LECTURE.

[Illustration]

My Hairy Hearers:

MANY parts of the world, less happy than the wilds of our beloved

Africa, are inhabited by a feeble, smooth-skinned creature called Man.

This unhappy animal is much vexed with creeds and theories and notions;

and the one of these which has been longest and most deeply rooted in

his mind is, that he is a fallen being. For hundreds of years, for

thousands, he has believed that his forefathers lived in a Golden Age,

compared with which that in which he now toils and worries is an age of

stone or iron; and he seems to have had a melancholy pleasure in the

thought that in that golden age his race was better, happier, and

handsomer than it is at present. Of all his fancies, this one has the

best foundation. For, O my quadrumanous hearers, whether gorillas,

chimpanzees, ouran-outans, or simple undistinguished monkeys! this

feeble, helpless creature is akin to us, and is in fact our poor

relation. The thought, indeed, is shocking. No respectable gorilla, of

well-regulated mind, can contemplate it without horror. But the truth

must be told sometimes; and the time has come when we must confess that

man, weak, born without clothes—cruel, cowardly, and ungrateful man—is

of our family; very remotely, I am happy to say, a kind of ten

thousandth cousin, but still a direct descendant of our progenitors.

From the high estate of gorilla-hood he has descended to that of

manhood; and we are in a measure disgraced by his humiliation. This is

the fall of man—that he has descended from monkey-hood to humanity.

The story of his descent in the scale of creation is sad and touching,

and cannot be heard without deep emotion. What lady gorilla about to

become a mother, or hoping that at some future day she may be about to

become a mother—about to become a mother for the first, or second, or I

will say even the third time (for I cannot suppose that any

well-regulated lady gorilla would ever be about to become a mother for

the fourth time)—what lady gorilla, I say, in this interesting condition

of mind, could contemplate without shuddering the probability that,

instead of presenting the gentleman gorilla of her affections with a

pledge of their love that promised to have a hide and a bellow that

would rival those of a buffalo, teeth like pebble-stones, a fine

retreating forehead, and, above all, that high distinguishing feature of

our race, a hind-thumb that is at once a terror to our foes and the most

useful of all our members, she would produce a wrinkled, pink-bodied

weakling, looking like a monkey—one of the smallest and feeblest of our

race—that had been flayed alive, and which, even after reaching

maturity, could live only by covering itself with an artificial skin,

and by making machines with which to get its food and defend itself

against its natural enemies! The idea is shocking; and I beg pardon of

my lady friends for the suggestion, I may say the bare suggestion. But

the story of this fall of man although sad, is interesting, and I shall

proceed to tell it, counting on the indulgence of my hearers; for it is

linked and twined with our own past history.

The tale has been lately told by one of these very miserable creatures,

who, in the depths of his degradation, has yet had the sense to discover

his relationship to us, and the grace to be proud of it. Yes, my

well-haired friends, a man-animal called the Darwin has had the

satisfaction of boasting to his fellows of his descent from the

quadrumana. Not only so, he has traced it truthfully, step by step, to

our shame and their glory. I shall tell you succinctly and directly what

he spreads over a long and tedious narrative, full of assertions, and

repetitions, and guesses, which he calls inferences. These are all

needless to us; for, as he confesses, and we boast, we comprehend at

once by instinct what he and his poor fellows in weakness and ignorance

can only grasp by a long and painful process which they call reasoning,

by which they are often led into absurdities attainable in no other way.

As you know, the world was made for the gorilla, and when he appeared he

was in all the glory of his present strength and beauty. He was the last

and highest of Nature’s productions, the ideal creature of the universe.

True, there were others larger and stronger—on land and in water—lions,

tigers, elephants, and the like, whales, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses;

but these were of low caste, creatures with whom he could have no

intercourse on terms of equality, and whom he could generally meet only

as his natural enemies. For you must have observed that those who are

below us hate us; hate us enough at least to rejoice in our downfall, if

not to seek our destruction. Usually, too, they devour us, and feed

their own life and growth by our extinction.

But the gorilla, too, has had his vicissitudes. Indeed, we may say that,

like man, he has had his fall. Unlike man, however, he rose again, until

he re-attained his present glorious perfection of form and feature. We

fell, my quadrumanous friends, through the frailty and fickleness of the

female sex. That charming and no less useful half of our race has also

been its bane and its torment for many centuries. To them we owe the

humiliating fact that gorillas once had tails, and that some even of our

cousins are still afflicted with that ridiculous, although sometimes

useful, appendage. I hope that none of those who are present,

representing the be-tailed families of our species, will take offence at

what I have said. All distinctions founded upon superiority have been

done away by the revolutions of late years; and the last change in the

fundamental law of our community, I think it was the fifteenth, made the

smallest and longest-tailed monkey in Africa—my equal.

But to the story of our tail.

[Illustration]

Long ago, so long that the years cannot be numbered upon all the fingers

and toes of all the gorillas and monkeys in Africa, a beautiful young

lady gorilla was courted by several gentlemen gorillas, some in their

earliest youth, some nearer maturity, and some at that period of mature

middle age which I—ah have—ah had occasion to observe is not without its

peculiar charms to the tender and beautiful of her sex. But none of them

found favor with her. She seemed averse to marriage. They went through

all those performances which are at once tributes to beauty, and so

allurements to its possessors. They danced, they strutted, they howled,

they beat their breasts; they ran up the tallest trees and jumped from

the tops, landing plump before her at the most unexpected moments, and

in the most extraordinary and indescribable positions. They stood on

their heads and clapped the palms of their hands and the soles of their

feet together, howling at the same time so enchantingly that they could

be heard for miles around. One of them even applied the thumb of one

distended hand to his nose, and the thumb of his other distended hand to

the little finger of the former, and so with the thumbs and fingers of

his feet, and grinned in the most bewitching manner. But alas, she sat

unmoved before all these demonstrations of strength, agility, and

affection. To none of them did she seriously incline. True, there

remained untried the form of mingled courtship and marriage, a seizure

by main force and an elopement, which has been so common, and which is

said to be not without its charms to many of her sex of all races, and

in all climes, and which is one of those time-honored institutions, the

abrogation of which would seem like the up-heaving of the foundations of

society. But her size and her strength were so great that none of her

suitors ventured upon this method of courtship; for it was understood

that she lacked that willingness to be seized which alone gives this

method its charm and its success. In fact, she was the Brunhilda of our

race, for whom there were Günthers enough, but no Siegfried. She had let

it be understood that if any lover pressed his attentions upon her she

would bind his hands and feet together, and, bending down the biggest

sapling she could find, tie him to its top and let it spring up with him

into the air again. And so she was not molested, and passed through the

woods in maiden-meditation, fancy free.

One day she sat upon the sea-shore, lonely and pensive, gazing upon the

waters, when suddenly there appeared in the distance an enormous, oval

head, with moon-like eyes, followed by many roods of body and tail, that

rose and fell like the waves of the ocean. It was the Sea-serpent. She

looked at first with wonder, then with curiosity, at last with

admiration. What enormous grace of undulation! What seductive sinuosity!

What bewildering immensity of horizontal extension! What glistening

folds of glairy smoothness! What a piquant difference from the

rectangular jointedness, the half-upright attitudes, and the hairy

roughness of her obtrusive suitors! As she gazed, her heart told her

that she had at last found her affinity. But, overcome although she was,

she was also coy. Smitten to her very midriff with love’s dart, she

would not, unsought, be won, even by the Sea-serpent. Nor would she be

guilty of the impropriety of remaining alone with a member of the

opposite sex, to whom she was not married, or even engaged, and indeed a

gentleman who had not been properly introduced. She rose with maiden

modesty, to walk away. But I am bound to say that her course did not

lead her directly from the object which she thought it becoming to

leave; rather, it must be confessed, in that oblique line before him,

which gave the best opportunity to him of seeing her, and to her of

casting glances at him, while she produced the impression that, if not

stayed, she would very soon be out of sight. As she moved along the

strand, he gazed, and was fascinated, not only by her hairy figure, but

by the captivating combination of stride, stumble, and jump, which is

the received mode of progression of our noble race. The Sea-serpent was

enchanted. The flame was mutual. Nevertheless, after the manner of his

sex, he set himself to win what was his already. He went through all his

masculine and serpentine performances. He coiled himself up and

stretched himself out. He lashed the sea into foam. He came on shore and

tied himself up into true lover’s knots before her. He put his tail into

his mouth, and rolled himself along the shore in a vast circle, the

symbol of the eternity of his love. It seemed as if the very equator had

become enamored of her charms, and, refusing any longer to belt the

Earth, revolved within the reach of her superior attractions. Finally,

by a super-serpentine effort, he stood straight up on the point of his

tail, flapping his fins and hissing out his admiration with a noise like

that of the Maelstrom. This accomplished his purpose. When she saw him

thus reared up, and looking down with such perpendicular enormity of

love, from an elevation of some hundred feet, the compliment was more

than she could bear. The omnipotence of her charms had turned the

equator to the pole; and, satisfied, she yielded. Then he, descending

from his height, led her to their nuptial bower, a neighboring cave,

nothing loath, but yet with coy, reluctant, amorous delay.[1]

Footnote 1:

The learned lecturer might here have cited, in support of the

truthfulness of this and one or two other passages, Mr. Darwin’s much

more impressive, as well as multitudinous, descriptions of what he

calls “the act of courtship,” in chapters xiii, and xviii., passim, of

“The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex.”

