_THIS SIMIAN WORLD_
_ONE_
Last Sunday, Potter took me out driving along upper Broadway, where
those long rows of tall new apartment houses were built a few years
ago. It was a mild afternoon and great crowds of people were out.
Sunday afternoon crowds. They were not going anywhere,--they were just
strolling up and down, staring at each other, and talking. There were
thousands and thousands of them.
"Awful, aren't they!" said Potter.
I didn't know what he meant. When he added, "Why, these crowds," I
turned and asked, "Why, what about them?" I wasn't sure whether he had
an idea or a headache.
"Other creatures don't do it," he replied, with a discouraged
expression. "Are any other beings ever found in such masses, but
vermin? Aimless, staring, vacant-minded,--look at them! I can get no
sense whatever of individual worth, or of value in men as a race, when
I see them like this. It makes one almost despair of civilization."
I thought this over for awhile, to get in touch with his attitude. I
myself feel differently at different times about us human-beings:
sometimes I get pretty indignant when we are attacked (for there is
altogether too much abuse of us by spectator philosophers) and yet at
other times I too feel like a spectator, an alien: but even then I had
never felt so alien or despairing as Potter. I cast about for the
probable cause of our difference. "Let's remember," I said, "it's a
simian civilization."
Potter was staring disgustedly at some vaudeville sign-boards.
"Yes," I said, "those for example are distinctively simian. Why should
you feel disappointment at something inevitable?" And I went on to
argue that it wasn't as though we were descended from eagles for
instance, instead of (broadly speaking) from ape-like or monkeyish
beings. Being of simian stock, we had simian traits. Our development
naturally bore the marks of our origin. If we had inherited our
dispositions from eagles we should have loathed vaudeville. But as
cousins of the Bandarlog, we loved it. What could you expect?
[Illustration: Descended from eagles]
_TWO_
If we had been made directly from clay, the way it says in the Bible,
and had therefore inherited no intermediate characteristics,--if a god,
or some principle of growth, had gone that way to work with us, he or
it might have molded us into much more splendid forms.
But considering our simian descent, it has done very well. The only
people who are disappointed in us are those who still believe that clay
story. Or who--unconsciously--still let it color their thinking.
* * * * *
There certainly seems to be a power at work in the world, by virtue of
which every living thing grows and develops. And it tends toward
splendor. Seeds become trees, and weak little nations grow great. But
the push or the force that is doing this, the yeast as it were, has to
work in and on certain definite kinds of material. Because this yeast
is in us, there may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting
mankind; but because of our line of descent there are also queer
limitations.
[Illustration: Strange forgotten dynasties]
_THREE_
In those distant invisible epochs before men existed, before even the
proud missing link strutted around through the woods (little realizing
how we his greatgrandsons would smile wryly at him, much as our own
descendants may shudder at us, ages hence) the various animals were
desperately competing for power. They couldn't or didn't live as
equals. Certain groups sought the headship.
Many strange forgotten dynasties rose, met defiance, and fell. In the
end it was our ancestors who won, and became simian kings, and
bequeathed a whole planet to us--and have never been thanked for it. No
monument has been raised to the memory of those first hairy conquerors;
yet had they not fought well and wisely in those far-off times, some
other race would have been masters, and kept us in cages, or shot us
for sport in the forests while they ruled the world.
* * * * *
So Potter and I, developing this train of thought, began to imagine we
had lived many ages ago, and somehow or other had alighted here from
some older planet. Familiar with the ways of evolution elsewhere in the
universe, we naturally should have wondered what course it would take
on this earth. "Even in this out-of-the-way corner of the Cosmos," we
might have reflected, "and on this tiny star, it may be of interest to
consider the trend of events." We should have tried to appraise the
different species as they wandered around, each with its own set of
good and bad characteristics. Which group, we'd have wondered, would
ever contrive to rule all the rest?
And how great a development could they attain to thereafter?
_FOUR_
If we had landed here after the great saurians had been swept from the
scene, we might first have considered the lemurs or apes. They had
hands. Aesthetically viewed, the poor simians were simply grotesque;
but travelers who knew other planets might have known what beauty may
spring from an uncouth beginning in this magic universe.
Still--those frowzy, unlovely hordes of apes and monkeys were so
completely lacking in signs of kingship; they were so flighty, too, in
their ways, and had so little purpose, and so much love for absurd and
idle chatter, that they would have struck us, we thought, as unlikely
material. Such traits, we should have reminded ourselves, persist. They
are not easily left behind, even after long stages; and they form a
terrible obstacle to all high advancement.
_FIVE_
The bees or the ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their
smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They
could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And
in these orderly insects there was obviously a capacity for labor, and
co-operative labor at that, which could carry them far. We all know
that they have a marked genius: great gifts of their own. In a
civilization of super-ants or bees, there would have been no problem of
the hungry unemployed, no poverty, no unstable government, no riots, no
strikes for short hours, no derision of eugenics, no thieves, perhaps
no crime at all.
Ants are good citizens: they place group interests first.
But they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant
doesn't have the vote, apparently: he just has his duties.
This quality may have something to do with their having group wars. The
egotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression, so the
egotism of the group is extremely ferocious and active. Is this one of
the reasons why ants fight so much? They go in for State Socialism,
yes, but they are not internationalists. And ants commit atrocities in
and after their battles that are--I wish I could truly say--inhuman.
But conversely, ants are absolutely unselfish within the community.
They are skilful. Ingenious. Their nests and buildings are relatively
larger than man's. The scientists speak of their paved streets, vaulted
halls, their hundreds of different domesticated animals, their pluck
and intelligence, their individual initiative, their chaste and
industrious lives. Darwin said the ant's brain was "one of the most
marvelous atoms in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of
man"--yes, of present-day man, who for thousands and thousands of years
has had so much more chance to develop his brain.... A thoughtful
observer would have weighed all these excellent qualities.
