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Title: The Fall of Man - The loves of the gorillas
Author: White, Richard Grant
Language: English
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THE FALL OF MAN:
THE LOVES OF THE GORILLAS.
[Illustration]
A POPULAR SCIENTIFIC LECTURE UPON THE
Darwinian Theory of Development by Sexual Selection.
BY A LEARNED GORILLA.
Edited by the Author of
“THE NEW GOSPEL OF PEACE.”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers.
LONDON: S. LOW & CO.
M.DCCC.LXXI.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Stereotyped at
THE WOMEN’S PRINTING HOUSE.
Eighth Street and Avenue A,
New York.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEDICATION.
--------------
TO CHARLES DARWIN, ESQ., M.A., F.R.S., ETC., ETC., ETC.
SIR:
To you is dedicated this faithful report of a humble attempt to confirm,
explain, and elucidate the wonderful and irrefragable theory of which
you are the discoverer and the promulgator. Of which dedication the
appropriateness is manifest. What other disposition of the work of your
learned kinsman would be so fitting as to lay it at your feet,
hind-thumbless although they be? He follows you feebly and afar. But
remember that he tells only what he knows, and does not attempt to soar
with you to the dizzy heights of speculation, or dive with you into the
depths of disbelief. Deign, sir, to accept this modest tribute to the
fame of one who has done so much to elevate our conception of ourselves
and of the great scheme of creation; and look with the generous eye of
exalted genius upon the honest and simple effort of a co-laborer who
strives, with you, to convince the world that a Shakespeare may be but
an oyster raised to the one-thousandth power, or even a Darwin the cube
root of a ring-tailed monkey.
THE EDITOR.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION.
ONE morning in the spring of the present year I, the editor, or rather
the reporter, of the following lecture, found myself in a forest of
Western Africa. I was neither searching for the source of anything nor
hoping to meet anybody. But, as I walked on my lonely way, I did soon
come upon a man, much be-tattered and bronzed, who was plainly an
Anglo-Saxon. He was bathing his feet in a muddy little spring, from
which a tiny rill ran out and lost itself in the leafy gloom. As I
passed him I turned my head inquiringly, and he looked up and said,
“Yes, my name is Livingstone, and this is it. It empties into a
duck-pond about a mile off, and that empties into a series of
mill-ponds, each a little larger than the other, from the last of which
a river runs into Lake Nyanza. This is it; and so I thought that, as I
am rather tired with my tramp, I would bathe my feet. Throw a chip in
here, and it will float past Thebes and the Pyramids into the
Mediterranean. Just send word to Murchison, please, that I’ll be along
presently. Good morning.” “All right,” I answered; “good morning,” and
continued my walk, thinking how nice and jolly it was to find
Livingstone making a wash-pot of the source of the Nile.
As I went onward, musing upon the eternal fitness of things, an endless
theme, I became aware that there were many monkeys around me, of various
kinds, but chiefly gorillas. They were all in motion, not disporting
themselves or seeking food, but apparently moving forward, with one
consent, in one direction. Some of them were leaping from tree to tree;
others ran along upon the ground. As I went on the numbers increased,
until at last I found myself surrounded by several hundred gorillas,
many of them being the largest and fiercest of their species. There
could not have been more if Mr. Du Chaillu had been present. Determined
to see what was the occasion of this movement, I followed his example
and joined the crowd. After walking for about an hour, the throng
increasing at every step, we finally came upon an open place in the
forest, and there we found a mass-meeting of monkeys. Some were seated
upon the ground; others were perched upon the branches of the
surrounding trees; and all seemed animated and expectant. There was a
great chattering, which, in the confusion, I did not at first quite
understand; although, having read Mr. Du Chaillu’s books in a docile
mood, I was familiar with the monkey language, and particularly with the
gorilla dialect. But I soon made out the words “Fall of man,”
“interesting subject,” “lecture,” “Darwin,” “the learned Um Bugg Hee.” I
inferred at once that there was to be a lecture on the monkey version of
the Darwinian theory; and of course decided to wait, and bathe my feet
also in the sources of the Nile. After the ladies had been escorted to
front places (for, as Mr. Du Chaillu has told us, the gorillas are very
attentive to their females), there was silence; and the lecturer, a
large and solemn male gorilla, somewhat past middle age, mounted a
stump, and delivered himself as follows. I have done nothing more than
translate his lecture from Gorillese into a civilized form of thought
and into the English idiom.