[Illustration]

The fruit of these nuptials appeared in due time. As might have been

expected, it was a mingling of the traits of the two parents—a gorilla

with a tail, which appendage had now been added to one of our race for

the first time by the operation of the great principle of sexual

selection. At first the tail was looked upon with suspicion, if not

aversion. The most respectable matrons of our race scoffed, and sniffed,

and turned up their noses at the little stranger. A gorilla with a tail!

And they were right; the serpent had indeed entered our Eden. But

Brunhilda was devoted to her married Siegfried, and produced at regular

intervals new tailed-gorillas; more, the demon of love, or of curiosity,

took possession of the young lady gorillas. They were fascinated by this

huge Adonis of the deep; and baby gorillas with tails began to come with

increasing frequency. The thing became the fashion; and what was at

first the fashion, was ere long confirmed by convenience. As the first

of this fallen race grew to adolescence, he not only flourished his tail

with captivating grace, but he used it in climbing trees; he swam with

it; he offered it as bait in the water, and came to shore with a crab or

a lobster attached to it, which he ate himself or carried to his mother

in triumph. And when at last, having taken to himself two wives, he hung

by his tail to the branch of a tree, and grasping a wife by each hind

foot, took a cocoa-nut in each hand, and broke them on the heads of the

two ladies, doubt and derision were alike abandoned; there went up a

howl of admiration, and he was declared to be fittest to survive in the

struggle for existence. After this he could have married every lady

gorilla in Africa; but there was no need of that. The generation of

gentlemen gorillas with tails came rapidly to maturity, and were as

rapidly-received into favor by the other sex. It became vulgar to have a

lover without a tail, and lady gorillas of any pretentions to social

distinction preferred to remain in a state of widowhood, or even of

vestal virginity, rather than accept a lover who was not decorated. This

went on until at last there were no gorillas without tails, except a few

old fogies who took great pains to parade their tailless backs, stroking

their sparse white whiskers, and talking of the good old times, when

they were young, and no proper young lady gorilla would have looked at a

Sea-serpent. But they were only laughed at for their pains.

[Illustration]

A few years, however, showed the justice of their censure, and the sad

consequences of Brunhilda’s indiscretion. A principle of normal

development was then illustrated in our hapless and fallen race with

direful results. The gorilla reaches maturity and full growth in a few

years, but the Sea-serpent in, I do not know how many. It may be

centuries. Science has not yet decided that interesting question. I am

of the opinion that the Sea-serpent is still growing; for each time that

he is seen he is larger than he was at his previous appearance. Be this

as it may, when the gorilla part of the new species which had thus been

formed reached maturity, it of course ceased to grow. Not so the

sea-serpentine appendage. That followed its normal law of development,

and kept on slowly growing.[2] At first this excited no apprehensions of

trouble, but even a little pride. At last, however, the new species

showed very little gorilla and a great deal of Sea-serpent, until at

last they came to be a tail with a gorilla. The tails grew, and grew,

and grew, until they wound and undulated off into the dim distance; and

it seemed at last as if a gorilla might be here; and the end of his

tail, if it had an end, vanish through far-stretching perspective into

infinite space. The tails, too, following their natural instincts, had

an irrepressible tendency toward the water, and while there they were so

remote that they were entirely beyond the control of their owners.

Lobsters clawed them, sharks snapped at them, and whales took offensive

liberties with them. On land the result was an inextricable

entanglement. At times the whole community would be tied up in one

indistinguishable knot, like the worms in a man’s bait-box. It was

proposed to cut off the tails with sharp flints or clam shells; and this

was tried; but the tail was so very large and the gorilla so very small

in proportion, that it was the gorilla that died, while the tail lived,

wriggled down to the shore, and swam off to sea. After two or three

experiments this plan was abandoned, as it must needs have been, or our

race would have become extinct. Next, it was decided that each

individual should gradually reduce the length of his tail by cutting it

off joint by joint. But the confusion produced by the inter-twisting was

so great that no one was quite sure of his own tail, and while he was

sleeping, or eating, or disporting himself in as lively a manner as was

possible in this gloomy condition of things, he was liable to feel a

joint of his tail cut off by some other individual half a mile away, or

perhaps sitting next him; and this might happen two or three times in

one day after he had himself amputated his daily joint so great was the

confusion. I blush to relate, too, that it destroyed the peace of many

families, and threatened to sap the morals of the community. To this

condition, my well-haired and tailless quadrumanous hearers, our race

was reduced by the wayward fancy and unnatural longing of one female.

Footnote 2:

See “The Descent of Man,” etc., chapter viii. on “The Laws of

Inheritance,” and “On the Relation of the Period of Development,” etc.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

* * * * *

In this deplorable condition of affairs, we were saved by the action of

the same great principle of sexual selection to which we owed our

degradation. By a female came our fall, and through a female came our

salvation. A gorilla maiden of tender years, and whose sea-serpentine

appendage was yet in its earliest stages of development, saw the time

approaching when she would be courted and perhaps claimed and taken by

some two-legged termination of an elongated sea-monster. She shrank from

the prospect and shuddered at her impending fate. She was a

strong-minded female, and she determined to free herself, and if

possible her race, from the dreadful consequences of the indiscretion of

her ancestress. Like that ancestress, she shunned the opposite sex,

withdrew from society, and gave herself up to solitary wanderings. The

problem which she had undertaken to solve was difficult; for then not

only gorillas, but all living things had tails. But when was female

ingenuity and perseverance ever baffled in regard to marriage! In that

matter, we of the stronger sex are mere puppets in the female hands. We

often think we have our own way, but it is chiefly by allowing us to

think so that our weaker charmers have theirs. Chance aided her as

chance so often does those who wait and watch with determined purpose.

One day, as she sat by the borders of a large lagoon, a huge pair of

nostrils appeared on the surface of the waters. They wheezed and snorted

for a few moments; and then an enormous head came forth, garnished with

little ears and huge, stony teeth. The head was followed by a still more

enormous body; but, oh joy! oh delight, and prospect full of hope! a

body to which there was appended the smallest conceivable of tails; in

fact, a tail which to her tail-wearied eyes was of inconceivable

smallness. It was a hippopotamus. In her turn she was charmed, was won

upon the instant. What happiness might be hoped for in a life with a

male creature having so gigantic a body and such an infinitesimally

little tail! What terminal transformation, what caudal beauty, might not

be looked for in the progeny of such a father! Her resolution was taken

on the instant. That hippopotamus should marry her. But the

accomplishment of her design proved to be far from easy. The

hippopotamus came up out of the water, and she supposed that he would

run directly to her. To her surprise, he took no notice of her, but

splashed along the sedgy margin of the great pool, thrusting his huge

snout into the mud and stirring up the bottom until he and the water

were alike befouled. She threw herself in his way and trod the shore

with dainty, mincing steps, her tail undulating after her in graceful

folds. To her disgust, he seemed unconscious of her presence. He lifted

his head, indeed, and gave her a lazy look of indifference, but turned

immediately again to his loafing through the mud and water. The

hippopotamus is not a lively animal, not of an inquiring mind, almost

without curiosity, and, I am grieved to say, utterly without sentiment.

What was to be done? She could not seize upon him and marry him out of

hand; or, if she could have done so, she would have been no nearer her

end. If she had been able to seize that vast, enchanting, and

exquisitely almost-tailless body, and carry it off with her to her

bower, of what use to her would have been the indifferent mass of flesh?