When we think of these creatures as little men (which is all wrong of
course) we see they have their faults. To our eyes they seem too
orderly, for instance. Repressively so. Their ways are more fixed than
those of the old Egyptians, and their industry is painful to think of,
it's hyper-Chinese. But we must remember this is a simian comment. The
instincts of the species that you and I belong to are of an opposite
kind; and that makes it hard for us to judge ants fairly.
But we and the ants are alike in one matter: the strong love of
property. And instead of merely struggling with Nature for it, they
also fight other ants. The custom of plunder seems to be a part of most
of their wars. This has gone on for ages among them, and continues
today. Raids, ferocious combats, and loot are part of an ant's regular
life. Ant reformers, if there were any, might lay this to their
property sense, and talk of abolishing property as a cure for the evil.
But that would not help for long unless they could abolish the love of
it.
Ants seem to care even more for property than we do ourselves. We men
are inclined to ease up a little when we have all we need. But it is
not so with ants: they can't bear to stop: they keep right on working.
This means that ants do not contemplate: they heed nothing outside of
their own little rounds. It is almost as though their fondness for
labor had closed fast their minds.
Conceivably they might have developed inquiring minds. But this would
have run against their strongest instincts. The ant is knowing and
wise; but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation. The worshipper of
energy is too physically energetic to see that he cannot explore
certain higher fields until he is still.
Even if such a race had somehow achieved self-consciousness and reason,
would they have been able therewith to rule their instincts, or to stop
work long enough to examine themselves, or the universe, or to dream of
any noble development? Probably not. Reason is seldom or never the
ruler: it is the servant of instinct. It would therefore have told the
ants that incessant toil was useful and good.
"Toil has brought you up from the ruck of things," Reason would have
plausibly said. "It's by virtue of feverish toil that you have become
what you are. Being endlessly industrious is the best road--for you--to
the heights." And, self-reassured, they would then have had orgies of
work; and thus, by devoted exertion, have blocked their advancement.
Work, and order and gain would have withered their souls.
_SIX_
Let us take the great cats. They are free from this talent for
slave-hood. Stately beasts like the lion have more independence of mind
than the ants,--and a self-respect, we may note, unknown to primates.
Or consider the leopards, with hearts that no tyrant could master. What
fearless and resolute leopard-men they could have fathered! How
magnificently such a civilization would have made its force tell!
A race of civilized beings descended from these great cats would have
been rich in hermits and solitary thinkers. The recluse would not have
been stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us simians. They would not
have been a credulous people, or easily religious. False prophets and
swindlers would have found few dupes. And what generals they would have
made! what consummate politicians!
Don't imagine them as a collection of tigers walking around on their
hind-legs. They would have only been like tigers in the sense that we
men are like monkeys. Their development in appearance and character
would have been quite transforming.
Instead of the small flat head of the tiger, they would have had clear
smooth brows; and those who were not bald would have had neatly parted
hair--perhaps striped.
Their mouths would have been smaller and more sensitive: their faces
most dignified. Where now they express chiefly savageness, they would
have expressed fire and grace.
They would have been courteous and suave. No vulgar crowding would have
occurred on the streets of their cities. No mobs. No ignominious
subway-jams.
Imagine a cultivated coterie of such men and women, at a ball, dancing.
How few of us humans are graceful. They would have all been Pavlovas.
* * * * *
Like ants and bees, the cat race is nervous. Their temperaments are
high-strung. They would never have become as poised or as placid
as--say--super-cows. Yet they would have had less insanity, probably,
than we. Monkeys' (and elephants') minds seem precariously balanced,
unstable. The great cats are saner. They are intense, they would have
needed sanitariums: but fewer asylums. And their asylums would have
been not for weak-minded souls, but for furies.
They would have been strong at slander. They would have been far more
violent than we, in their hates, and they would have had fewer
friendships. Yet they might not have been any poorer in real
friendships than we. The real friendships among men are so rare that
when they occur they are famous. Friends as loyal as Damon and Pythias
were, are exceptions. Good fellowship is common, but unchanging
affection is not. We like those who like us, as a rule, and dislike
those who don't. Most of our ties have no better footing than that; and
those who have many such ties are called warm-hearted.
* * * * *
The super-cat-men would have rated cleanliness higher. Some of us
primates have learned to keep ourselves clean, but it's no large
proportion; and even the cleanest of us see no grandeur in
soap-manufacturing, and we don't look to manicures and plumbers for
social prestige. A feline race would have honored such occupations. J.
de Courcy Tiger would have felt that nothing _but_ making soap, or
being a plumber, was compatible with a high social position; and the
rich Vera Pantherbilt would have deigned to dine only with manicures.
None but the lowest dregs of such a race would have been lawyers
spending their span of life on this mysterious earth studying the long
dusty records of dead and gone quarrels. We simians naturally admire a
profession full of wrangle and chatter. But that is a monkeyish way of
deciding disputes, not a feline.
We fight best in armies, gregariously, where the risk is reduced; but
we disapprove usually of murderers, and of almost all private combat.
With the great cats, it would have been just the other way round.
(Lions and leopards fight each other singly, not in bands, as do
monkeys.)
As a matter of fact, few of us delight in really serious fighting. We
do love to bicker; and we box and knock each other around, to exhibit
our strength; but few normal simians are keen about bloodshed and
killing; we do it in war only because of patriotism, revenge, duty,
glory. A feline civilization would have cared nothing for duty or
glory, but they would have taken a far higher pleasure in gore. If a
planet of super-cat-men could look down upon ours, they would not know
which to think was the most amazing: the way we tamely live, five
million or so in a city, with only a few police to keep us quiet, while
we commit only one or two murders a day, and hardly have a respectable
number of brawls; or the way great armies of us are trained to
fight,--not liking it much, and yet doing more killing in war-time and
shedding more blood than even the fiercest lion on his cruelest days.
