THE COMMON-SENSE VIEW 155 



ing. And if it dies she is in despair. For hours, 

 and even for days, she carries the little corpse 

 about with her, refuses all food, sits indifferently 

 in the same spot, and often literally pines to 

 death ' (8). 



Orphan monkeys, according to Brehm, are often 

 adopted by the tribe, and carefully looked after by 

 the other monkeys, both male and female. The 

 great mass of human beings, who know about as 

 much about the real emotional life of monkeys 

 as wooden Indians do, are inclined to pass over 

 lightly all displays of feeling by these people of 

 the trees. But the poet knows, and the prophet 

 knows, and the world will one day understand, 

 that in the gentle bosoms of these wild woodland 

 mothers glow the antecedents of the same impulses 

 as those that cast that blessed radiance over the 

 lost paradise of our own sweet childhood. The 

 mother monkey who gathered green leaves as she 

 fled from limb to limb, and frantically stuffed them 

 into the wound of her dying baby in order to 

 stanch the cruel rush of blood from its side, all 

 the while uttering the most pitiful cries and 

 casting reproachful glances at her human enemy, 

 until she fell with her darling in her arms and a 

 bullet in her heart, had in her simian soul just as 

 genuine mother-love, and love just as sacred, as 

 that which burns in the breast of woman. 



The affection of monkeys is not confined to the 

 love of the mother for her child, but exists among 

 the different members of the same tribe, and extends 

 even to human beings, especially to those who 