For strong minded as a female may be, and even strong bodied, the

unalterable decrees of nature have placed a limit to the efficiency of

her will, although not to that of her wiles. Our forecasting and

self-sacrificing ancestress might perhaps have stood guard over her male

favorite, keeping him well fed and contented within her solitary

seraglio; but she would have been thereby no nearer to her hopes of

dandling in her arms a new-born and almost tailless progeny.

She grasped the situation at a glance, and mastered it after a moment’s

reflection. With the readiness of her sex in such matters, she instantly

formed her resolution. Her female instinct taught her that, although a

hippopotamus might be without curiosity, without politeness, and even

without a disposition to gallantry, he could not be male and yet without

sexual vanity. As he would not fall in love with her, she decided to

make him believe that she was enamored of him; and, being female, she

also determined that, although she set out with the intention of

captivating him and yielding to him, she would make him pay well for his

indifference. She retreated to her former position, and sitting down on

the bank, remained there looking at her victim until he waded into deep

water and sank out of sight.

The next day, when he came out upon his haunt, she was there again, and

he could not but see that she watched him closely; and when, after

stirring up the mud and treading down the sedges (a proceeding which she

seemed to regard with the liveliest interest), he walked down into the

depths, as he was about disappearing he turned his head, and his last

glimpse of the upper world showed him the young lady gorilla gazing

pensively on his vanishing form. When she saw him turn his head she

smiled within herself; for she saw that she had put a hook into his

nostrils. Again and again he found her there, always gazing quietly at

him; and each day he lingered longer at his amphibious disporting.

[Illustration]

One day he came and she was not there; at least she was not visible;

but, concealed in a neighboring thicket, she watched the effect of her

absence. The hippopotamus arrived as usual, and looked for her at her

accustomed seat. Not seeing her, he came fully out upon the shore and

gazed around. He trotted heavily about, peering inquisitively from his

little eyes. He sniffed the air, but the wind blew from the shore, and

she remained undiscovered. Deprived of his audience, his performances

that day were brief and spiritless, and he soon sought the bottom of the

lagoon. The next day she was there, and he trotted directly up to her.

But she rose and walked shyly away, keeping her eyes softly bent upon

him. He approached quickly; but at once she fled away at a pace that

defied pursuit; for she was much the nimbler. At a convenient distance,

she paused and made eyes at him. Seeing that he could not overtake her,

he went back into the water. She returned to her post of observation,

when he began those performances which the Darwin says the male always

goes through to please and win the female. He bellowed and gnashed his

teeth, he rolled over and over in the mud and water, in the most

captivating manner. He went into deeper water and lashed about in it

until he made it boil like a pot. In vain; she sat immovable, although

she continued her pensive gaze; and when he again approached her she

fled, and this time actually vanished from his sight. The next day both

were there again, and he repeated his performance. Again she was

charmed, but still unyielding. In a frenzy of repressed hippopotamic

feeling, he approached her; and, could he believe his little eyes? she

did not flee. He wiggled his tiny tail with the rapidity of a Yankee

clock’s pendulum, all unconscious that he was thus attracting attention

to the greatest, although the least conspicuous, of his charms. All at

once, fired and stimulated by vanity and love, it occurred to him that

if he could and should exhibit himself in a position and with a movement

more like her own, he would be irresistible. He had observed that she

walked chiefly upon her hind legs; and he therefore determined to

approach her walking upon his. He heaved himself upward two or three

times with difficulty, and without success; for he was one of the heavy

fathers of his clumsy race. But at last he attained his end, and

approached her, walking in a ponderous imitation of her own graceful

gait. It was an awful and overpowering exertion. The great historian of

the fallen race of Darwin, one of them called Gibbon, did not have a

more trying task when he bent his hippopotamic figure, and knelt before

his beloved one, who was obliged to call her servants to help him up. He

was paid only with a peal of laughter; but our ponderous ancestor was

rewarded by seeing on the face of his charmer a pensive and delighted

smile. It roused him to an exertion almost incredible. Inflamed with

love, and his vanity tickled to the point of frenzy, he did what the

Darwin says all lovers do to win their loves, he danced. Moving slowly

and stiffly at first, he soon launched into a break-down that was a

marvel to all living creatures. With jaws wide open, and nostrils

distended, he thundered about the shore, flinging his forefeet into the

air with frantic and gigantic abandonment. If one of his hind legs stuck

deep in the soft margin of the pool, and interrupted his performance, it

was but for a moment; he drew it out with a suddenness and force that

made a report that startled all the birds within a mile, and plunged

again into his amorous saltation. It was the most tremendous _pas seul_

ever executed. At last he stopped, panting; and, plumping down upon his

knees, joined his fore-paws in supplication. Of course our ancestress

then yielded—so the Darwin says that no female can resist a dancing

lover—and in due time she was rewarded by the appearance of a little

gorilla with a tail so small as to be hardly visible.

The event stirred our community far more than if the bantling had been

born without a head. The mothers of newly-born gorillas, with the

old-fashioned tail, undertook at first to decry the peculiar feature of

the new-comer. But this effort, although natural, was in vain; and in

brief, the little tail now, like the great tail in earlier ages, became

the fashion, and carried all before it. The hippopotamus, although, I am

sorry to say, he was already married, and the father of a family, was

persuaded by other lady gorillas to illustrate the great principle of

sexual selection. Many other hippopotamuses were led astray, to the

great disturbance of the connubial depths of the lakes and rivers of

that region; and the result was that in the course of a generation or

two the great tails had disappeared, and the story of their origin came

to be regarded as an old wive’s fable.

* * * * *

For a very considerable time—I will not undertake to say how many

hundred thousand years; and in such matters a hundred thousand years or

so is a mere trifle—gorillas had little tails: now they have none. It

has been supposed by a predecessor of the Darwin that these tails were

worn off by being sat down upon, and so gradually disappeared at once

from the face of the earth and the back of the gorilla. I am not

prepared to say, at this stage of the inquiry into the theory of

development, that such an abatement of our caudal appendages was not

possible. But I deal here with facts, not with fancies; and, in fact,

such was not the manner of their disappearance; for, indeed, the tails

were so very small, and tucked themselves away so very closely and

comfortably when we sat down, that the friction necessary to their

abatement was never effectually established. It happened through another

manifestation of the principle of sexual selection, and in this wise.

[Illustration]

A lady gorilla—a young matron, who was generally believed to have her

husband very well in hand, partly from his devotion to her, but chiefly

through her selfish indifference to him, and who found herself for the

second time in that interesting situation which gives every female who

considers herself a lady the right to insist upon the gratification of

her slightest whim and most fanciful caprice—took a notion that she must

eat the soft parts of a very tender young crocodile. She thought that

the high musky flavor of such a tit-bit would be of great benefit to

her; and, indeed, she threatened that if it were not forthcoming she

would surely produce, not a gorilla, but a crocodile, or, at the very

least, a gorilla with scales and a long, thick tail. Her husband was a

great fisherman, and she sent him out to catch for her the much-desired

dainty. He fished all day with fisherman’s luck. He had many exciting

nibbles, and some very promising bites, but no baby crocodile. The

shades of night were falling fast, and he found that his bait was all

gone. He dreaded the scene that would ensue upon his appearance without

the object of his lady’s longings. What should he do? In his desperation

a bright thought occurred to him. There was his own tail. It was his

last chance, and the method was unheard of; but the emergency was great,

and he was willing to submit to almost any sacrifice, even that of

mutilation, rather than appear empty-handed before the mistress of his

affections and his household. He cut off his tail, put it on his

fish-bone hook as if he loved it (which he did), and made his last cast,

comforting himself as much as he could with the consciousness that, at

least, he could come before his longing lady, saying, “I have done what

I could,” and being able to show proof of his words. To his delight and

surprise, it proved a very killing bait. An infant crocodile, that had

just then gone out, in defiance of her mother’s commands, who had warned

her particularly against gorillas’ tails, saw this one sink slowly down

to her, twiddling invitingly through the twilit water. She thought that

she would eat one only this once, just to see how it tasted, and would

never do so again. She sprang at it, and was instantly drawn screaming

and wriggling out of the water, and the gorilla took her home

triumphantly to his expectant spouse, telling her of his sacrifice. Her

whim had changed; and the odor that she had so longed for filled her

with loathing. But the consciousness that the thing had cost her husband

his tail gave it a relish in what she called her heart, if not to her

palate, and she managed to eat a morsel.