Which would perplex a gentlemanly super-cat spectator the more, our
habits of wholesale slaughter in the field, or our spiritless making a
fetish of "order," at home?
* * * * *
It is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most for.
Super-cat-men would have been outraged, had their right of personal
combat been questioned. The simian submits with odd readiness to the
loss of this privilege. What outrages him is to make him stop wagging
his tongue. He becomes most excited and passionate about the right of
free speech, even going so far in his emotion as to declare it is
sacred.
He looks upon other creatures pityingly because they are dumb. If one
of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy. Even that
mere hesitation in speech, known as stammering, he deems a misfortune.
So precious to a simian is the privilege of making sounds with his
tongue, that when he wishes to punish severely those men he calls
criminals, he forbids them to chatter, and forces them by threats to be
silent. It is felt that this punishment is entirely too cruel however,
and that even the worst offenders should be allowed to talk part of
each day.
Whatever a simian does, there must always be some talking about it. He
can't even make peace without a kind of chatter called a peace
conference. Super-cats would not have had to "make" peace: they would
have just walked off and stopped fighting.
* * * * *
In a world of super-cat-men, I suppose there would have been fewer
sailors; and people would have cared less for seaside resorts, or for
swimming. Cats hate getting wet, so men descended from them might have
hated it. They would have felt that even going in wading was a sign of
great hardihood, and only the most daring young fellows, showing off,
would have done it.
Among them there would have been no anti-vivisection societies:
No Young Cats Christian Associations or Red Cross work:
No vegetarians:
No early closing laws:
Much more hunting and trapping:
No riding to hounds; that's pure simian. Just think how it would have
entranced the old-time monkeys to foresee such a game! A game where
they'd all prance off on captured horses, tearing pell-mell through the
woods in gay red coats, attended by yelping packs of servant-dogs. It
is excellent sport--but how cats would scorn to hunt in that way!
They would not have knighted explorers--they would have all been
explorers.
* * * * *
Imagine that you are strolling through a super-cat city at night. Over
yonder is the business quarter, its evening shops blazing with jewels.
The great stock-yards lie to the east where you hear those sad sounds:
that low mooing as of innumerable herds, waiting slaughter. Beyond lie
the silent aquariums and the crates of fresh mice. (They raise mice
instead of hens in the country, in Super-cat Land.) To the west is a
beautiful but weirdly bacchanalian park, with long groves of catnip,
where young super-cats have their fling, and where a few crazed catnip
addicts live on till they die, unable to break off their strangely
undignified orgies. And here where you stand is the sumptuous residence
district. Houses with spacious grounds everywhere: no densely-packed
buildings. The streets have been swept up--or lapped up--until they are
spotless. Not a scrap of paper is lying around anywhere: no rubbish, no
dust. Few of the pavements are left bare, as ours are, and those few
are polished: the rest have deep soft velvet carpets. No footfalls are
heard.
[Illustration: Punctilious, haughty, inflammable]
There are no lights in these streets, though these people are abroad
much at night. All you see are stars overhead and the glowing eyes of
cat ladies, of lithe silken ladies who pass you, or of stiff-whiskered
men. Beware of those men and the gleam of their split-pupiled stare.
They are haughty, punctilious, inflammable: self-absorbed too, however.
They will probably not even notice you; but if they do, you are lost.
They take offense in a flash, abhor strangers, despise hospitality, and
would think nothing of killing you or me on their way home to dinner.
Follow one of them. Enter this house. Ah what splendor! No servants,
though a few abject monkeys wait at the back-doors, and submissively
run little errands. But of course they are never let inside: they would
seem out of place. Gorgeous couches, rich colors, silken walls, an
oriental magnificence. In here is the ballroom. But wait: what is this
in the corner? A large triumphal statue--of a cat overcoming a dog. And
look at this dining-room, its exquisite appointments, its daintiness:
faucets for hot and cold milk in the pantry, and a gold bowl of cream.
Some one is entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous,
slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent
purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were _her_ lover, my
boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden,
how hostile, how ecstatic, how violent!
* * * * *
Think what the state of the arts would have been in such cities.
They would have had few comedies on their stage; no farces. Cats care
little for fun. In the circus, superlative acrobats. No clowns.
[Illustration: One of their poets]
In drama and singing they would have surpassed us probably. Even in the
stage of arrested development as mere animals, in which we see cats,
they wail with a passionate intensity at night in our yards. Imagine
how a Caruso descended from such beings would sing.
In literature they would not have begged for happy endings.
They would have been personally more self-assured than we, far freer of
cheap imitativeness of each other in manners and art, and hence more
original in art; more clearly aware of what they really desired, not
cringingly watchful of what was expected of them; less widely observant
perhaps, more deeply thoughtful.
Their artists would have produced less however, even though they felt
more. A super-cat artist would have valued the pictures he drew for
their effects on himself; he wouldn't have cared a rap whether anyone
else saw them or not. He would not have bothered, usually, to give any
form to his conceptions. Simply to have had the sensation would have
for him been enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it does not
content them to have a conception; they must wrestle with it until it
takes a form in which others can see it. They doom the artistic impulse
to toil with its nose to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed
in a book or a statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic
impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly
deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is
labor. With the cats, art is joy.
* * * * *
But the dominant characteristic of this fine race is cunning. And hence
I think it would have been through their craftiness, chiefly, that they
would have felt the impulse to study, and the wish to advance. Craft is
a cat's delight: craft they never can have too much of. So it would
have been from one triumph of cunning to another that they would have
marched. That would have been the greatest driving force of their
civilization.
