Wondering, if not worshipping, as she blinked at the morning sun,
Charlie Darwin then and all the rest of the day was continually giving
opportunities of observation such as would have rejoiced the heart of
Wallace. The gibbons in a Zoo are more out of their element than men
in a jail. They are surrounded by strange sights and sounds, and
stupefied and quasi-paralysed by lack of occupation. We can learn
little more from them living there than from their little bodies when
they are dead. Nor are pets more satisfactory. At any rate all others
I have seen, but Charlie, were too sophisticated. You could no more
learn from them their native life, than you could learn the ways of
English children in the country by watching poor little guttersnipes,
who have never been out of town.
But Charlie was the real wild maid of the woods, the genuine gibbon,
unadulterated. She never needed to conform to our ways unless she saw
fit to do so, to please herself. It was live and let live, on both
sides. She was at home in every sense. Cousins of hers, perhaps actual
brothers and sisters, or her bereaved mother, were roving free, not
very far away--as free as any wild beast ever is, that is to say,
living from hand to mouth as usual, seeking provender. And after all,
that is how Nature first made man--
"Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran."
One day as I was listening to mingled sounds from across the river,
thinking I heard the "Oo-oo-oos" of the gibbons, mingled with dogs'
barking and human cries, there seemed to be a look of recognition on
Charlie's face, and she also listened; but neither then nor at any
time did she make a second attempt to join her relatives, so that her
master began to hope that, perhaps, when she was older, some likely
bachelor of their clan might be attracted to civilisation by her. It
was quite certain she would never revert. She had had her fill of
barbarism.
The melancholy moping of her first few days, when she used to eye the
woods, never returned after it went away. From dawn to dusk, her
mercurial activity never ceased, and that fact seemed to her master to
illuminate one of the most interesting problems in mental evolution.
It is not yet very long since Sandow and others have taught us that
the best way to develop the muscles is to use them frequently in
gentle exercises, avoiding great spasmodic efforts, which strain and
weaken them. The same law applies to the mind. There was a Latin
jingle to that effect current long ago in schools, which is worth
preserving as a bit of old-fashioned wisdom. I never saw it in print,
but was taught it orally many years ago by one who had learned it in
the same way sixty years before.
"Gutta cavat lapidem
Non vi, sed sæpe cadendo;
Sic vir fit doctus
Non vi, sed sæpe legendo."