The next day the remains of the disobedient crocodile child were

displayed in her cave, and she told to her gossips the story of the

tribute to her charms. She was filled with exultation, and they were

stung with envy. She took airs upon herself. She was a wife for whom her

husband would stop at no sacrifice, not even that of the appendage to

his seat of honor. This could not be borne. The other ladies felt

humiliated; and soon several of them were seized with a longing like to

hers for a baby crocodile, to be captured in the same manner. One

entrapped, or caught with any other bait, would not answer the purpose.

Why prolong the recital? The husbands yielded; the bait still proved

taking; and the pride of the ladies was fed, if not their appetites.

Soon it became an understood thing that any gorilla who was worthy the

name of husband and father would sacrifice his tail to provide

newly-born crocodiles for his wife; and ere long there was not a

masculine tail to be seen in the community. The natural consequences

ensued, as the Darwin has explained; and thus, by the operation of the

laws of development and of sexual selection, the gorilla became again a

tailless animal.

* * * * *

Through these vicissitudes, my esteemed quadrumanous hearers, our race

has passed in consequence of the weakness and the caprice of that lovely

and enchanting sex whose errors we are always so ready to forgive, in

consideration of their charms. [Here it was observed that the female

gorillas bridled and cast side glances at the males, and chattered in

low tones to each other. A few of the ugliest broke out into applause,

which was quickly frowned down by the leading matrons, and laughed at by

the beauties of the younger sort.] And now let me warn my young female

friends against that curse of their sex, the temptation to make low

marriages and to form disreputable connections with extravagant and

wheeling strangers. There is no surer way to destroy their peace of mind

and to ruin their prospects in life. [Here a hum of approval was heard

from the matrons, at which the younger belles giggled, tossed their

heads, and turned up their noses. One of them, a pert minx, evidently a

gorilla girl of the period, had the audacity to call out, “I say, old

buffer, how about that hippopotamus?” But the lecturer did not reply,

and went on with his subject.] This failing is not peculiar to the

females of our noble race. The Darwin tells us that it is found in the

dog family. But what might not be looked for in the habits of such low

people, who go about continually upon all fours, without raising

themselves occasionally as we do on their posterior extremities; who

have no thumbs on their hind feet, and who have tails, and not only have

them, but wag them, with delight in their possession. The Darwin says

that the females of the dog family (he gives them a name, I am sorry to

say, which would bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and which

therefore I shrink from uttering, and so I use another term that means

the same thing)—well, he tells us that the lady-dogs “are not always

prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of

low degree. If reared with a companion of vulgar appearance” [here the

lecturer drew himself up, passed one hand through his hair, and with the

other stroked his whiskers], “there often springs up between the pair a

devotion which no time can afterward subdue. The passion, for such it

really is, becomes of a more than romantic endurance.”[3] Could there be

a more effectual warning against the dangers of propinquity and the

folly of what simpletons call disinterested affection!

Footnote 3:

The Descent of Man. Chapter xvii.

Let me further illustrate this topic by the story of a beautiful

lady-dog, the elegant and high-bred Kaloolah. Worthy to bear the name of

that lovely and renowned princess, our Kaloolah lived in a country far

beyond the Great Waters. She was the daintiest and most delicate of her

sex. Born of the famous Blakkantan tribe, her coat was of jetty

brilliancy, soft and fine, and edged with the dark saffron border which

is the mark of the highest families of her race. Not one white hair

marred the jetty perfection of her exterior, to betray the indiscretion

of any of her ancestresses. Her body had the slenderness of a

greyhound’s, and her pretty pointed paws tapped the responsive ground

lightly as she ran. After she had attained nubile years she was sought

by many males of her own race; but her fastidiousness caused her to

reject them all, and the care of those under whose protection she had

been placed so seconded and supported her in her resolution, that it

seemed as if she would pass her life in the sweet serenity of virgin

solitude. [Here some slight hissing and giggling was heard from the

younger females, and a groan came from an ancient one, who was said to

have very unfavorable opinions of the taste of the whole male sex.] But,

alas! she was one day removed to a rural district in the hill-country

where her protectors made their dwelling. At that place was a dog, a

coarse, vulgar creature, rude, shaggy, unkempt, grisly, uncouth, a kind

of slave of the soil, who had been bought with the acres, and who was

never allowed to come within the house, hardly near it, but was driven

to find a fitting harborage in the stables and out-buildings. Yet after

a period—will it be believed?—such is the influence of propinquity, the

beautiful Kaloolah cast aside that maidenly reserve and fastidious

exclusiveness by which she had hitherto been distinguished, and shocked

her protectors by forming a _mésalliance_ with the Bear; for so the low

brute was fitly called. The consequence duly appeared in the form of a

miserable mongrel, a grisly, gaunt, lean-bodied, huge-pawed, awkward

creature, without either the high-bred elegance of its mother or the

rugged strength of its father, a shame to both its parents, an offence

to the household, and a living witness of the dreadful consequences of a

practical disregard of the great principle of sexual selection.

* * * * *

No other modification or development of our race has taken place, in the

direct line, than those of which I have told you. None other was

necessary. We at last returned to, and have since maintained, that

perfection of beauty in face and form which makes the gorilla the

paragon of animals, and which causes the few specimens of our effete

cousin, man, who venture within our haunts to come without their

females, being naturally unwilling to expose the partners of their beds

and their bosoms to the temptation of our superior attractions. [Here

the lecturer glanced aside at a knot of females in his audience, and

tried to look modest, but failed.] Even the Darwin, who boasts of his

descent from our noble race, would, shrink from such a test of his

principle of sexual selection. We, I confess, are not proud, and should

have no objection to such visitors, a generosity of feeling which he

himself has had the grace to acknowledge.[4]

Footnote 4:

See the passage in Latin in chapter i. of “The Descent of Man.”

One overture was made to a female of our race which, if it had been

accepted, might have resulted in a very great and striking modification

of our traits. The incident has a direct connection with the subject of

my lecture; for it was through this female, and partly in consequence of

this affair, that our family tree divided into two great branches, and

one of them degenerated into Man. It so happened, by one of those

deplorable freaks of nature from which no race, however noble, is

entirely free, that a male gorilla was born deformed. In his infancy he

was almost without hair, and the great thumb upon the hinder

extremities, to which chiefly we owe our proud distinction of being a

four-handed race, was a puny thing, useless except for walking; and, in

fact, of no more value than the big toe of some of the inferior animals.

As he grew up, a sparse coat of soft hair did appear upon his body; but

the deformed thumb of course never developed or changed; it only grew in

proportion to his growth, and remained a miserable toe. Yet, will it be

believed? certain of our young females, with the unaccountable caprice

of their sex, showed a hankering after this young fellow. They found

him, in their own phrase “so interesting!” “He was so different,” they

said, “from the old humdrum style of gorilla gentlemen.” They called him

elegant. Gorilla girls of the period, who might have commanded the

devoted service of individuals of the opposite sex much more worthy of

their attention, in fact, of individuals of mature age, and

distinguished position, well-haired, and with gigantic hind thumbs—[Here

the lecturer was observed to rub his coat well up, and to gradually

advance one of his hind feet on the stump on which he was

standing]—giddy creatures who might have won the favor of such persons

who abounded then, and who are—in fact—I may say—who are—sometimes—to be

found even now, actually preferred the society of this effeminate, this

more than effeminate creature. And yet, in the interests of science, I

must tell the exact truth; according to tradition, he was not quite a

weakling. He was nimble and strong, but it was in a different way from

that of the other males of his race. In his singularity was his charm.

He was also lazy, listless, and indifferent. He took no notice of the

fairer sex, even of those who were most devoted to him, and most open in

their admiration. He might have lived without lifting a finger; for they

delighted in nothing so much as in serving him. Making of the

peculiarity that was the very occasion of their admiration an excuse for

him and for themselves, they said, “Poor fellow! how can he be expected

to get his living with that soft coat, and with no hind thumbs?” And so

they ministered to him, each one hoping that she might be the one whom

he found essential to his happiness. He was often seen stretched upon

the grass, or lolling against a tree, with half a score of these

infatuated young creatures grouped around him, waiting upon him,

bringing him cocoanuts, endeavoring to win from him some special

acknowledgment of thankfulness—some mark of preference.

