Children of air, without the wings to fly,
Like apes, we mount the trees to reach the sky.
Why not? Are not our arms better than wings, the implements of an
inferior species? A very slight knowledge of anatomy is enough to let
one know that nobody can have both wings and arms. The why of that is
inscrutable; but the fact is undeniable. The Almighty has written that
in the skeletons of all creation.
What fools we are, when we try to improve on the works of God! In His
eyes, it is but as yesterday since our parents, with bent backs and
feeble knees, came out of the wood, and, "hand in hand, with wandering
steps and slow," they stumbled on their humble human way. Fine roads
and cars, big houses and convenient clothes we have procured
ourselves; but let us not unwisely forget our origin, nor fail to
recognise the Mystery of Mysteries, from which we emerged, and into
which we shall soon again subside.
There is something so ridiculous in human pride, it is so silly as
well as so sinful, that it is profitable to dwell in thought upon the
touches of Nature that link us to our humbler kindred, even to those
of our monkey cousins, surviving still. Well might Goethe glory, as we
know he did, in his discovery of the intermaxillary bone--the little
bone which the apes have between the jaws, but which men were always
supposed to lack, until the poet and anatomist found it, latent and
disused, but visible yet in every son of man.
On this and many other such likenesses, it is needless now to dwell.
Encyclopædias are cheap, and the works of Charles Darwin. Rather
consider what has been noticed less, and is equally remarkable, the
likenesses in feelings, habits and gestures, which depend less upon
the bones and muscles than upon the nerves, and upon the spiritual
springs, still more impalpable than nerves.
In learning to swim, for example, the first lesson is, do not lift the
arms out of the water; for in water or anywhere else, when men are
excited, up go their arms. This is not merely a conventional stage
gesture. It has become so, because it is a spontaneous movement in
real life. Why? Surely, because our arboreal ancestors, whether it was
a lion in their way that frightened them or a bull, would take to the
trees, and the uplifted arms were the first step to safety. Besides,
the little babies in the trees, long, long ago, had to hang on to
their mothers by their arms. The whole significance of the gesture
lies in its spontaneity. It is by taking thought that we run. We have
to learn to walk, no less than to dance; but the baby, newly born,
lifts up his little arms, and thinks of what he is doing no more than
does an adult in despair, or a drowning man that is sinking in the
sea.
Let Aristotle and Confucius say what they will about the best road in
the middle, the habits of innumerable ages cannot be unlearned at
dictation. In the hour of danger men are apt to revert, and grope for
an escape upwards, like the apes, feeling that that must be the right
direction--Excelsior. So "to the hills they lift their eyes" and run,
when hills are visible and trees are not.
It is not only in the hour of danger that we feel this itching for
altitude. It consoled the sailors who had to climb the masts. At
least, they sometimes said so, singing with gusto,
"We jolly sailor-boys are sitting up aloft,
And the land-lubbers lying down below."
To this day it makes yachtsmen happy--at least, some of them say so,
and it is otherwise not easy to understand their preference for cloths
stretched on poles to more efficient modern machinery. Be that as it
may, it is certainly the itching for altitude that is the inherent
part of the pleasure of climbing knotted ropes and poles and slippery
mountain-sides, of drifting in balloons like clouds, or whirring madly
about like monstrous mechanical partridges with motors in their
bellies. For myriads of ages, our noble ancestors looked down upon
things in general from the trees, and the taste revives in us readily,
and soon feels as natural as winking.
So, if old fashions of decoration last, and a "coat of arms" is needed
for some successful sailor in the sky, he could choose no more
appropriate emblem than a noble little gibbon. The mighty muscles of
an orang-outang or gorilla might put a man to shame, whereas the
gibbon is much smaller than ourselves. He is also the nimblest of all
us creatures with legs and arms, and in various ways more like us than
any of the others. So let the emblem be a gibbon and a man clasping
hands, and the legend these plain words of simple truth--
"TWO CHILDREN OF THE AIR."