I will only call attention to the reserve and decorum of the gorilla
lecture. Notwithstanding the nature of his subject, and the example of
his illustrious predecessor and kinsman, he has made his amorous scenes
few, and has treated them with great delicacy, and, unlike the former,
has not made it necessary to cloak any part of his lecture in the
obscurity of a learned language:—a doubtful expedient in these
days—these practical days—when so many young women learn nothing of
house-keeping but much of Latin.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LECTURE.
[Illustration]
My Hairy Hearers:
MANY parts of the world, less happy than the wilds of our beloved
Africa, are inhabited by a feeble, smooth-skinned creature called Man.
This unhappy animal is much vexed with creeds and theories and notions;
and the one of these which has been longest and most deeply rooted in
his mind is, that he is a fallen being. For hundreds of years, for
thousands, he has believed that his forefathers lived in a Golden Age,
compared with which that in which he now toils and worries is an age of
stone or iron; and he seems to have had a melancholy pleasure in the
thought that in that golden age his race was better, happier, and
handsomer than it is at present. Of all his fancies, this one has the
best foundation. For, O my quadrumanous hearers, whether gorillas,
chimpanzees, ouran-outans, or simple undistinguished monkeys! this
feeble, helpless creature is akin to us, and is in fact our poor
relation. The thought, indeed, is shocking. No respectable gorilla, of
well-regulated mind, can contemplate it without horror. But the truth
must be told sometimes; and the time has come when we must confess that
man, weak, born without clothes—cruel, cowardly, and ungrateful man—is
of our family; very remotely, I am happy to say, a kind of ten
thousandth cousin, but still a direct descendant of our progenitors.
From the high estate of gorilla-hood he has descended to that of
manhood; and we are in a measure disgraced by his humiliation. This is
the fall of man—that he has descended from monkey-hood to humanity.
The story of his descent in the scale of creation is sad and touching,
and cannot be heard without deep emotion. What lady gorilla about to
become a mother, or hoping that at some future day she may be about to
become a mother—about to become a mother for the first, or second, or I
will say even the third time (for I cannot suppose that any
well-regulated lady gorilla would ever be about to become a mother for
the fourth time)—what lady gorilla, I say, in this interesting condition
of mind, could contemplate without shuddering the probability that,
instead of presenting the gentleman gorilla of her affections with a
pledge of their love that promised to have a hide and a bellow that
would rival those of a buffalo, teeth like pebble-stones, a fine
retreating forehead, and, above all, that high distinguishing feature of
our race, a hind-thumb that is at once a terror to our foes and the most
useful of all our members, she would produce a wrinkled, pink-bodied
weakling, looking like a monkey—one of the smallest and feeblest of our
race—that had been flayed alive, and which, even after reaching
maturity, could live only by covering itself with an artificial skin,
and by making machines with which to get its food and defend itself
against its natural enemies! The idea is shocking; and I beg pardon of
my lady friends for the suggestion, I may say the bare suggestion. But
the story of this fall of man although sad, is interesting, and I shall
proceed to tell it, counting on the indulgence of my hearers; for it is
linked and twined with our own past history.
The tale has been lately told by one of these very miserable creatures,
who, in the depths of his degradation, has yet had the sense to discover
his relationship to us, and the grace to be proud of it. Yes, my
well-haired friends, a man-animal called the Darwin has had the
satisfaction of boasting to his fellows of his descent from the
quadrumana. Not only so, he has traced it truthfully, step by step, to
our shame and their glory. I shall tell you succinctly and directly what
he spreads over a long and tedious narrative, full of assertions, and
repetitions, and guesses, which he calls inferences. These are all
needless to us; for, as he confesses, and we boast, we comprehend at
once by instinct what he and his poor fellows in weakness and ignorance
can only grasp by a long and painful process which they call reasoning,
by which they are often led into absurdities attainable in no other way.
As you know, the world was made for the gorilla, and when he appeared he
was in all the glory of his present strength and beauty. He was the last
and highest of Nature’s productions, the ideal creature of the universe.