In vain did other males approach these besotted damsels. In vain did

they howl, and spring from tree to tree! In vain did they even dance

with an extravagance—a frenzy of strength and agility which had never

before been known in the annals of gorilla courtship, and which could be

surpassed only by few of the many similar scenes described by the

Darwin. It was as nothing compared with the listless languor of the

soft-coated, and hind-thumbless fellow.

But, in like manner, vain was the devotion of these silly young

creatures. No one of them found favor in his eyes. At last he sent

sorrow and despair into their souls by telling them in secret, one by

one, that although she was very good, and although to have cocoanuts,

and fruit, and water brought to him by such a nice waiter-girl was very

pleasant, and he was very much obliged, he thought it only fair, under

the circumstances, and considering her obvious expectations, to say that

he was not a marrying gorilla. In fact, he never could be fond of such

roughly-haired creatures as even she-gorillas were; and that, until he

found one whose coat was even softer and slighter than his own, he

should remain a bachelor. They heard his avowal in silent grief, each

one saying in her heart that his conditions were cruelly difficult to

comply with; in fact, as she turned the matter over in her mind—quite

im-pos-si-ble. And each one silently resolved that she would admit the

addresses of no other gentleman gorilla, let him dance before her never

so furiously; but all her life would remain the virgin widow of her

living love. Such, the Darwin tells, has been the determination of the

females of other races, dogs, guinea-hens, etc.[5]

Footnote 5:

See “The Descent of Man, etc.,” chapter xiv., _passim_; where,

however, the reader will find recorded multitudinous instances of

fickleness, faithlessness, and forgetfulness on the part of “widows;”

unfeminine forwardness, and even of downright “seduction” on the part

of matrons and even of maidens of the bird family.

Among this interesting—I must say interesting, although infatuated—group

of gorilla girls was one who took this determination more seriously to

heart than the others did. She gave herself up to loneliness and

melancholy musings. She left the delights of caves and woods and the

companionship they bring, and wandered forth upon the plains, level and

lonely, rockless, treeless, and dismal with sunlight. Her thought, day

and night, was, “How can I rid myself of this disgusting coat of coarse

hair? and if I could do so, should I find favor in his eyes?”

As she was one day near the edge of the great desert, musing on her

ever-present theme, she became gradually conscious that she was not

alone; then that a tall personage was in her presence; and then that a

great exhibition of fuss and feathers was going on before her. It was an

ostrich, one of the largest and most distinguished of his race. He had

seen her frequently come to this place, so unfrequented by her people,

and walk about it with slow and pensive air. What was her motive? What

could it be but one? Was not he there? There was nothing else there but

the sand and the sunlight; and yet she came almost daily. He drew the

same conclusion that the hippopotamus did, but without equal reason or

good fortune. Under the circumstances, however, and misled as he was,

what could he do but make himself agreeable to the lady, and pay some

attention to her? No he-creature with a spark of masculine spirit in him

could do less. So he began to strut up and down before her, and to

expand his wings and his tail. He ran violently about. He lifted up his

voice and squawked. He ate sand, and, burrowing in it with his huge bill

and finding the hoof and leg-bone of a horse that had died many years

before in the desert, he brought it triumphantly, and, laying it down at

her feet, ate it up before her eyes. Could anything be more

agreeable—any attention more flattering to the female heart? What, then,

must have been her gratification when after a few moments she saw him

again eat up one just like it? Deeming himself quite irresistible after

this last performance, he fluttered directly toward her. The family of

man has its stories and traditions, all of which have some foundation in

fact, but are much magnified or perverted or misunderstood. This story

of their ancestors they tell, transferring the heroine to their own

race, and making him a male swan called Jupiter, and her a kind of

female man called Leda. According to man, the swan was received with

open arms; but the gorilla girl fled from the ostrich. His intentions, I

have no doubt, were strictly honorable; while in the man story I regret

to say the Jupiter’s were not; but they were none the less unwelcome to

her. Mistaking her flight for the coquetry of her sex, he pursued; and

although love for another and consequent aversion to him lent her wings,

he had real wings, as well as long legs, and by the use of both he was

gaining on the object of his pursuit, when not far off she saw the

object of her affections. She sped toward him and flung herself panting

into his arms. He held her there for a moment, and then moved, partly by

gratitude for her many services, and partly by the feeling that,

although he did not want her himself, yet, as she had thought of him, no

one else should have her, he laid her lightly down, and with a club made

such a vigorous attack upon the ostrich that the latter soon turned and

fled back to his sand, his hen, and his horsehoofs.[6]

Footnote 6:

The learned lecturer here gives but a feeble imitation of a passage,

upon “the courtship of birds,” cited in “The Descent of Man,” etc.,

chapter xiv., of which, widely circulated as that popular work is, I

need here reproduce only the concluding part, if, indeed, even in the

interests of science, I could venture to give more:

—“elle refuse constamment ses caresses; les avances empressées, les

agaceries, les tournoiements, les tendres roncoulements, rien ne peut

lui plaire ni l’emouvoir; gonflee, boudeuse, blottie dans un coin de

sa prison, elle n’en sort que pour boir et manger, on pour repousser

avec une espèce de rage des caresses devenus trop pressantes.”

[Illustration]

Whether this incident in the history of our species is to be altogether

deplored, I do not feel competent to decide. True, the perfection of the

gorilla form and the purity of its traits were preserved. We remained at

the head of the animal creation, unequalled in our combination of beauty

and strength; but might we not by this profferred alliance have been

elevated? Might we not have hoped to add to all our other superiority

the beauty and the power of wings? Might we not have become as the

angels—nay, very angels ourselves? Might not we, instead of poor,

feeble, pusillanimous man, have furnished the traits which were to be

sublimed into the forms of archangels and ministering spirits? Might not

we have become seraphs and our children cherubs? Man has his Raphael, as

he has his Darwin, whose imagination framed from things actual things

impossible—winged men and pin-feathered man-children—creatures never

known on Earth or in Heaven. But the Darwin himself is my authority for

telling you that, if our kinswoman had yielded to her winged suitor, the

Raphael would have only needed to paint gorilla portraits. Think of the

change, the superiority, as well in beauty as in truthfulness, that

would have been made in his works if female caprice had not prevented

this application of the principle of sexual selection? This, however,

was not to be; and that it was not, is one of those mysterious

dispensations at which we must wonder, but to which we are taught that

we must thankfully submit.

[Illustration]

This affair, strange to say, had a direct influence in the development

of that singular and enfeebled variety of our species known as Man. Our

kinswoman was more set by it than ever before in her aversion to all

other suitors, and in her devotion to the one object of her love. The

momentary clasp of his arms, and his defence of her against another

suitor not only bound her to him more strongly than before, but seems to

have developed in her a strange faculty which never was known before in

any of our species, and which has never appeared in any other in the

direct line. Her solitary wanderings were now more limited in extent

than they were before this remarkable occurrence. Her experience of the

desert kept her within the line of sand which she sometimes approached,

but never passed again. Yet she continued to muse alone, and constantly

upon the one theme, her strong, thick coat of hair, now become odious to

her, and how it might be softened and diminished. Pining away in her

despair, she leaned one day against a tree, and remained there for a

long time wrapped in sad reverie. Coming to herself again, she was about

to continue her walk, when she found that she could not move away. Her

arm, from the shoulder to the elbow, stuck fast to the tree. It was a

gum-tree, and she had not seen that a broad stream of thick, half-dried

gum was on that part of the trunk against which she leaned. The hair on

the outside of her arm had been imbedded in the gum, which, drying as

she leaned, held her fast, a prisoner. She looked about for help. None

was near, not even that cold and cruel gorilla who had told her that he

could not love her. Nothing was left but to tear herself away by main

strength. Summoning all her fortitude and her force, she threw herself

forward and fell upon the ground with a scream that might have been

heard afar off, for she had torn out by the roots every hair that had

touched the tree.

