But where had Charlie learned that "Equality is equity," a rule that
has been found beyond the grasp of a "common"-minded chancellor?
Surely, in the family circle. Her whole character, and, in particular,
the readiness to imitate, upon which I do not dwell only because
everybody knows that kind of thing, was that of one who had inherited
family instincts, whose ancestors had lived in families for immemorial
generations. The habits of living species are slowly modified in the
lapse of millenniums; and we were not teaching Charlie tricks, but
letting her develop naturally, and observing her.
The mention of imitation reminds me that Charlie could handle my
wife's hand-mirror as well as any lady; but the first sight of it
raised hopes that were disappointed. She was seen to be moving it back
and forward with one hand, while with the other she was groping behind
it, until at last she was satisfied that there was no other gibbon
there. The great life-sorrow of Charlie was that she never saw another
like herself again. It was pathetic to see her looking in the mirror,
and then at other inmates of the house, as if asking herself, "Why am
I so different?" She was like Robinson Crusoe, without a chance of
deliverance; or she might be compared to Gulliver among the giants.
Though in proportion not so small as he was, she was too small to feel
at home or among equals; and for animals as for men to be weak is to
be miserable, and strength and weakness are largely matters of
comparison. We petted her so that she did not feel that much; and
though nothing could supply the lack of kindred beings, the lapse of
time benumbed the pain, and she was consoled.
"Reader, if thou an oft-told tale wilt trust,
Thou'lt gladly do and suffer what thou must."
One of the best-known bits of English literature is the sentence which
keeps the memory of old Hobbes green, his fancy picture of a state of
Nature.--
"No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all"
(especially for philosophers), "continual fear and danger of violent
death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
The great mistake in this nightmare description is the supposition
that men were ever solitary by natural habits. Never, never, O Hobbes,
since men began to be, never but in artificial conglomerations defying
the laws of Nature, and dying in consequence, never did men and women
stand alone. Individualism in its extreme form is actual insanity. In
moderate forms it has always been common. It fills our jails to-day.
It is almost universal among the cat tribes; but wherever and whenever
it spreads among men it leads to death. The most primitive of human
creatures ever known to maintain themselves have been found to live in
families. The human apes, nay, the very baboons do likewise. So it is
contrary to science or sifted common-sense to think of our arboreal
ancestors as solitaries.
What probably misled Hobbes was the remark of Tacitus, in his
_Germany_ (XVI), that the Germans, who may have seemed to Hobbes, as
to a great French historian, "the last arrived of the barbarians,"
lived "scattered and apart, just as a spring, a meadow, or a wood has
attracted them." But Tacitus goes on to tell how they lived in
villages, and were united in tribes or clans, just like the people of
Afghanistan both then and now, or the Highland clans till the
eighteenth century.
What misled Hobbes is matter of conjecture. That he was mistaken is
certain. It would be contrary to all analogies based on our existing
knowledge, that is to say, it would be sheer hallucination to imagine
that, between our cousins the human apes, and primitive humanity, who
both live in families, there was a different kind of creatures in
human form, who lived like cats, each for himself, and every man
against everybody else. Hobbes, himself, if he were alive to-day,
would laugh at that, and in the light of new knowledge he would be the
first to allow that, though life in a state of Nature has its
drawbacks, solitude was never one of them. Civilisation is the art of
living together; and it commenced with family life in immemorial
antiquity, before we left the trees, so that it may be said to be
older than humanity itself.