True, there were others larger and stronger—on land and in water—lions,
tigers, elephants, and the like, whales, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses;
but these were of low caste, creatures with whom he could have no
intercourse on terms of equality, and whom he could generally meet only
as his natural enemies. For you must have observed that those who are
below us hate us; hate us enough at least to rejoice in our downfall, if
not to seek our destruction. Usually, too, they devour us, and feed
their own life and growth by our extinction.
But the gorilla, too, has had his vicissitudes. Indeed, we may say that,
like man, he has had his fall. Unlike man, however, he rose again, until
he re-attained his present glorious perfection of form and feature. We
fell, my quadrumanous friends, through the frailty and fickleness of the
female sex. That charming and no less useful half of our race has also
been its bane and its torment for many centuries. To them we owe the
humiliating fact that gorillas once had tails, and that some even of our
cousins are still afflicted with that ridiculous, although sometimes
useful, appendage. I hope that none of those who are present,
representing the be-tailed families of our species, will take offence at
what I have said. All distinctions founded upon superiority have been
done away by the revolutions of late years; and the last change in the
fundamental law of our community, I think it was the fifteenth, made the
smallest and longest-tailed monkey in Africa—my equal.
But to the story of our tail.
[Illustration]
Long ago, so long that the years cannot be numbered upon all the fingers
and toes of all the gorillas and monkeys in Africa, a beautiful young
lady gorilla was courted by several gentlemen gorillas, some in their
earliest youth, some nearer maturity, and some at that period of mature
middle age which I—ah have—ah had occasion to observe is not without its
peculiar charms to the tender and beautiful of her sex. But none of them
found favor with her. She seemed averse to marriage. They went through
all those performances which are at once tributes to beauty, and so
allurements to its possessors. They danced, they strutted, they howled,
they beat their breasts; they ran up the tallest trees and jumped from
the tops, landing plump before her at the most unexpected moments, and
in the most extraordinary and indescribable positions. They stood on
their heads and clapped the palms of their hands and the soles of their
feet together, howling at the same time so enchantingly that they could
be heard for miles around. One of them even applied the thumb of one
distended hand to his nose, and the thumb of his other distended hand to
the little finger of the former, and so with the thumbs and fingers of
his feet, and grinned in the most bewitching manner. But alas, she sat
unmoved before all these demonstrations of strength, agility, and
affection. To none of them did she seriously incline. True, there
remained untried the form of mingled courtship and marriage, a seizure
by main force and an elopement, which has been so common, and which is
said to be not without its charms to many of her sex of all races, and
in all climes, and which is one of those time-honored institutions, the
abrogation of which would seem like the up-heaving of the foundations of
society. But her size and her strength were so great that none of her
suitors ventured upon this method of courtship; for it was understood
that she lacked that willingness to be seized which alone gives this
method its charm and its success. In fact, she was the Brunhilda of our
race, for whom there were Günthers enough, but no Siegfried. She had let
it be understood that if any lover pressed his attentions upon her she
would bind his hands and feet together, and, bending down the biggest
sapling she could find, tie him to its top and let it spring up with him
into the air again. And so she was not molested, and passed through the
woods in maiden-meditation, fancy free.
One day she sat upon the sea-shore, lonely and pensive, gazing upon the
waters, when suddenly there appeared in the distance an enormous, oval
head, with moon-like eyes, followed by many roods of body and tail, that
rose and fell like the waves of the ocean. It was the Sea-serpent. She
looked at first with wonder, then with curiosity, at last with
admiration. What enormous grace of undulation! What seductive sinuosity!
