316 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



conscious, gently and peacefully, not as an animal, but as a man 

 dies. 



These are features of the character and conduct of anthropoid 

 apes which can neither be misunderstood nor cavilled at. When 

 one considers that they can be observed in all anthropoids not yet 

 full-grown but beyond the stage of childhood, one must undoubtedly 

 grant those animals a very high place. For the opinion expressed 

 by some one incapable observer, and thoughtlessly repeated by hun- 

 dreds, that the monkey loses mental power with increasing age, 

 that he retrogrades and becomes stupid, is completely false, and is 

 disproved by every ape which is observed carefully, and without 

 prejudice, from youth to age. 73 Even if we knew nothing more 

 about full-grown anthropoids than that they erect shelters resem- 

 bling huts rather than nests, in which to pass a single night, 

 and that they drum on hollow trees for amusement, it would be 

 enough to lead us to the same conclusion as we have arrived at by 

 observation of the young members of this group; that is, that they 

 must be regarded as by far the most gifted and highly developed of 

 animals, and as our nearest relatives. 



And the ape question? I might say that I have just answered it 

 in what I have said; but I have no hesitation in expressing a more 

 definite opinion. 



Everyone must admit that man is not the representative of a 

 new order of being, but is simply a member of the animal king- 

 dom, and every unprejudiced person will also describe apes as the 

 creatures most resembling man. If we compare them with one 

 another, and then with man, the conviction is forced upon us, how- 

 ever we may strive against it, that there is a greater difference 

 between the marmosets and the anthropoid apes than between the 

 latter group and man. Zoologically, therefore, one cannot even 

 relegate the apes and man to different orders of the highest class 

 of animals. This has indeed been done, and is still done, man 

 being classed as two-handed and monkeys as four-handed animals, 

 but this leaves the most important aid to the classification of a 

 mammal, the dentition, out of the question. For the dentition of 

 man and monkeys is so essentially similar that it points impera- 