For many days she suffered in her loneliness; but her pain passed

gradually away. But then came the depressing thought that she must now

be more repulsive than before, a mutilated creature, with a bare patch

on one arm, from the shoulder to the elbow. At first this was worse to

bear than the pain of the injury; but ere long she was led from despair

to hope by a strange way of thinking which man calls reason, which I

have mentioned before, and which I am happy to say is unknown to

gorillas; and the consequence of which, in this case, will cause you all

to sympathize with me in my felicitations. The thought that if the

object of her love longed for a female with a coat softer and finer and

sparser than his own, he might, as she said, therefore (but who of us

can tell what _therefore_ means?), possibly like one better yet who had

no hairy coat at all. And she thought, too, that as she had deprived

herself by accident of a small part of her coat, she might (using again

the unmeaning word) therefore get rid of the whole of it intentionally

by the same means. “At least,” she said, “I shall be in no worse

condition than I am now, as far as he is concerned, and what do I care

for the others? And if I die, there is but one gone that cares little to

remain.” She went to the tree. The gum had flowed again; and in like

manner, and with like pain as before, she bared her lower arm of hair.

Thus she went on, week after week, as she could endure the torment, and

find gum-trees in their flow, until at last she had bared her whole

body.

During this process she kept herself more secluded than ever, lest by

chance he to please whom she suffered should see her before her

sacrificial transformation was complete. She shuddered at the thought of

his catching her half made up, in a sort of grand fleshly deshabille.

Fortune favored her, and no one saw her until her whole body was as

smooth as the inside of her hand. Then she restrained her impatience,

and fed and nursed herself with a care she had not taken for many

months, that she might regain all the litheness and the grace that she

felt that she had lost. Even when she thought that she had gained all

this (but how little seemed the all!), she hesitated and kept shyly to

herself for many days—a foolish backwardness, of which I am sure no

young gorilla lady before me would be guilty! But at last, feeling that

nothing more was to be gained by delay, and that her fate might as well

be decided first as last, she sallied forth.

Fortune favored her again; for she soon saw at a short distance the

object of her search. At first she started to run to him; but hardly had

she taken a few steps when she hesitated, halted, and finally turned

away, overcome by a feeling entirely new to her. She had been for many

weeks preparing herself, through pain and care, to please this very male

gorilla, whom in former days she waited on and cooed to and coaxed,

without a thought except of the pleasure she had and the pleasure she

hoped for, although in vain. But now that she had some reason to hope

that she would find the favor that she longed for, she shrunk within

herself and feared to offer him that which it was her only desire in

life that he should want and take.

With that change in her mind that made her say “therefore,” there had

come another in her soul that made her say the still stranger words, “I

am ashamed.” And so she turned away from him whom she had set out to

find. But before she turned he had caught sight of her; and, struck by

such a strange object as an entirely smooth-skinned female of his race,

he immediately followed her. She fled, spurred on by her strange,

conflicting apprehensions—first, lest he should like her, next, lest he

should not. He gained upon her rapidly and soon came up with her, and

she sank upon the ground before him. He stood and looked at her, and she

saw that there was no recognition in his eyes; but there was something

else that repaid her for that loss—admiration; and presently he and her

heart began to dance together. He, the lazy, listless fellow of former

days, leaped and curvetted like a young antelope. He bounded his full

height into the air, he roared with that enchanting roar of his, he beat

his breast, he ran up to the top of an enormous tree, and came near

killing her by flinging himself down so close to her that had she not

swayed lightly aside, he would have dashed her to pieces. But never was

a female before in so precious a peril; and as he stood before her,

panting with exertion, she sidled up to him, and, laying her head upon

his shoulder, and taking his hands, she led them lightly and tenderly

over her soft, smooth limbs and body, that, all unknown to him, had

suffered such torment for his delight. After that, as men would say, she

was his’n and he was her’n. This is the kind of language that they call

poetical.

She did not tell him that she was the same old girl that had made love

to him before. That secret she kept very profoundly and deceitfully

hidden in her own bosom, until it was brought out by another incident

that has a direct bearing upon our subject. She was just about to bring

forth the first fruit of their happiness, and he was off gathering the

daintiest food that he could find for her, when she thoughtlessly

strolled near the edge of the sandy desert, and walked along it, musing

to herself and wondering if her child would be as handsome as its

father, when suddenly she looked up, and there, at a short distance from

her, stood the great ostrich who had before persecuted her with his

attentions. He darted toward her; and she, fleeing as rapidly toward her

cave as her condition would permit, was soon met again by the same

defender as before, who this time, after a brief contest, slew the

ostrich before her eyes. The effect of this shock was that that night

her child was born. It was the most remarkable birth in the history of

our race; yet not of our race, for it was not a gorilla that she

produced; and here began the new departure. It was a male child which,

to look forward a few years, had not the hind thumb of his mother but

the toe of his father, and had even less and finer hair than he, and

besides (a trait which his mother attributed to her critical encounter

with the ostrich), he walked constantly erect, and with straight legs,

like that large, feathered biped. Moreover, he inherited from his mother

those strange thoughts, “therefore” and “I am ashamed.”

Then, explaining her terror to the father of the child whose birth it

had hastened, she confessed to him, she was almost obliged to confess,

that she was the poor girl who had loved him so long, and whom he had

protected before against the too ardent courtship of the same suitor; he

could hardly believe his ears, and his curiosity was excited to know the

manner of her transformation. At first she refused to tell; but he asked

her again and again; and after some months had passed and she had

brought forth her second child—this time a girl, with a smooth body,

like herself, and without a hind thumb, like the father, and with the

straight, ostrich-way of walking, in a moment of female triumph at this

charming success of the principle of development, and of the greater

principle of sexual selection, she confessed to what artifice she owed

her hairless skin.

He was now naturally not with her so much as during the first months of

their union, and his behavior toward her was more placid and serene.

Every gorilla matron among my hearers must have had the same experience.

Pursuit must always be more or less eager; possession must always be

more or less quiet. And if any of my lady hearers have been dissatisfied

or disturbed by the manifestation of this inevitable and eternal

truth—[Here there was a movement among the females, and one rose and

shrieked out, “Disturbed! dissatisfied! To be sure we are. You’re all a

set of brutes. Sea-serpents, and hippopotamuses, and ostriches are

nothing to you!” The males just turned their heads with bland, pitying

smiles, and then gave their attention again to the lecturer, who

continued]—if, I say, they have been dissatisfied or disturbed by the

manifestation of this inevitable and eternal truth, to which the

relations of male and female are merely not an exception, they only show

that they expect that the operations of laws of nature will be suspended

for the gratification of their pride. During one of his absences, in the

still noon of a summer’s day, she heard a faint scream in the distance.

But, faint as it was, it seemed unlike those that are sometimes heard in

the forest solitudes, and yet like a sound she remembered to have heard

before, she could not recollect when or where. In the course of a few

weeks it was explained, when one day he appeared, accompanied by another

smooth-skinned gorilla girl, who she saw at once was one of those whose

love he had before despised, and who was now his wife. To be brief, he

found that of the ten who had devoted themselves to him, and who had

vowed to have no other love, only three had yielded to the courtship of

his rivals, and the remaining six he persuaded to qualify them selves

for his admiration, and the nuptials which they had so long and so

eagerly coveted. They all illustrated equally well with his first wife

the beautiful principles of development and sexual selection, and soon

he was surrounded with a large and growing family of smooth-skinned,

hind-thumbless, erectly-walking children, of whom the males chiefly

said, “therefore,” and the females, “I am ashamed.”

The appearance of this new family in the gorilla country caused a

profound sensation throughout our species. The tradition of the

sea-serpent alliance and its deplorable consequences were remembered and

discussed. The conservative feeling was fully aroused. A mass-meeting,

in the nature of a general _conseil de famille_, was held; and it was

finally decided that, to prevent confusion and the deterioration of the

race (for what consequences might not be apprehended from female fancy

for smooth-skinned, hind-thumbless lovers, who walked like ostriches!

what wide-spread disaster might not ensue upon the application of the

principle of sexual selection under these new circumstances!), that this

new family of non-descript creatures, who, whatever they might be, were

certainly not gorillas, should be driven from our borders. Whatever

might have been the wishes of the new family in this regard, they (most

of them being yet of tender years) could not resist such a determination

on the part of a whole tribe, and they submitted. The world was before

them where to choose; and they chose to go northward toward the borders

of the great sea. Ere long they were seen moving in that direction, the

father of the family lounging listlessly in his old way in advance, the

females following, carrying the provender and such of the children as

were too small to walk. And thus began the first migration. This was the

first step in the Fall of Man, which he, in one of those traditions of

which I spoke, has embodied and perverted into a tale which he calls,

and well calls, “The Expulsion from Paradise.”

