We were speaking a while ago of the fertility with which simians
breed. This is partly due to the constant love interest they
take in each other, but it is also reenforced by their reliance
on numbers. That reliance will be deep, since, to their numbers,
they will owe much success. It will be thus that they will drive
out other species, and garrison the globe. Such a race would
naturally come to esteem fertility. It will seem profane not to.
As time goes on, however, the advantage of numbers will end; and
in their higher stages, large numbers will be a great drawback. The
resources of a planet are limited, at each stage of the arts. Also,
there is only a limited space on a planet. Yet it will come hard
to them to think of ever checking their increase. They will bring
more young into existence than they can either keep well or feed.
The earth will be covered with them everywhere, as far as eye can
see. North and south, east and west, there will always be simians
huddling. Their cities will be far more distressing than cities of
vermin,--for vermin are healthy and calm and successful in life.
Ah, those masses of people--unintelligent, superstitious,
uncivilized! What a dismal drain they will be on the race's
strength! Not merely will they lessen its ultimate chance of
achievement; their hardships will always distress and preoccupy
minds,--fine, generous minds,--that might have done great things
if free: that might have done something constructive at least,
for their era, instead of being burned out attacking mere
anodyne-problems.
Nature will do what it can to lessen the strain, providing an
appropriate remedy for their bad behavior in plagues. Many
epochs will pass before the simians will learn or dare to
control them--for they won't think they can, any more than
they dare control propagation. They will reverently call
their propagation and plagues "acts of God." When they get
tired of reverence and stop their plagues, it will be too soon.
Their inventiveness will be--as usual--ahead of their wisdom;
and they will unfortunately end the good effects of plagues
(as a check) before they are advanced enough to keep down their
numbers themselves.
Meanwhile, when, owing to the pressure of other desires, any group of
primates does happen to become less prolific, they will feel ashamed,
talk of race suicide, and call themselves decadent. And they will
often be right: for though some regulation of the birth-rate is an
obvious good, and its diminution often desirable in any planet's
history, yet among simians it will be apt to come from second-rate
motives. Greed, selfishness or fear-thoughts will be the incentives,
the bribes. Contrivances, rather than continence, will be the
method. How audacious, and how disconcerting to Nature, to baffle
her thus! Even into her shrine they must thrust their bold paws to
control her. Another race viewing them in the garlanded chambers of
love, unpacking their singular devices, might think them grotesque:
but the busy little simians will be blind to such quaint incongruities.
Still, there is a great gift that their excess of passion will bestow
on this race: it will give them romance. It will teach them what
little they ever will learn about love. Other animals have little
romance: there is none in the rut: that seasonal madness that drives
them to mate with perhaps the first comer. But the simians will
attain to a fine descrimination in love, and this will be their path
to the only spiritual heights they can reach. For, in love, their
inmost selves will draw near, in the silence of truth; learning
little by little what the deepest sincerity means, and what clean
hearts and minds and what crystal-clear sight it demands. Such
intercommunication of spirit with spirit is at the beginning of all
true understanding. It is the beginning of silent cosmic wisdom: it
may lead to knowing the ways of that power called God.