What bewildering immensity of horizontal extension! What glistening
folds of glairy smoothness! What a piquant difference from the
rectangular jointedness, the half-upright attitudes, and the hairy
roughness of her obtrusive suitors! As she gazed, her heart told her
that she had at last found her affinity. But, overcome although she was,
she was also coy. Smitten to her very midriff with love’s dart, she
would not, unsought, be won, even by the Sea-serpent. Nor would she be
guilty of the impropriety of remaining alone with a member of the
opposite sex, to whom she was not married, or even engaged, and indeed a
gentleman who had not been properly introduced. She rose with maiden
modesty, to walk away. But I am bound to say that her course did not
lead her directly from the object which she thought it becoming to
leave; rather, it must be confessed, in that oblique line before him,
which gave the best opportunity to him of seeing her, and to her of
casting glances at him, while she produced the impression that, if not
stayed, she would very soon be out of sight. As she moved along the
strand, he gazed, and was fascinated, not only by her hairy figure, but
by the captivating combination of stride, stumble, and jump, which is
the received mode of progression of our noble race. The Sea-serpent was
enchanted. The flame was mutual. Nevertheless, after the manner of his
sex, he set himself to win what was his already. He went through all his
masculine and serpentine performances. He coiled himself up and
stretched himself out. He lashed the sea into foam. He came on shore and
tied himself up into true lover’s knots before her. He put his tail into
his mouth, and rolled himself along the shore in a vast circle, the
symbol of the eternity of his love. It seemed as if the very equator had
become enamored of her charms, and, refusing any longer to belt the
Earth, revolved within the reach of her superior attractions. Finally,
by a super-serpentine effort, he stood straight up on the point of his
tail, flapping his fins and hissing out his admiration with a noise like
that of the Maelstrom. This accomplished his purpose. When she saw him
thus reared up, and looking down with such perpendicular enormity of
love, from an elevation of some hundred feet, the compliment was more
than she could bear. The omnipotence of her charms had turned the
equator to the pole; and, satisfied, she yielded. Then he, descending
from his height, led her to their nuptial bower, a neighboring cave,
nothing loath, but yet with coy, reluctant, amorous delay.[1]
Footnote 1:
The learned lecturer might here have cited, in support of the
truthfulness of this and one or two other passages, Mr. Darwin’s much
more impressive, as well as multitudinous, descriptions of what he
calls “the act of courtship,” in chapters xiii, and xviii., passim, of
“The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex.”
[Illustration]
The fruit of these nuptials appeared in due time. As might have been
expected, it was a mingling of the traits of the two parents—a gorilla
with a tail, which appendage had now been added to one of our race for
the first time by the operation of the great principle of sexual
selection. At first the tail was looked upon with suspicion, if not
aversion. The most respectable matrons of our race scoffed, and sniffed,
and turned up their noses at the little stranger. A gorilla with a tail!
And they were right; the serpent had indeed entered our Eden. But
Brunhilda was devoted to her married Siegfried, and produced at regular
intervals new tailed-gorillas; more, the demon of love, or of curiosity,
took possession of the young lady gorillas. They were fascinated by this
huge Adonis of the deep; and baby gorillas with tails began to come with
increasing frequency. The thing became the fashion; and what was at
first the fashion, was ere long confirmed by convenience. As the first
of this fallen race grew to adolescence, he not only flourished his tail
with captivating grace, but he used it in climbing trees; he swam with
it; he offered it as bait in the water, and came to shore with a crab or
a lobster attached to it, which he ate himself or carried to his mother
in triumph. And when at last, having taken to himself two wives, he hung
by his tail to the branch of a tree, and grasping a wife by each hind
foot, took a cocoa-nut in each hand, and broke them on the heads of the
two ladies, doubt and derision were alike abandoned; there went up a
howl of admiration, and he was declared to be fittest to survive in the
struggle for existence. After this he could have married every lady
gorilla in Africa; but there was no need of that. The generation of
gentlemen gorillas with tails came rapidly to maturity, and were as
rapidly-received into favor by the other sex. It became vulgar to have a
lover without a tail, and lady gorillas of any pretentions to social
distinction preferred to remain in a state of widowhood, or even of
vestal virginity, rather than accept a lover who was not decorated. This
went on until at last there were no gorillas without tails, except a few
old fogies who took great pains to parade their tailless backs, stroking
their sparse white whiskers, and talking of the good old times, when
they were young, and no proper young lady gorilla would have looked at a
Sea-serpent. But they were only laughed at for their pains.