* * * * *

One of the most ruinous steps in the descent of this new species, which

gradually deteriorated until it became Man and produced the Darwin, was

the living in what they call huts or houses, which, as you all know, are

a kind of small, movable cave, very hot and dry, and shut up against the

air. This, men like the Darwin say, became necessary to protect them

against the inclemency of the weather. There was no such necessity. On

the contrary, it is the use of this contrivance which has made the new

creature weak, unable to live naturally like his ancestor, the gorilla,

and obliged him to go on year after year, and generation after

generation, adding impediment to impediment, and incumbrance to

incumbrance, that he may supply artificial wants which grow upon him

year by year, till at last—the poor besotted creature! he deems that one

of his species happiest who has most possessions, that is, most occasion

of care and trouble. His hut he has at last deprived of the only good

quality it once possessed, its movableness (for it would be a nice thing

to be able to take your cave around with you when food becomes scarce,

instead of being obliged to go after the food and then return to the

cave); and, in his self-delusion, he now builds it of some heavy,

immovable material, and fills it so full of all kinds of gim-cracks that

his highest praise of one of these immovable caves is that it is filled

with all the modern inconveniences; and, to keep these in disorder, he

has a rapacious multitude of his own species whom he calls carpenters,

and masons, and painters, and plumbers. These sorts of man seem to have

come into his family through some operation of the law of sexual

selection with the bird family; for they are all dreaded because of

their bills; and of them all, I am told the plumber’s bill is at once

the most dreadful, and the most inscrutable in its origin.

As I have told you, the hut or house was not first used for protection

against cold and wet. It came in this wise. Many generations after the

first migration a female of the new family was born much lighter in

color than the original rich black tint of the species; and when she

grew up, she preserved this unpleasant peculiarity. But, strange to say,

she was liked by one of the largest and strongest of her species, who

took her for his third wife, and made much of her. She, observing that

things turned black in the sun, took a notion that unless she could be

protected against his rays she also would become black, and lose the

peculiar charm to which she owed her marriage to so desirable a husband,

and his very marked admiration and attention; and yet she could not bear

a cave; it was altogether too damp and gloomy, and, indeed, very

unbecoming to the complexion. She therefore insisted with much pouting

and sulkiness, including some secret slaps and pinches of the other

wives’ children, and alternate fits of temper and sickness that turned

the family topsy-turvy (the good old gorilla family discipline, ladies,

which permitted the use of a stick not larger than the husband’s hind

thumb having sadly deteriorated among these degenerate creatures), that

if her husband really loved her and cared anything to preserve the

beauty he professed so much to admire, he would make something that

would protect her skin against the sun.

After long cogitation he produced a wonderful structure. He took three

dry saplings, about one-half again taller than himself, and putting one

end of each in the ground, about his own length apart, he joined their

tops, and upon the outside of these he piled dried twigs and broad

leaves, leaving an opening in the front. To this he led his now radiant

beauty, and she took possession with great glee and greater pride. At

first she stayed in it all the time, night and day. She allowed no one

else but her husband to enter. The other wives affected great scorn of

her and her rubbish-hole, as they called it, which they would not go

near or seem to notice; but if their children came to peep in, she drove

them away with blows and sticks and stones. It was her delight to sit

just within the doorway, and nod with condescending affability to the

other females who came to see the great curiosity; and they came from

miles around.

Her pride, and the airs she took upon herself, set the whole female

community agog. She was a wife for whom the wonderful hut had been built

to preserve her complexion. She held up her nose in the air, as if the

earth and the other females on it were too mean for her to look upon. In

the course of a few days the first wife began to make things very

uncomfortable. [“Very proper of her,” screamed one of the matrons—an

exclamation which was followed by a hum of approval.] She spanked her

three children, of whom she had been very fond, on various pretexts; but

in her heart, the boys, because they were boys and looked like their

father, and the girl, because she was his favorite and looked like

herself. She took no notice of her husband, but passed him in glum

silence [“Served him right,” screamed another matron]; in this (mildly

continued the lecturer) showing the proverbial tact and wisdom of her

sex; for the only consequence was that he passed more time than ever at

the hut. At last, one evening, when he had brought her some very fine

fruit, she flung it down untasted, and went into a kind of convulsion.

She screamed, she chattered, she clenched her hands, and gnashed her

teeth, and flung herself upon the ground, kicking and tossing her arms

about. At first he was inclined to administer to her the remedy which

she had applied to the children; but, as he really loved her, he was

weak, and asked what was the matter. At first, there was no answer, only

more screams, more kicking, more flinging of the arms about. At last,

however, it came: “The matter? Her complexion was the matter!” (She was

as black as a crocodile’s back.) “How could he expect her not to have

fits, unprotected as she was from the sun? But what did _her_ complexion

matter? What did he care about that? Why did he not go to his other

wife? She could have a hut built for her, where she could sit and sneer

at every one else.” The consequence, ladies, you all know. She also had

her hut, in the door of which she sat with her nose in the air. And of

this the consequence was that the second wife’s complexion also needed

protection; and soon she too had her hut, and sat with her nose in the

air. Whereupon there was great commotion in the whole community. Was it

to be endured that that fellow’s wives should sit in huts and sniff?

Would a husband of any spirit, not to say a husband who cared anything

for his wives, endure that? There was an outbreak of complexion fever

among all the females. Such a thing as a complexion was never before

heard of; but now every female had one; and nothing would preserve it,

or save her from convulsions, but a hut for its protection. And it was

remarkable that the blacker the female the more sensitive she became on

this subject, and the more imperatively necessary it was that she should

be provided with shelter. And so, ere long, it came to pass that a hut

ceased to be any distinction whatever, and that, when all the females

got what they wanted, the chief value it was to have had in their eyes

was entirely gone, and it would only have been a mark of destitution to

be without one. The thing having become a necessity, and a matter of

course, the males, to save trouble, made huts large enough for all their

females; and as time went on they plastered the twigs and leaves with

clay. The males passed more and more time with their females in these

she contrivances, and became themselves, of course, more and more

effeminate. And thus it was that this new branch of our family became

more and more a house-dwelling species.

* * * * *

It is well known to you that some members of our kindred, although

degenerate family, man, live upon the water, and go about upon it in a

kind of cave with wings. Such folly is incomprehensible to a

thorough-bred and high-toned gorilla, who is eminently conservative, and

likes to stand upon a solid foundation; and how any people who are in

the slightest degree connected with us can seek, or endure, a life upon

that shifting and cruel element that is the proper habitation of fishes

and crocodiles and hippopotamuses, we cannot surmise, or could not, were

it not for our newly-acquired knowledge of the working of the principle

of sexual selection, that great newly-found key to all the mysteries of

life.

The first sailors were not gorillas, or their puny descendants, but

squirrels; and it was through the squirrel that the sailor element was

transposed into man’s nature. It happened many ages ago, at least as

many ages as had passed since the occurrence of the events which I have

narrated and explained, that a community of the new species dwelt on the

borders of a great lake. In search of food, or for other purposes, they

often had need to go from one side of the lake to the other, and they

were always obliged to go around, because they could not go across. It

was too far to swim, and there was no other way. But one day a female,

who had been obliged to carry her youngest child half around the shore

and back again two or three times, saw a squirrel shoving a large piece

of bark into the water. He had shaped the bark with his teeth, making

the sides even, and the ends somewhat pointed. It was about twice the

length of his own body, and that was nearly the height of this female;

for squirrels were then not the puny things they are in these degenerate

days. When he had launched his bark, he got upon it, settled himself

well in the middle, and then suddenly raised his tail. The wind blew

gently from shore, and wafted him out upon the water, and gradually

across it, he acting as mast, sail, rudder, crew, and passenger; and she

saw him disappear, a bounding speck upon the opposite side. At first she

wished that she, too, had a long, flat, bushy tail; but the traditions

of the dreadful tail-period of our common ancestors lingered with her

family, and she shrank from the thought. Then she thought that two or

three large palm-leaves would do as well as the tail, or better.