This would have meant great progress in invention and science--or in
some fields of science, the economic for instance. But it would have
retarded them in others. Craft studies the world calculatingly, from
without, instead of understandingly from within. Especially would it
have cheapened the feline philosophies; for not simply how to know but
how to circumvent the universe would have been their desire. Mankind's
curiosity is disinterested; it seems purer by contrast. That is to say,
made as we are, it seems purer to us. What we call disinterested,
however, super-cats might call aimless. (Aimlessness is one of the
regular simian traits.)
I don't mean to be prejudiced in favor of the simian side. Curiosity
may be as debasing, I grant you, as craft. And craft might turn into
artifices of a kind which would be noble and fine. Just as the ignorant
and fitful curiosity of some little monkey is hardly to be compared to
the astronomer's magnificent search, so the craft and cunning we see in
our pussies would bear small relation to the high-minded planning of
some ruler of the race we are imagining.
And yet--craft _is_ self-defeating in the end. Transmute it into its
finest possible form, let it be as subtle and civilized as you please,
as yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets itself over
against the wholeness of things; its role is that of the part at war
with the whole. Milton's Lucifer had the mind of a fine super-cat.
That craft may defeat itself in the end, however, is not the real
point. That doesn't explain why the lions aren't ruling the planet. The
trouble is, it would defeat itself in the beginning. It would have too
bitterly stressed the struggle for existence. Conflict and struggle
make civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves make
civilizations. Mutual aid and support are needed for that. There the
felines are lacking. They do not co-operate well; they have small
group-devotion. Their lordliness, their strong self-regard, and their
coolness of heart, have somehow thwarted the chance of their racial
progress.
_SEVEN_
There are many other beasts that one might once have thought had a
chance.
Some, like horses and deer, were not bold enough; or were stupid, like
buffaloes.
Some had over-trustful characters, like the seals; or exploitable
characters, like cows, and chickens, and sheep. Such creatures sentence
themselves to be captives, by their lack of ambition.
Dogs? They have more spirit. But they have lost their chance of
kingship through worshipping us. The dog's finer qualities can't be
praised too warmly; there is a purity about his devotion which makes
mere men feel speechless: but with all love for dogs, one must grant
they are vassals, not rulers. They are too parasitic--the one willing
servant class of the world. And we have betrayed them by making
under-simians of them. We have taught them some of our own ways of
behaving, and frowned upon theirs. Loving us, they let us stop their
developing in tune with their natures; and they've patiently tried ever
since to adopt ways of ours. They have done it, too; but of course they
can't get far: it's not their own road. Dogs have more love than
integrity. They've been true to us, yes, but they haven't been true to
themselves.
Pigs? The pig is remarkably intelligent and brave,--but he's gross; and
grossness delays one's achievement, it takes so much time. The snake
too, though wise, has a way of eating himself into stupors. If
super-snake-men had had banquets they would have been too vast to
describe. Each little snake family could have eaten a herd of cattle at
Christmas.
Goats, then? Bears or turtles? Wolves, whales, crows? Each had brains
and pride, and would have been glad to rule the world if they could;
but each had their defects, and their weaknesses for such a position.
The elephant? Ah! Evolution has had its tragedies, hasn't it, as well
as its triumphs; and well should the elephant know it. He had the best
chance of all. Wiser even than the lion, or the wisest of apes, his
wisdom furthermore was benign where theirs was sinister. Consider his
dignity, his poise and skill. He was plastic, too. He had learned to
eat many foods and endure many climates. Once, some say, this race
explored the globe. Their bones are found everywhere, in South America
even; so the elephants' Columbus may have found some road here before
ours. They are cosmopolitans, these suave and well-bred beings. They
have rich emotional natures, long memories, loyalty; they are steady
and sure; and not narrow, not self-absorbed, for they seem interested
in everything. What was it then, that put them out of the race?
Could it have been a quite natural belief that they had already won?
And when they saw that they hadn't, and that the monkey-men were
getting ahead, were they too great-minded and decent to exterminate
their puny rivals?
It may have been their tolerance and patience that betrayed them. They
wait too long before they resent an imposition or insult. Just as ants
are too energetic and cats too shrewd for their own highest good, so
the elephants suffer from too much patience. Their exhibitions of it
may seem superb,--such power and such restraint, combined, are
noble,--but a quality carried to excess defeats itself. Kings who won't
lift their scepters must yield in the end; and, the worst of it is, to
upstarts who snatch at their crowns.
* * * * *
I fancy the elephants would have been gentler masters than we: more
live-and-let-live in allowing other species to stay here. Our way is to
kill good and bad, male and female and babies, till the few last
survivors lie hidden away from our guns. All species must surrender
unconditionally--those are our terms--and come and live in barns
alongside us; or on us, as parasites. The creatures that want to live a
life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless
we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are specially well
brought up shoot them for fun. Some might be our friends. We don't wish
it. We keep them all terrorized. When one of us conquering monkey-men
enters the woods, most animals that scent him slink away, or race off
in a panic. It is not that we have planned this deliberately: but they
know what we're like. Race by race they have been slaughtered. Soon all
will be gone. We give neither freedom nor life-room to those we defeat.
If we had been as strong as the elephants, we might have been kinder.
When great power comes naturally to people, it is used more urbanely.
We use it as parvenus do, because that's what we are. The elephant,
being born to it, is easy-going, confident, tolerant. He would have
been a more humane king.
* * * * *
A race descended from elephants would have had to build on a large
scale. Imagine a crowd of huge, wrinkled, slow-moving elephant-men
getting into a vast elephant omnibus.
And would they have ever tried airships?