[Illustration]
A few years, however, showed the justice of their censure, and the sad
consequences of Brunhilda’s indiscretion. A principle of normal
development was then illustrated in our hapless and fallen race with
direful results. The gorilla reaches maturity and full growth in a few
years, but the Sea-serpent in, I do not know how many. It may be
centuries. Science has not yet decided that interesting question. I am
of the opinion that the Sea-serpent is still growing; for each time that
he is seen he is larger than he was at his previous appearance. Be this
as it may, when the gorilla part of the new species which had thus been
formed reached maturity, it of course ceased to grow. Not so the
sea-serpentine appendage. That followed its normal law of development,
and kept on slowly growing.[2] At first this excited no apprehensions of
trouble, but even a little pride. At last, however, the new species
showed very little gorilla and a great deal of Sea-serpent, until at
last they came to be a tail with a gorilla. The tails grew, and grew,
and grew, until they wound and undulated off into the dim distance; and
it seemed at last as if a gorilla might be here; and the end of his
tail, if it had an end, vanish through far-stretching perspective into
infinite space. The tails, too, following their natural instincts, had
an irrepressible tendency toward the water, and while there they were so
remote that they were entirely beyond the control of their owners.
Lobsters clawed them, sharks snapped at them, and whales took offensive
liberties with them. On land the result was an inextricable
entanglement. At times the whole community would be tied up in one
indistinguishable knot, like the worms in a man’s bait-box. It was
proposed to cut off the tails with sharp flints or clam shells; and this
was tried; but the tail was so very large and the gorilla so very small
in proportion, that it was the gorilla that died, while the tail lived,
wriggled down to the shore, and swam off to sea. After two or three
experiments this plan was abandoned, as it must needs have been, or our
race would have become extinct. Next, it was decided that each
individual should gradually reduce the length of his tail by cutting it
off joint by joint. But the confusion produced by the inter-twisting was
so great that no one was quite sure of his own tail, and while he was
sleeping, or eating, or disporting himself in as lively a manner as was
possible in this gloomy condition of things, he was liable to feel a
joint of his tail cut off by some other individual half a mile away, or
perhaps sitting next him; and this might happen two or three times in
one day after he had himself amputated his daily joint so great was the
confusion. I blush to relate, too, that it destroyed the peace of many
families, and threatened to sap the morals of the community. To this
condition, my well-haired and tailless quadrumanous hearers, our race
was reduced by the wayward fancy and unnatural longing of one female.
Footnote 2:
See “The Descent of Man,” etc., chapter viii. on “The Laws of
Inheritance,” and “On the Relation of the Period of Development,” etc.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
* * * * *
In this deplorable condition of affairs, we were saved by the action of
the same great principle of sexual selection to which we owed our
degradation. By a female came our fall, and through a female came our
salvation. A gorilla maiden of tender years, and whose sea-serpentine
appendage was yet in its earliest stages of development, saw the time
approaching when she would be courted and perhaps claimed and taken by
some two-legged termination of an elongated sea-monster. She shrank from
the prospect and shuddered at her impending fate. She was a
strong-minded female, and she determined to free herself, and if
possible her race, from the dreadful consequences of the indiscretion of
her ancestress. Like that ancestress, she shunned the opposite sex,
withdrew from society, and gave herself up to solitary wanderings. The
problem which she had undertaken to solve was difficult; for then not
only gorillas, but all living things had tails. But when was female
ingenuity and perseverance ever baffled in regard to marriage! In that
matter, we of the stronger sex are mere puppets in the female hands. We
often think we have our own way, but it is chiefly by allowing us to
think so that our weaker charmers have theirs. Chance aided her as
chance so often does those who wait and watch with determined purpose.
One day, as she sat by the borders of a large lagoon, a huge pair of
nostrils appeared on the surface of the waters. They wheezed and snorted
for a few moments; and then an enormous head came forth, garnished with
little ears and huge, stony teeth. The head was followed by a still more
enormous body; but, oh joy! oh delight, and prospect full of hope! a
body to which there was appended the smallest conceivable of tails; in
fact, a tail which to her tail-wearied eyes was of inconceivable
smallness. It was a hippopotamus. In her turn she was charmed, was won
upon the instant. What happiness might be hoped for in a life with a
male creature having so gigantic a body and such an infinitesimally
little tail! What terminal transformation, what caudal beauty, might not
be looked for in the progeny of such a father! Her resolution was taken
on the instant. That hippopotamus should marry her. But the
accomplishment of her design proved to be far from easy. The
hippopotamus came up out of the water, and she supposed that he would
run directly to her. To her surprise, he took no notice of her, but
splashed along the sedgy margin of the great pool, thrusting his huge
snout into the mud and stirring up the bottom until he and the water
were alike befouled. She threw herself in his way and trod the shore
with dainty, mincing steps, her tail undulating after her in graceful
folds. To her disgust, he seemed unconscious of her presence. He lifted
his head, indeed, and gave her a lazy look of indifference, but turned
immediately again to his loafing through the mud and water. The
hippopotamus is not a lively animal, not of an inquiring mind, almost
without curiosity, and, I am grieved to say, utterly without sentiment.
