37 



III. 



MONKEYS. 



THERE is little doubt that our " quadrumanous " neighbours are 

 by no means viewed with favour, or held in high esteem, by the 

 vast majority of mankind. Probably with the exception of inter- 

 ested zoologists, possessed of an inherent weakness for the study 

 of man's nearest allies, or of certain Eastern sects whose veneration 

 of the monkey-race forms an obligatory part of their creeds, the 

 genus homo regards his " poor relations " in a zoological sense, with 

 the same disfavour with which, in his most civilised aspect, he looks 

 upon the same relatives in a social sense. Curiosity and disgust are, 

 in fact, the ruling ideas of ordinary mankind, when it surveys the 

 monkey-tribes " from China to Peru " as literally represented in our 

 collections of living animals, or when respectably preserved for 

 national instruction in our museums. Why this should be so, is per- 

 haps more difficult to trace than most of us would imagine. There 

 are more unlikely theories than those which attribute the proverbial 

 hostility of near relatives as the cause of the common repudiation 

 by mankind of the "chattering ape" and "mischievous monkey." 

 Poetry, ever the earliest teacher of mankind, has never viewed the 

 Simian race with favour ; and popular culture has been largely content 

 to travel in the poet's wake. Too much the reflex of humanity itself, 

 on the one hand, to be readily accepted as a desirable acquaintance, 

 and too little human in the best sense of that term in some of 

 its ways, on the other, to expedite a close alliance with mankind, 

 the ape-type has been ostracised, whilst the rat and mouse have 

 been petted, the hare domesticated, the pig fondled, and even the 

 cruel octopus itself lionised. There exist German legends which 

 picture rats and mice under the guise of human souls. He would 

 have been a bold man, who would have dared to have placed the ape 

 or monkey in the position of the familiar rodents. Myth and tradi- 

 tion, tender to the birds on the whole, and even treating the insects 

 with loving kindness, have been worse than brutal to the nearest 

 allies of man which living Nature knows. Even the Laureate himself, 

 with no prepossessed views of the base in nature, cannot avoid the 

 employment of the " ape " idea as a simile for a something in 

 humanity without which mankind would be both nobler and wiser. 



Move upward, working out the beast, 

 And let the ape and tiger die, 