The elephant is stupid when it comes to learning how to use tools. So
are all other species except our own. Isn't it strange? A tool, in the
most primitive sense, is any object, lying around, that can obviously
be used as an instrument for this or that purpose. Many creatures use
objects as _materials_, as birds use twigs for nests. But the step that
no animal takes is learning freely to use things as instruments. When
an elephant plucks off a branch and swishes his flanks, and thus keeps
away insects, he is using a tool. But he does it only by a vague and
haphazard association of ideas. If he once became a conscious user of
tools he would of course go much further.
We ourselves, who are so good at it now, were slow enough in beginning.
Think of the long epochs that passed before it entered our heads.
And all that while the contest for leadership blindly went on, without
any species making use of this obvious aid. The lesson to be learned
was simple: the reward was the rule of a planet. Yet only one species,
our own, has ever had that much brains.
It makes you wonder what other obvious lessons may still be unlearned.
* * * * *
It is not necessarily stupid however, to fail to use tools. To use
tools involves using reason, instead of sticking to instinct. Now,
sticking to instinct has its disadvantages, but so has using reason.
Whichever faculty you use, the other atrophies, and partly deserts you.
We are trying to use both. But we still don't know which has the more
value.
* * * * *
A sudden vision comes to me of one of the first far-away ape-men who
tried to use reason instead of instinct as a guide for his conduct. I
imagine him, perched in his tree, torn between those two voices,
wailing loudly at night by a river, in his puzzled distress.
My poor far-off brother!
[Illustration: The First Thinker.]
_EIGHT_
We have been considering which species was on the whole most finely
equipped to be rulers, and thereafter achieve a high civilization; but
that wasn't the problem. The real problem was which would _do_
it:--a different matter.
To do it there was need of a species that had at least these two
qualities: some quenchless desire, to urge them on and on; and also
adaptability of a thousand kinds to their environment.
The rhinoceros cares little for adaptability. He slogs through the
world. But we! we are experts. Adaptability is what we depend on. We
talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is
we respectfully adapt ourselves first, to her ways. "We attain no power
over nature till we learn natural laws, and our lordship depends on the
adroitness with which we learn and conform."
Adroitness however is merely an ability to win; back of it there must
be some spur to make us use our adroitness. Why don't we all die or
give up when we're sick of the world? Because the love of life is
reenforced, in most energized beings, by some longing that pushes them
forward, in defeat and in darkness. All creatures wish to live, and to
perpetuate their species, of course; but those two wishes alone
evidently do not carry any race far. In addition to these, a race, to
be great, needs some hunger, some itch, to spur it up the hard path we
lately have learned to call evolution. The love of toil in the ants,
and of craft in cats, are examples (imaginary or not). What other such
lust could exert great driving force?
With us is it curiosity? endless interest in one's environment?
Many animals have some curiosity, but "some" is not enough; and in but
few is it one of the master passions. By a master passion, I mean a
passion that is really your master: some appetite which habitually, day
in, day out, makes its subjects forget fatigue or danger, and sacrifice
their ease to its gratification. That is the kind of hold that
curiosity has on the monkeys.
_NINE_
Imagine a prehistoric prophet observing these beings, and forecasting
what kind of civilizations their descendants would build. Anyone could
have foreseen certain parts of the simians' history: could have guessed
that their curiosity would unlock for them, one by one, nature's doors,
and--idly--bestow on them stray bits of valuable knowledge: could have
pictured them spreading inquiringly all over the globe, stumbling on
their inventions--and idly passing on and forgetting them.
To have to learn the same thing over and over again wastes the time of
a race. But this is continually necessary, with simians, because of
their disorder. "Disorder," a prophet would have sighed: "that is one
of their handicaps; one that they will never get rid of, whatever it
costs. Having so much curiosity makes a race scatter-brained.
"Yes," he would have dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture:
these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is
plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in
after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How
incredible it would seem on other planets to hear of lost arts.
"There is a strong streak of triviality in them, which you don't see in
cats. They won't have fine enough characters to concentrate on the
things of most weight. They will talk and think far more of trifles
than of what is important. Even when they are reasonably civilized,
this will be so. Great discoveries sometimes will fail to be heard of,
because too much else is; and many will thus disappear, and these men
will not know it."[1]
[1] We did rescue Mendel's from the dust heap; but perhaps it was
an exception.
* * * * *
Let me interrupt this lament to say a word for myself and my ancestors.
It is easy to blame us as undiscriminating, but we are at least full of
zest. And it's well to be interested, eagerly and intensely, in so many
things, because there is often no knowing which may turn out important.
We don't go around being interested on purpose, hoping to profit by it,
but a profit may come. And anyway it is generous of us not to be too
self-absorbed. Other creatures go to the other extreme to an amazing
extent. They are ridiculously oblivious to what is going on. The
smallest ant in the garden will ignore the largest woman who visits it.
She is a huge and most dangerous super-mammoth in relation to him, and
her tread shakes the earth; but he has no time to be bothered,
investigating such-like phenomena. He won't even get out of her way. He
has his work to do, hang it.
Birds and squirrels have less of this glorious independence of spirit.
They watch you closely--if you move around. But not if you keep still.
In other words, they pay no more attention than they can help, even to
mammoths.
We of course observe everything, or try to. We could spend our lives
looking on. Consider our museums for instance: they are a sign of our
breed. It makes us smile to see birds, like the magpie, with a mania
for this collecting--but only monkeyish beings could reverence museums
as we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and quantities in them.
Old furniture, egg-shells, watches, bits of stone.... And next door, a
"menagerie." Though our victory over all other animals is now aeons
old, we still bring home captives and exhibit them caged in our cities.
And when a species dies out--or is crowded (by us) off the planet--we
even collect the bones of the vanquished and show them like trophies.
