64 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



motions which he has observed in other creatures, 

 and does this because the perception of these mo- 

 tions in another excites the corresponding nerve 

 tracts in the perceiving individual. Sympathy 

 differs from this faculty only in this, that it repro- 

 duces feelings, emotions, and thoughts perceived in 

 another. But since apes live in trees and the man- 

 brute on the ground, since the former are well 

 fitted by nature for the struggle for existence and 

 the latter are not, the opportunities must have 

 been few and rare when our brute ancestors could 

 observe these habits so as to be induced to imitate 

 them. Neither would our brute ancestors be likely 

 to perceive how these habits could be made useful, 

 seeing that apes handle sticks and missiles clumsily. 

 Only after many generations, when a higher order 

 of intelligence and a developed imagination enabled 

 our ancestors to foresee from the clumsy move- 

 ments of apes how greatly they might be benefited 

 by the skillful use of clubs and missiles, only then 

 does it seem possible that the brightest of them 

 may have experimented how to handle them. 1 



^ir John Lubbock, in "The Origin of Civilization, etc.," tells 

 of monkeys which use stones to crack nuts, of one who used a 

 stick to open the lid of a box, and that the house of the chimpan- 

 zee is equal to some of the rude habitations of savages. 



The following report, if reliable, indicates unexpectedly high 

 intellectual, social, and moral faculties among some of the an- 

 thropoids. 



For the purpose of observing these brutes, Margaret Selenka 

 spent considerable time, with her husband Emil, in the abori- 

 ginal forests of the Sunda Islands. The two had for a long time 

 made unsuccessful efforts to capture a living specimen of 

 the gibbons, One day in the forest, she perceived, crouching 



