182 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



DECEMBER 6, 1892— FIRST REGULAR MEETING, 



Present, Chairman Burgess, and 70 members and 

 visitors. The Curator reported as gifts to the Museum 

 30 specimens of birds' eggs from Fred. W. Stack, and 

 about 50 specimens from Florida from Mr. E. R. 

 Williams. 



Dr. Theo. Neumann presented the following paper on 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS IN THE LIGHT OF DARWINISM. 



By universal consent we see in the monkey tribe a 

 caricature of humanity. Their faces, their hands, their 

 actions and expressions present ludicrous resemblances 

 to our own. Indeed, since times immemorial these 

 similarities have struck the eyes of all thinking and ob- 

 serving friends of Nature as something very remarkable, 

 and poets as well as writers of scientific works have, 

 for many centuries, dwelt at length on that fact. 



It is, therefore, easily conceivable that efforts were 

 made from time to time to deny such similarities, be- 

 cause that resemblance was always more or less a dis- 

 agreeable one, humiliating and annoying, so that we 

 need not wonder that man, the more he felt his superior- 

 ity over the surrounding animals, tried to deny his 

 relations to those creatures, to prove that such relations 

 could not possibly exist, nay, that he was of quite a 

 different, of a divine, origin. 



Very instructive is, concerning this question, the 

 demeanor of the different states of culture of mankind. 

 Originally, i. e., nearer to the natural state, man feels 

 usually a member of the great whole, he does not con- 

 sider animals and plants around him as beings created 

 only for his entertainment and for his convenience, but 

 as his equals as to the right to live and to enjoy life, some- 

 times even as his superiors which he must worship and 

 respect. In all the countries where there are anthropoid 



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