* * * * *
Curiosity is a valuable trait. It will make the simians learn many
things. But the curiosity of a simian is as excessive as the toil of an
ant. Each simian will wish to know more than his head can hold, let
alone ever deal with; and those whose minds are active will wish to
know everything going. It would stretch a god's skull to accomplish
such an ambition, yet simians won't like to think it's beyond their
powers. Even small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how thrifty, will be
eager to buy costly encyclopedias, or books of all knowledge. Almost
every simian family, even the dullest, will think it is due to
themselves to keep all knowledge handy.
Their idea of a liberal education will therefore be a great
hodge-podge; and he who narrows his field and digs deep will be viewed
as an alien. If more than one man in a hundred should thus dare to
concentrate, the ruinous effects of being a specialist will be sadly
discussed. It may make a man exceptionally useful, they will have to
admit; but still they will feel badly, and fear that civilization will
suffer.
* * * * *
One of their curious educational ideas--but a natural one--will be
shown in the efforts they will make to learn more than one "language."
They will set their young to spending a decade or more of their lives
in studying duplicate systems--whole systems--of chatter. Those who
thus learn several different ways to say the same things, will command
much respect, and those who learn many will be looked on with awe--by
true simians. And persons without this accomplishment will be looked
down on a little, and will actually feel quite apologetic about it
themselves.
Consider how enormously complicated a complete language must be, with
its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the
many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs;
the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and
inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![2]
Where another race, after the most frightful discord and pains, might
have slowly constructed _one_ language before this earth grew cold,
this race will create literally hundreds, each complete in itself, and
many of them with quaint little systems of writing attached. And the
owners of this linguistic gift are so humble about it, they will marvel
at bees, for their hives, and at beavers' mere dams.
[2] You remember what Kipling says in the Jungle Books, about how
disgusted the quiet animals were with the Bandarlog, because they
were eternally chattering, would never keep still. Well, this is
the good side of it.
* * * * *
To return, however, to their fear of being too narrow, in going to the
other extreme they will run to incredible lengths. Every civilized
simian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever older facts he
has picked up, will wish to know all the news of all the world. If he
felt any true concern to know it, this would be rather fine of him: it
would imply such a close solidarity on the part of this genus. (Such a
close solidarity would seem crushing, to others; but that is another
matter.) It won't be true concern, however, it will be merely a blind
inherited instinct. He'll forget what he's read, the very next hour, or
moment. Yet there he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature,
reading of bombs in Spain or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting
on all the news he can get of the kind our race loved when they
scampered and fought in the forest, news that will stir his most
primitive simian feelings,--wars, accidents, love affairs, and family
quarrels.
To feed himself with this largely purposeless provender, he will pay
thousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night; and
they will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother or
obscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets will be
read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this lazy race
will not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't like to eat in
the morning without their papers, such slaves they will be to this
droll greed for knowing. They won't even think it is droll, it is so in
their blood.
Their swollen desire for investigating everything about them, including
especially other people's affairs, will be quenchless. Few will feel
that they really are "fully informed"; and all will give much of each
day all their lives to the news.
Books too will be used to slake this unappeasable thirst. They will
actually hold books in deep reverence. Books! Bottled chatter! things
that some other simian has formerly said. They will dress them in
costly bindings, keep them under glass, and take an affecting pride in
the number they read. Libraries,--store-houses of books,--will dot
their world. The destruction of one will be a crime against
civilization. (Meaning, again, a simian civilization.) Well, it is an
offense to be sure--a barbaric offense. But so is defacing forever a
beautiful landscape; and they won't even notice that sometimes; they
won't shudder anyway, the way they instinctively do at the loss of a
"library."
* * * * *
All this is inevitable and natural, and they cannot help it. There even
are ways one can justify excesses like this. If their hunger for books
ever seems indiscriminate to them when they themselves stop to examine
it, they will have their excuses. They will argue that some bits of
knowledge they once had thought futile, had later on come in most
handy, in unthought of ways. True enough! For their scientists. But not
for their average men: they will simply be like obstinate housekeepers
who clog up their homes, preserving odd boxes and wrappings, and stray
lengths of string, to exult if but one is of some trifling use ere they
die. It will be in this spirit that simians will cherish their books,
and pile them up everywhere into great indiscriminate mounds; and these
mounds will seem signs of culture and sagacity to them.
Those who know many facts will feel wise! They will despise those who
don't. They will even believe, many of them, that knowledge is power.
Unfortunate dupes of this saying will keep on reading, ambitiously,
till they have stunned their native initiative, and made their thoughts
weak; and will then wonder dazedly what in the world is the matter, and
why the great power they were expecting to gain fails to appear. Again,
if they ever forget what they read, they'll be worried. Those who _can_
forget--those with fresh eyes who have swept from their minds such
facts as the exact month and day that their children were born, or the
numbers on houses, or the names (the mere meaningless labels) of the
people they meet,--will be urged to go live in sanitariums or see
memory doctors!
* * * * *
By nature their itch is rather for knowing, than for understanding or
thinking. Some of them will learn to think, doubtless, and even to
concentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those accomplishments will
not be strong or insistent. Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity
will enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than the pausing at
times to reflect on those facts. If they do not reflect on them, of
course they'll be slow to find out about the ideas and relationships
lying behind them; and they will be curious about those ideas; so you
would suppose they'd reflect. But deep thinking is painful. It means
they must channel the spready rivers of their attention. That cannot be
done without discipline and drills for the mind; and they will abhor
doing that; their minds will work better when they are left free to run
off at tangents.
Compare them in this with other species. Each has its own kind of
strength. To be compelled to be so quick-minded as the simians would be
torture, to cows. Cows could dwell on one idea, week by week, without
trying at all; but they'd all have brain-fever in an hour at a simian
tea. A super-cow people would revel in long thoughtful books on
abstruse philosophical subjects, and would sit up late reading them.
Most of the ambitious simians who try it--out of pride--go to sleep.