What was to be done? She could not seize upon him and marry him out of
hand; or, if she could have done so, she would have been no nearer her
end. If she had been able to seize that vast, enchanting, and
exquisitely almost-tailless body, and carry it off with her to her
bower, of what use to her would have been the indifferent mass of flesh?
For strong minded as a female may be, and even strong bodied, the
unalterable decrees of nature have placed a limit to the efficiency of
her will, although not to that of her wiles. Our forecasting and
self-sacrificing ancestress might perhaps have stood guard over her male
favorite, keeping him well fed and contented within her solitary
seraglio; but she would have been thereby no nearer to her hopes of
dandling in her arms a new-born and almost tailless progeny.
She grasped the situation at a glance, and mastered it after a moment’s
reflection. With the readiness of her sex in such matters, she instantly
formed her resolution. Her female instinct taught her that, although a
hippopotamus might be without curiosity, without politeness, and even
without a disposition to gallantry, he could not be male and yet without
sexual vanity. As he would not fall in love with her, she decided to
make him believe that she was enamored of him; and, being female, she
also determined that, although she set out with the intention of
captivating him and yielding to him, she would make him pay well for his
indifference. She retreated to her former position, and sitting down on
the bank, remained there looking at her victim until he waded into deep
water and sank out of sight.
The next day, when he came out upon his haunt, she was there again, and
he could not but see that she watched him closely; and when, after
stirring up the mud and treading down the sedges (a proceeding which she
seemed to regard with the liveliest interest), he walked down into the
depths, as he was about disappearing he turned his head, and his last
glimpse of the upper world showed him the young lady gorilla gazing
pensively on his vanishing form. When she saw him turn his head she
smiled within herself; for she saw that she had put a hook into his
nostrils. Again and again he found her there, always gazing quietly at
him; and each day he lingered longer at his amphibious disporting.
[Illustration]
One day he came and she was not there; at least she was not visible;
but, concealed in a neighboring thicket, she watched the effect of her
absence. The hippopotamus arrived as usual, and looked for her at her
accustomed seat. Not seeing her, he came fully out upon the shore and
gazed around. He trotted heavily about, peering inquisitively from his
little eyes. He sniffed the air, but the wind blew from the shore, and
she remained undiscovered. Deprived of his audience, his performances
that day were brief and spiritless, and he soon sought the bottom of the
lagoon. The next day she was there, and he trotted directly up to her.
But she rose and walked shyly away, keeping her eyes softly bent upon
him. He approached quickly; but at once she fled away at a pace that
defied pursuit; for she was much the nimbler. At a convenient distance,
she paused and made eyes at him. Seeing that he could not overtake her,
he went back into the water. She returned to her post of observation,
when he began those performances which the Darwin says the male always
goes through to please and win the female. He bellowed and gnashed his
teeth, he rolled over and over in the mud and water, in the most
captivating manner. He went into deeper water and lashed about in it
until he made it boil like a pot. In vain; she sat immovable, although
she continued her pensive gaze; and when he again approached her she
fled, and this time actually vanished from his sight. The next day both
were there again, and he repeated his performance. Again she was
charmed, but still unyielding. In a frenzy of repressed hippopotamic
feeling, he approached her; and, could he believe his little eyes? she
did not flee. He wiggled his tiny tail with the rapidity of a Yankee
clock’s pendulum, all unconscious that he was thus attracting attention
to the greatest, although the least conspicuous, of his charms. All at
once, fired and stimulated by vanity and love, it occurred to him that
if he could and should exhibit himself in a position and with a movement
more like her own, he would be irresistible. He had observed that she
walked chiefly upon her hind legs; and he therefore determined to
approach her walking upon his. He heaved himself upward two or three
times with difficulty, and without success; for he was one of the heavy
fathers of his clumsy race. But at last he attained his end, and
approached her, walking in a ponderous imitation of her own graceful
gait. It was an awful and overpowering exertion. The great historian of
the fallen race of Darwin, one of them called Gibbon, did not have a
more trying task when he bent his hippopotamic figure, and knelt before
his beloved one, who was obliged to call her servants to help him up. He
was paid only with a peal of laughter; but our ponderous ancestor was
rewarded by seeing on the face of his charmer a pensive and delighted
smile. It roused him to an exertion almost incredible. Inflamed with
love, and his vanity tickled to the point of frenzy, he did what the
Darwin says all lovers do to win their loves, he danced. Moving slowly