The next day she left her children in the hut, and, coming down to the

lake, she shaped a piece of bark, and, taking her place upon it, hoisted

two palm-leaves. The wind blew more briskly on this day than on the

other, and she was delighted at soon finding herself carried well out

upon the lake. But as she went on, and the breeze freshened, she was

surprised to find that her bark wobbled unpleasantly from side to side,

and even from end to end. The shores of the lake seemed alternately to

rise up into the heavens and to descend to the centre of the earth. She

was pitched forward and pitched backward. Ere long her surprise soon

took the form of disgust, and the seat of the disgust soon shifted from

her head to her stomach. The sensation was equally novel and awful. She

felt herself grow green about the mouth; and, female although she was,

she had no concern about this change in her appearance. Each hair on her

head seemed to shrink from its neighbor. She broke into a cold sweat.

Her limbs relaxed; and the palm-leaves went overboard. She wished that

she might die; and suddenly she thought she was dying, for the hearty

breakfast that she had eaten, to set her up for her voyage, was cast out

into the treacherous waters—an awful catastrophe! She gave herself up

for lost, and, without strength or will to cling to her bark, flung

herself along it, and hoped that the end would soon come. It did come,

but not as she expected that it would. Being no longer able to keep her

balance, she leaned too much on one side, just as a large wave struck

the bark upon the other, and she was upset into the water. The shock

revived her, and, being not yet very far from land, she was just able to

swim back to the shore whence she had started. Creeping up on the bank,

she sat a while musing in the sun, and then went meekly home.

Thinking over her adventure, she compared her performance with that of

the squirrel, and came to the conclusion that her race needed the

infusion of some new blood to fit them for the struggle for existence

upon the water-side, and—loathsome thought—upon the water. She threw

herself in the way of the squirrel, and, being a fascinating female,

soon brought him to that state of mind in which he felt that he could

not be happy without her, and of course that she could not be happy

without him. Indeed, she avowed her admiration for him openly, but told

him that his beauty had but one drawback—his tail. She could not endure

a gentleman with a tail. This confession cast a gloom upon their

intimacy; for his tail was his pride. But she was inexorable, and one

day he appeared tailless. After this she had two children, born, like

her others, tailless, but, unlike their elders, they showed an early

inclination to sail chips in puddles; and when they were well grown she

took them down to the lake-side with her husband. They immediately

fashioned a piece of bark, boarded it, set up the palm-leaf sails, and

flew across the water, untroubled by any of those dreadful symptoms from

which she had suffered. The head of the family gazed with wonder, which

he loudly expressed, that two of his children should perform such an

unprecedented feat; but she sat in silence, musing doubtless upon this

new triumph of the great principle of sexual selection, and thinking of

herself as the mother of all them that go down to the sea in ships, and

do their business upon the great waters. She had never mentioned her

intimacy with the squirrel, and soon afterward picked a quarrel with him

and cut his acquaintance as short as he had cut his tail.

[Illustration]

Denuded of their hair, deprived of their hind thumb, thinking

“therefore” and “I am ashamed,” provided with huts for the land, and the

ability, in at least one family, to manage a bark on the water, the new

species of gorilla now differed so widely from our own that their

degeneration became very rapid, and it required but a short period, only

a few hundred thousand years more, to make them sink into the depth of

manhood.

As time went by, however, there were other applications of the great

principle discovered by the Darwin, which have left some traces upon the

development of the new species. How otherwise could there be such a

multitude of men who have really the habits and traits of other animals?

Asses, for instance: how many men are but asses, with the outside which

they have inherited from their gorilla ancestors—a kind of mixture of

monkey and donkey which, I need not tell you, is never found in our

branch of the family. The very ears have not quite disappeared; for the

Darwin himself says that some men can move their ears, and that length

of the organ has only been diminished somewhat and turned down at the

top. Does not man recognize this, and often call his fellow-man an ass?

But who ever applied that term to a gorilla? And was one of our race, I

ask, ever designated as Old Hoss? But every man knows that some of his

fellow-men are geese, and vultures, and sharks, and foxes, and jackals?

Are there not pigeons among them? Yes, Darwin, pigeons whom they pluck

remorselessly. And is not the plucker frequently a jail-bird? Does not

every countryman of the Darwin believe that there is a lion in his

breast, the rousing of which would be followed by consequences so

dreadful, that of late years he allows him to sleep under the most

irritating provocations? And does not all this bear witness to various

and numberless applications of the principle of sexual selection during

past ages? Frankly, I cannot tell. It may be so, and it may not. The

wisest gorilla knows so little that what we call knowledge is often

merely the name we give to ignorance. And—

* * * * *

How much longer the speaker continued in this vein I cannot say. But as

the audience began to stir uneasily, and many of those in the back rows

went away, and even some of the more distinguished and self-possessed of

the females in the front got up, turned their backs on the lecturer,

and, followed by their attendant males, pushed their way out through the

crowd, I was sure that the lecture was within a sentence or two of its

end, and that if these persons had waited but a few minutes they might

have avoided slighting the speaker and disturbing their fellow-hearers.

At this stage of the reading, I, too, left the place suddenly, the

learned lecturer still speaking; but my motive was of a very different

kind. During the lecture I had noticed a large and portly middle-aged

gorilla look at me from time to time, and with increasing frequency.

Each time, too, the glance was kindlier, and at last was accompanied by

a nod, a beck, or a smile. What did this mean? I doubted; but for a

moment. I considered the subject of the lecture, so stimulating to the

female fancy, the experiences of the sex related in it, so fitted to

awaken the instinct of imitation in the female breast; I thought of

Darwin’s book, which I had read before I started for Africa, and I

remembered the dreadful words: “_et dignoscebat in turba, et advocat

voce, gestuque_,” just, too, as this portly old person was doing. It was

too plain: this middle-aged dame, entering into the spirit of the

lecture, had selected me. And now, being one of those that rose, she

approached me as rapidly as possible. The sweat started from every pore,

and, with double horror, I felt the hair on my body rise, reminding me,

as it did so, of what likeness there was between me and this infatuated

female. There was but one thing to do—to flee.

I got out of the throng as quickly as I could, and, glancing over my

shoulder, I saw that she was following. I plunged into the forest,

goaded by an indefinable terror. The thicket hampered me, but I pushed

on; twigs clung to me, thorns seized me; I tore myself away; but, alas!

I left my clothes. I was gradually stripped of my artificial covering,

and revealed to my pursuer in that state of nature which bore yet

further witness to our kindred. I turned my head again; she was gaining

on me rapidly. The jungle that impeded and bewildered me, offered little

or no restraint to her swift, practised steps. Observing this, I sought

an open glade, which I saw ahead of me, and took to that, hoping—as I

was now weighted only by my revolver, the leathern belt of which had

resisted the laceration which had removed all my other covering—that on

its even surface I might be at least the equal of my pursuer. In vain.

Glancing backward as I ran, I saw her steadily approaching, and always

nodding and beckoning with what seemed to me a loathsome leer. At last

she came so near that I heard her panting breath. In a moment she might

clasp me in her arms. I took the alternative, and turned to fight. My

revolver was a slight weapon against such a creature, but still it was

one of the largest bore; and, if it did not kill or disable my pursuer,

it would at least enrage, and I might thus hope that instead of being

embraced I would be disembowelled. As I faced her, she rose, and laying

her hands upon her breast, bellowed out her admiration. I took steady

aim across my left arm and fired. She sprang into the air, evidently

hit, and as she came down I fired again, with like effect, and she fell

to the ground.

[Illustration]

I gazed a moment at my prostrate and dying admirer; and seeing that she

was incapable of rising or doing me injury, I approached, with a certain

feeling of pity and remorse, to look at her closely. And then I found

that my terror, although justified, was entirely misplaced. I had

mistaken the sex of my pursuer: my enamored female was a male—an enraged

male, of course, and I was saved, not from marriage but from death. But

no; faint, and dying fast, he turned and held out his hand to me.

“Cousin, what made you run? Why did you hurt me so?” he said. I answered

with a feeling of shame that I hope never to have again: “Because I

thought you were a lady that wanted to marry me.” “Oh, no,” he said,

with feeble and interrupted breath, “I only thought you looked something

like a friend of ours who was here a few years ago; and I wanted to take

you to a place where there are some cocoa-nut trees and a fresh spring,

and we’d talk this matter over. And let me tell you something,” he said,

drawing my ear down near his lips. “Don’t go on supposing that every

female that may look at you pleasantly and seek your society has

selected you. Remember me kindly to Du Chaillu. Adieu!”

He died; and I walked slowly on, musing upon my adventure, a more

modest, if not a wiser man, and did not quicken my pace until I

remembered that I was charged with Livingstone’s message to Murchison.