artificial
ideals, which are doubtless well-meaning but are inherently of course
second-rate, so that even at our best we smell prudish. And as
for our worst, when we as we say let ourselves go, we dirty the
life-force unspeakably, with chuckles and leers. But a race so
indecent by nature as the simians are would naturally have a hard
time behaving as though they were not: and the strain of pretending
that their thoughts were all pretty and sweet, would naturally send
them to smutty extremes for relief. The standards of purity we have
adopted are far too strict--for simians.