and stiffly at first, he soon launched into a break-down that was a
marvel to all living creatures. With jaws wide open, and nostrils
distended, he thundered about the shore, flinging his forefeet into the
air with frantic and gigantic abandonment. If one of his hind legs stuck
deep in the soft margin of the pool, and interrupted his performance, it
was but for a moment; he drew it out with a suddenness and force that
made a report that startled all the birds within a mile, and plunged
again into his amorous saltation. It was the most tremendous _pas seul_
ever executed. At last he stopped, panting; and, plumping down upon his
knees, joined his fore-paws in supplication. Of course our ancestress
then yielded—so the Darwin says that no female can resist a dancing
lover—and in due time she was rewarded by the appearance of a little
gorilla with a tail so small as to be hardly visible.
The event stirred our community far more than if the bantling had been
born without a head. The mothers of newly-born gorillas, with the
old-fashioned tail, undertook at first to decry the peculiar feature of
the new-comer. But this effort, although natural, was in vain; and in
brief, the little tail now, like the great tail in earlier ages, became
the fashion, and carried all before it. The hippopotamus, although, I am
sorry to say, he was already married, and the father of a family, was
persuaded by other lady gorillas to illustrate the great principle of
sexual selection. Many other hippopotamuses were led astray, to the
great disturbance of the connubial depths of the lakes and rivers of
that region; and the result was that in the course of a generation or
two the great tails had disappeared, and the story of their origin came
to be regarded as an old wive’s fable.
* * * * *
For a very considerable time—I will not undertake to say how many
hundred thousand years; and in such matters a hundred thousand years or
so is a mere trifle—gorillas had little tails: now they have none. It
has been supposed by a predecessor of the Darwin that these tails were
worn off by being sat down upon, and so gradually disappeared at once
from the face of the earth and the back of the gorilla. I am not
prepared to say, at this stage of the inquiry into the theory of
development, that such an abatement of our caudal appendages was not
possible. But I deal here with facts, not with fancies; and, in fact,
such was not the manner of their disappearance; for, indeed, the tails
were so very small, and tucked themselves away so very closely and
comfortably when we sat down, that the friction necessary to their
abatement was never effectually established. It happened through another
manifestation of the principle of sexual selection, and in this wise.
[Illustration]
A lady gorilla—a young matron, who was generally believed to have her
husband very well in hand, partly from his devotion to her, but chiefly
through her selfish indifference to him, and who found herself for the
second time in that interesting situation which gives every female who
considers herself a lady the right to insist upon the gratification of
her slightest whim and most fanciful caprice—took a notion that she must
eat the soft parts of a very tender young crocodile. She thought that
the high musky flavor of such a tit-bit would be of great benefit to
her; and, indeed, she threatened that if it were not forthcoming she
would surely produce, not a gorilla, but a crocodile, or, at the very
least, a gorilla with scales and a long, thick tail. Her husband was a
great fisherman, and she sent him out to catch for her the much-desired
dainty. He fished all day with fisherman’s luck. He had many exciting
nibbles, and some very promising bites, but no baby crocodile. The
shades of night were falling fast, and he found that his bait was all
gone. He dreaded the scene that would ensue upon his appearance without
the object of his lady’s longings. What should he do? In his desperation
a bright thought occurred to him. There was his own tail. It was his
last chance, and the method was unheard of; but the emergency was great,
and he was willing to submit to almost any sacrifice, even that of
mutilation, rather than appear empty-handed before the mistress of his
affections and his household. He cut off his tail, put it on his
fish-bone hook as if he loved it (which he did), and made his last cast,
comforting himself as much as he could with the consciousness that, at
least, he could come before his longing lady, saying, “I have done what
I could,” and being able to show proof of his words. To his delight and
surprise, it proved a very killing bait. An infant crocodile, that had
just then gone out, in defiance of her mother’s commands, who had warned
her particularly against gorillas’ tails, saw this one sink slowly down
to her, twiddling invitingly through the twilit water. She thought that
she would eat one only this once, just to see how it tasted, and would
never do so again. She sprang at it, and was instantly drawn screaming
and wriggling out of the water, and the gorilla took her home
triumphantly to his expectant spouse, telling her of his sacrifice. Her
whim had changed; and the odor that she had so longed for filled her
with loathing. But the consciousness that the thing had cost her husband
his tail gave it a relish in what she called her heart, if not to her
palate, and she managed to eat a morsel.
