Monkeys are certainly, there is no denying it, very like men; and, what
is worse, men are still more like monkeys. Many worthy people, who have
a high respect for what they choose to call the Dignity of Human Nature,
are much distressed by this similitude, approaching in many cases to
absolute identity; and some of them have written books of considerable
erudition and ingenuity, to prove that a man is not a monkey; nay, not
so much as even an ape; but truth compels us to confess, that their
speculations have been far from carrying conviction to our minds. All
such inquirers, from Aristotle to Smellie, principally insist on two
great leading distinctions--speech and reason. But it is obvious to the
meanest capacity, that monkeys have both speech and reason. They have a
language of their own, which, though not so capacious as the Greek, is
much more so than the Hottentottish; and as for reason, no man of a
truly philosophical genius ever saw a monkey crack a nut, without
perceiving that the creature possesses that endowment, or faculty, in no
small perfection. Their speech, indeed, is said not to be articulate;
but it is audibly more so than the Gaelic. The words unquestionably do
run into each other, in a way that, to our ears, renders it rather
unintelligible; but it is contrary to all the rules of sound
philosophizing, to confuse the obtuseness of our own senses with the
want of any faculty in others; and they have just as good a right to
maintain, and to complain of, our inarticulate mode of speaking, as we
have of theirs--indeed much more--for monkeys speak the same, or nearly
the same, language all over the habitable globe, whereas men, ever since
the Tower of Babel, have kept chattering, muttering, humming, and
hawing, in divers ways and sundry manners, so that one nation is unable
to comprehend what another would be at, and the earth groans in vain
with vocabularies and dictionaries. That monkeys and men are one and the
same animal, we shall not take upon ourselves absolutely to assert, for
the truth is, we, for one or two, know nothing whatever about the
matter; all we mean to say is, that nobody has yet proved that they are
not, and farther, that whatever may be the case with men, monkeys have
reason and speech.
The monkey has not had justice done him, we repeat and insist upon it;
for what right have you to judge of a whole people, from a few isolated
individuals,--and from a few isolated individuals, too, running up poles
with a chain round their waist, twenty times the length of their own
tail, or grinning in ones or twos through the bars of a cage in a
menagerie? His eyes are red with perpetual weeping--and his smile is
sardonic in captivity. His fur is mouldy and mangy, and he is manifestly
ashamed of his tail, prehensile no more--and of his paws, "very hands,
as you may say," miserable matches to his miserable feet. To know him as
he is, you must go to Senegal; or if that be too far off for a trip
during the summer vacation, to the Rock of Gebir, now called Gibraltar,
and see him at his gambols among the cliffs. Sailor nor slater would
have a chance with him there, standing on his head on a ledge of six
inches, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, without ever so
much as once tumbling down; or hanging at the same height from a bush by
the tail, to dry, or air, or sun himself, as if he were flower or fruit.
There he is, a monkey indeed; but you catch him young, clap a pair of
breeches on him, and an old red jacket, and oblige him to dance a
saraband on the stones of a street, or perch upon the shoulder of Bruin,
equally out of his natural element, which is a cave among the woods.
Here he is but the ape of a monkey. Now if we were to catch you young,
good subscriber or contributor, yourself, and put you into a cage to
crack nuts and pull ugly faces, although you might, from continued
practice, do both to perfection, at a shilling a-head for grown-up
ladies and gentlemen, and sixpence for children and servants, and even
at a lower rate after the collection had been some weeks in town, would
you not think it exceedingly hard to be judged of in that one of your
predicaments, not only individually, but nationally--that is, not only
as Ben Hoppus, your own name, but as John Bull, the name of the people
of which you are an incarcerated specimen? You would keep incessantly
crying out against this with angry vociferation, as a most unwarrantable
and unjust Test and Corporation Act. And, no doubt, were an
Ourang-outang to see you in such a situation, he would not only form a
most mean opinion of you as an individual, but go away with a most false
impression of the whole human race. _Blackwood's Magazine._
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