The typical simian brain is supremely distractable, and it's really too
jumpy by nature to endure much reflection.
Therefore many more of them will be well-informed than sagacious.
This will result in their knowing most things far too soon, at too
early a stage of civilization to use them aright. They will learn to
make valuable explosives at a stage in their growth, when they will use
them not only in industries, but for killing brave men. They will
devise ways to mine coal efficiently, in enormous amounts, at a stage
when they won't know enough to conserve it, and will waste their few
stores. They will use up a lot of it in a simian habit[3] called
travel. This will consist in queer little hurried runs over the globe,
to see ten thousand things in the hope of thus filling their minds.
[3] Even in a wild state, the monkey is restless and does not
live in lairs.
Their minds will be full enough. Their intelligence will be active and
keen. It will have a constant tendency however to outstrip their
wisdom. Their intelligence will enable them to build great industrial
systems before they have the wisdom and goodness to run them aright.
They will form greater political empires than they will have strength
to guide. They will endlessly quarrel about which is the best scheme of
government, without stopping to realize that learning to govern comes
first. (The average simian will imagine he knows without learning.)
The natural result will be industrial and political wars. In a world of
unmanageable structures, wild smashes must come.
_TEN_
Inventions will come so easily to simians (in comparison with all other
creatures) and they will take such childish pleasure in monkeying
around, making inventions, that their many devices will be more of a
care than a comfort. In their homes a large part of their time will
have to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities in good working
order--their elaborate bell-ringing arrangements, their locks and their
clocks. In the field of science to be sure, this fertility in invention
will lead to a long list of important and beautiful discoveries:
telescopes and the calculus, radiographs, and the spectrum. Discoveries
great enough, almost, to make angels of them. But here again their
simian-ness will cheat them of half of their dues, for they will
neglect great discoveries of the truest importance, and honor
extravagantly those of less value and splendor if only they cater
especially to simian traits.
To consider examples: A discovery that helps them to talk, just to
talk, more and more, will be hailed by these beings as one of the
highest of triumphs. Talking to each other over wires will come in this
class. The lightning when harnessed and tamed will be made to trot
round, conveying the most trivial cacklings all day and night.
Huge seas of talk of every sort and kind, in print, speech, and
writing, will roll unceasingly over their civilized realms, involving
an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence
talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will
be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go
inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter for
hours. Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet very few
subjects will be counted important enough for the average man to do any
_thinking_ on them, off by himself.
In their futurist books they will dream of an even worse state, a more
dreadful indulgence in communication than the one just described. This
they'll hope to achieve by a system called mental telepathy. They will
long to communicate wordlessly, mind impinging on mind, until all their
minds are awash with messages every moment, and withdrawal from the
stream is impossible anywhere on earth. This will foster the
brotherhood of man. (Conglomerateness being their ideal.) Super-cats
would have invented more barriers instead of more channels.
Discoveries in surgery and medicine will also be over-praised. The
reason will be that the race will so need these discoveries. Unlike the
great cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Having less
self-respect, less proper regard for their egos, they care less than
the cats do for the casing of the ego,--the body. The more civilized
they grow the more they will let their bodies deteriorate. They will
let their shoulders stoop, their lungs shrink, and their stomachs grow
fat. No other species will be quite so deformed and distorted.
Athletics they will watch, yes, but on the whole sparingly practise.
Their snuffy old scholars will even be proud to decry them. Where once
the simians swung high through forests, or scampered like deer, their
descendants will plod around farms, or mince along city streets, moving
constrictedly, slowly, their litheness half gone.
They will think of Nature as "something to go out and look at." They
will try to live wholly apart from her and forget they're her sons.
Forget? They will even deny it, and declare themselves sons of God. In
spite of her wonders they will regard Nature as somehow too humble to
be the true parent of such prominent people as simians. They will lose
all respect for the dignity of fair Mother Earth, and whisper to each
other she is an evil and indecent old person. They will snatch at her
gifts, pry irreverently into her mysteries, and ignore half the
warnings they get from her about how to live.
Ailments of every kind will abound among such folk, inevitably, and
they will resort to extraordinary expedients in their search for
relief. Although squeamish as a race about inflicting much pain in cold
blood, they will systematically infect other animals with their own
rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and dissect
them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves.
Conditions among them will be such that this will really be necessary.
Few besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore oppose it. But
the idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a trick, instead of
by taking the trouble to live healthy lives.
Strange barrack-like buildings called hospitals will stand in their
cities, where their trick-men, the surgeons, will slice them right open
when ill; and thousands of zealous young pharmacists will mix little
drugs, which thousands of wise-looking simians will firmly prescribe.
Each generation will change its mind as to these drugs, and laugh at
all former opinions; but each will use some of them, and each will feel
assured that in this respect they know the last word.
And, in obstinate blindness, this people will wag their poor heads, and
attribute their diseases not to simian-ness but to civilization.
The advantages that any man or race has, can sometimes be handicaps.
Having hands, which so aids a race, for instance, can also be harmful.
The simians will do so many things with their hands, it will be bad for
their bodies. Instead of roaming far and wide over the country, getting
vigorous exercise, they will use their hands to catch and tame horses,
build carriages, motors, and then when they want a good outing they
will "go for a ride," with their bodies slumped down, limp and
sluggish, and losing their spring.
Then too their brains will do harm, and great harm, to their bodies.
The brain will give them such an advantage over all other animals that
they will insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it too free
a rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating. This organ, this
outgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active, and its many
fears and fancies will naturally injure the body. The interadjustment
is delicate and intimate, the strain is continuous. When the brain
fails to act with the body, or, worse, works against it, the body will
sicken no matter what cures doctors try.
