8o AMERICAN MONKEYS. 



Tubs it is with the Cebidae, 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 light 

 of true reason, separate the countries in which they dwell. So we have the Simiadae of 

 Asia and Africa represented by the Cebidae of America. The lion, tiger and other Felidae 

 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, color, and 

 dimensions, but still being unmistakably dogs. The same circumstance may be re- 

 marked 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 

 kingdom, 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 char- 

 acter, living almost exclusively on slaughtered 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 repacious 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 

 grand 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 labor 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 though 

 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 be- 

 ing, 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 



