80 AMERICAN MONKEYS. » 
oe 
Thus it is with the Cebide. or American Monkeys. While preserving the chief 
characteristics of the monkey nature, thus proving their close relationship with the Old 
World monkeys, they exhibit the strangest modification of details. The four hand-like 
paws, and other quadrumanous peculiarities, point out their position in the animal kingdom, 
while sundry differences of form show that the animals are intended to pass their life under 
conditions which would not suit the monkeys of the Old World. 
It is curious to observe how the same idea of animal life is repeated in various lands 
and various climates, even though seas, now impassable to creatures unaided by the hght 
of true reason, separate the countries in which they dwell. So we have the Simiade of 
Asia and Africa represented by the Cebidee of America. The lion, tiger, and other Felidee 
of the Eastern continents, find Western representatives in the jaguar and puma. The dogs 
are spread over nearly the whole world, taking very diversified forms, colour, and dimen- 
sions, but still being unmistakeably dogs. The same circumstance may be remarked of 
nearly all the families of mammalian animals ; of the chief bird forms ; of the reptiles ; 
the fishes, and so on, through the entire animal kingdom. 
It seems, also, as if a similar system ran through the various classes of the animal king- 
dom, the nature or instinct being the original creation, and the outward shape only the 
manifestation thereof. 
Thus, taking the Destructive Idea, as an example. Among the Mammalia it takes form 
as a lion, a tiger, or a leopard. In the birds, it becomes an eagle or a falcon. Descending 
to the reptiles, we find the destructive idea more constantly developed in the crocodiles and 
alligators, and serpents; while among fishes, the lowest of the vertebrated animals, the 
shark, pike, and indeed almost every species of fish, exhibits this same idea enshrined in 
outward shape. 
The records of the past, written upon rocks and stones, prove that in the earlier ages of 
this world the destructive element was powerfully manifested and widely diffused, and that 
nearly every creature to whom Almighty God imparted the breath of animated life, and 
that moved on the earth in those strange dark times, was of a rapacious character, living 
almost exclusively on slanghtered animals, and waging ceaseless wars against every being 
less powerful than itself. 
As the earth, under the moulding hand of its divine Maker, advanced towards a more 
perfect state of being, the old fierce creations died out, and were replaced by milder and 
gentler races. Thus, by slow degrees, it was made a fit residence for man, the epitome of 
all previous beings, combining in himself a capacity of inflicting torture more appalling 
than the aggregated cruelty of all the rapacious animals that belong to the material world, 
and a faculty of self-sacrificing love that belongs wholly to the better world to which he 
alone is privileged to look forward. 
Even in man himself, there exists an analogy from which we may infer that the same 
erand system reigns. At one extreme of the human scale we see the ruthless savage, 
pouring out blood like water, exultant at another’s suffering, and feasting with diabolical 
enjoyment on the banquet torn from the still breathing body of his fellow man. At the 
other extreme we have the man, more like what God intended that being to be when He 
made him in His own image, shunning to pain another even by an unkind thought, the 
aim of whose life is to love and to fabour for all mankind. 
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,” was the benediction pronounced 
upon the true humanity, and just as good is in itself its own blessed reward, and through 
love continually gives birth to love, so evil, being destructive, bears within its very being 
the doom of eternal death, and by unwilling self-annihilation prepares the way for better 
and higher natures. Therefore, in the earlier and less perfect races, there was greater 
destructiveness, because there was more evil to destroy. 
Herein we may find a key to that problem that must present itself to all reflective 
minds, namely, the reason why rapacious animals should exist at all. 
The answer to this enigma is, that all creation represents somewhat of the Creator’s 
being, and thus the destructive animals are the visible embodiments of God’s evil-destroying 
power. As the evil is destroyed, so will the destroyers perish, “the evil beasts shall cease 
out of the land,” and vanish from the face of the earth as completely as the rapacious 