As in bodily self-respect, so in racial self-respect, they'll be
wanting. They will have plenty of racial pride and prejudice, but that
is not the same thing. That will make them angry when simians of one
color mate with those of another. But a general deterioration in
physique will cause much less excitement.
They will _talk_ about improving the race--they will talk about
everything--but they won't use their chances to _do_ it. Whenever a new
discovery makes life less hard, for example, these heedless beings will
seldom preserve this advantage, or use their new wealth to take more
time thereafter for thought, or to gain health and strength or do
anything else to make the race better. Instead, they will use the new
ease just to increase in numbers; and they will keep on at this until
misery once more has checked them. Life will then be as hard as ever,
naturally, and the chance will be gone.
They will have a proverb, "The poor ye have always with you,"--said by
one who knew simians.
Their ingenious minds will have an answer to this. They will argue it
is well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the discipline
and its strengthening effects on the character. But the good effects of
this sort of discipline will be mixed with sad wreckage. And only
creatures incapable of disciplining themselves could thus argue. It is
an odd expedient to get yourself into trouble just for discipline's
sake.
The fact is, however, the argument won't be sincere. When their nations
grow so over-populous and their families so large it means misery, that
will not be a sign of their having felt ready for discipline. It will
be a sign of their not having practised it in their sexual lives.
_ELEVEN_
The simians are always being stirred by desire and passion. It
constantly excites them, constantly runs through their minds. Wild or
tame, primitive or cultured, this is a brand of the breed. Other
species have times and seasons for sexual matters, but the simian-folk
are thus preoccupied all the year round.
This super-abundance of desire is not necessarily good or bad, of
itself. But to shape it for the best it will have to be studied--and
faced. This they will not do. Some of them won't like to study it,
deeming it bad--deeming it bad yet yielding constantly to it. Others
will hesitate because they will deem it so sacred, or will secretly
fear that study might show them it ought to be curbed.
Meantime, this part of their nature will be coloring all their
activities. It will beautify their arts, and erotically confuse their
religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social
functions. It will keep alive degrading social evils in all their great
towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be
corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at
self-government. Self-government works best among those who have
learned to self-govern.
* * * * *
In the far distant ages that lie before us what will be the result of
this constant preoccupation with desire? Will it kill us or save us?
Will this trait and our insatiable curiosity interact on each other?
That might further eugenics. That might give us a better chance to
breed finely than all other species.
* * * * *
We already owe a great deal to passion: more than men ever realize.
Wasn't it Darwin who once even risked the conjecture that the vocal
organs themselves were developed for sexual purposes, the object being
to call or charm one's mate. Hence--perhaps--only animals that were
continuously concerned with their matings would be at all likely to
form an elaborate language. And without an elaborate language, growth
is apt to be slow.
If we owe this to passion, what follows? Does it mean, for example,
that the more different mates that each simian once learned to charm,
the more rapidly language, and with it civilization, advanced?
_TWELVE_
A doctor, who was making a study of monkeys, once told me that he was
trying experiments that bore on the polygamy question. He had a young
monkey named Jack who had mated with a female named Jill; and in
another cage another newly-wedded pair, Arabella and Archer. Each pair
seemed absorbed in each other, and devoted and happy. They even hugged
each other at mealtime and exchanged bits of food.
After a time their transports grew less fiery, and their affections
less fixed. Archer got a bit bored. He was decent about it, though, and
when Arabella cuddled beside him he would more or less perfunctorily
embrace her. But when he forgot, she grew cross.
The same thing occurred a little later in the Jack and Jill cage, only
there it was Jill who became a little tired of Jack.
Soon each pair was quarreling. They usually made up, pretty soon, and
started loving again. But it petered out; each time more quickly.
[Illustration: Archer felt bored]
Meanwhile the two families had become interested in watching each
other. When Jill had repulsed Jack, and he had moped about it awhile,
he would begin staring at Arabella, over opposite, and trying to
attract her attention. This got Jack in trouble all around. Arabella
indignantly made faces at him and then turned her back; and as for
Jill, she grew furious, and tore out his fur.
But in the next stage, they even stopped hating each other. Each pair
grew indifferent.
Then the doctor put Jack in with Arabella, and Archer with Jill.
Arabella promptly yielded to Jack. New devotion. More transports. Jill
and Archer were shocked. Jill clung to the bars of her cage, quivering,
and screaming remonstrance; and even blase Archer chattered angrily at
some of the scenes. Then the doctor hung curtains between the cages to
shut out the view. Jill and Archer, left to each other, grew
interested. They soon were inseparable.
The four monkeys, thus re-distributed, were now happy once more, and
full of new liveliness and spirit. But before very long, each pair
quarreled--and made up--and quarreled--and then grew indifferent, and
had cynical thoughts about life.
At this point, the doctor put them back with their original mates.
And--they met with a rush! Gave cries of recognition and joy, like
faithful souls reunited. And when they were tired, they affectionately
curled up together; and hugged each other even at mealtime, and
exchanged bits of food.
* * * * *
This was as far as the doctor had gotten, at the time that I met him;
and as I have lost touch with him since, I don't know how things were
afterward. His theory at the time was, that variety was good for
fidelity.
"So many of us feel this way, it may be in the blood," he concluded.
"Some creatures, such as wolves, are more serious; or perhaps more
cold-blooded. Never mate but once. Well--we're not wolves. We can't
make wolves our models. Of course we are not monkeys either, but at any
rate they are our cousins. Perhaps wolves can be continent without any
trouble at all, but it's harder for simians: it may affect their
nervous systems injuriously. If we want to know how to behave,
according to the way Nature made us, I say that with all due allowances
we should study the monkeys."
To be sure, these particular monkeys were living in idleness. This
corresponds to living in high social circles with us, where men do not
have to work, and lack some of the common incentives to home-building.
The experiment was not conclusive.