Fie] AND SYMBOLS. 121 



Fictitious Prestige. 



It would be a marvellous investigation to ascertain the prin- 

 ciples upon which honour and credit and reputation are bestowed 

 on men by their fellows. Very often there is no more just 

 ground for the reputation men are enjoying than there is 

 for the reputation which the chimpanzees have acquired. 

 The chimpanzees live in troops in the forest, or at least they 

 congregate for the purpose of repelling the attacks made upon 

 them by the carnaria, and to drive from their domains such 

 other animals as may attempt to instal themselves therein to 

 their disadvantage. Their weapons are ready to their hand 

 stones and the branches of trees. Like the orangs, they con- 

 struct rude beds or couches of interwoven boughs stripped of 

 their greenery. In consequence of this the negroes of Guinea, 

 scarcely much higher in the scale of intelligence than them- 

 selves, look upon them as a nation, and believe that if these 

 men of the woods do not speak, it is because they fear to be 

 condemned to work or carried off into slavery, and not from 

 'incapacity. So these creatures have credit for being a nation, 

 and as it also seems for being very acute and shrewd. It is 

 obvious that in many other instances among men individuals 

 and classes are credited with powers and a status which are 

 entirely fictitious. "In the kingdom of the blind, the one- 

 eyed man is king." Stupid conventionality, stolid preju- 

 dice, cold formality, and long habit, have all had the effect 

 of so dwarfing our mental capacity that we are constantly 

 ascribing to those whom the accident of birth has placed in 

 a sphere different from our own, some wonderful ability which 

 they cannot possess, and some extraordinary power which does 

 not exist. In all this we are like those negroes of Guinea, 

 for we look up at assemblages of little men in elevated positions, 

 and ascribe to them fictitious prestige, as they look up at the 

 chimpanzees, and actually conceive them to be in mind sagacious 

 and in social power a nation ! D. 