The next day the remains of the disobedient crocodile child were
displayed in her cave, and she told to her gossips the story of the
tribute to her charms. She was filled with exultation, and they were
stung with envy. She took airs upon herself. She was a wife for whom her
husband would stop at no sacrifice, not even that of the appendage to
his seat of honor. This could not be borne. The other ladies felt
humiliated; and soon several of them were seized with a longing like to
hers for a baby crocodile, to be captured in the same manner. One
entrapped, or caught with any other bait, would not answer the purpose.
Why prolong the recital? The husbands yielded; the bait still proved
taking; and the pride of the ladies was fed, if not their appetites.
Soon it became an understood thing that any gorilla who was worthy the
name of husband and father would sacrifice his tail to provide
newly-born crocodiles for his wife; and ere long there was not a
masculine tail to be seen in the community. The natural consequences
ensued, as the Darwin has explained; and thus, by the operation of the
laws of development and of sexual selection, the gorilla became again a
tailless animal.
* * * * *
Through these vicissitudes, my esteemed quadrumanous hearers, our race
has passed in consequence of the weakness and the caprice of that lovely
and enchanting sex whose errors we are always so ready to forgive, in
consideration of their charms. [Here it was observed that the female
gorillas bridled and cast side glances at the males, and chattered in
low tones to each other. A few of the ugliest broke out into applause,
which was quickly frowned down by the leading matrons, and laughed at by
the beauties of the younger sort.] And now let me warn my young female
friends against that curse of their sex, the temptation to make low
marriages and to form disreputable connections with extravagant and
wheeling strangers. There is no surer way to destroy their peace of mind
and to ruin their prospects in life. [Here a hum of approval was heard
from the matrons, at which the younger belles giggled, tossed their
heads, and turned up their noses. One of them, a pert minx, evidently a
gorilla girl of the period, had the audacity to call out, “I say, old
buffer, how about that hippopotamus?” But the lecturer did not reply,
and went on with his subject.] This failing is not peculiar to the
females of our noble race. The Darwin tells us that it is found in the
dog family. But what might not be looked for in the habits of such low
people, who go about continually upon all fours, without raising
themselves occasionally as we do on their posterior extremities; who
have no thumbs on their hind feet, and who have tails, and not only have
them, but wag them, with delight in their possession. The Darwin says
that the females of the dog family (he gives them a name, I am sorry to
say, which would bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and which
therefore I shrink from uttering, and so I use another term that means
the same thing)—well, he tells us that the lady-dogs “are not always
prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of
low degree. If reared with a companion of vulgar appearance” [here the
lecturer drew himself up, passed one hand through his hair, and with the
other stroked his whiskers], “there often springs up between the pair a
devotion which no time can afterward subdue. The passion, for such it
really is, becomes of a more than romantic endurance.”[3] Could there be
a more effectual warning against the dangers of propinquity and the
folly of what simpletons call disinterested affection!
Footnote 3:
The Descent of Man. Chapter xvii.
Let me further illustrate this topic by the story of a beautiful
lady-dog, the elegant and high-bred Kaloolah. Worthy to bear the name of
that lovely and renowned princess, our Kaloolah lived in a country far
beyond the Great Waters. She was the daintiest and most delicate of her
sex. Born of the famous Blakkantan tribe, her coat was of jetty
brilliancy, soft and fine, and edged with the dark saffron border which
is the mark of the highest families of her race. Not one white hair
marred the jetty perfection of her exterior, to betray the indiscretion
of any of her ancestresses. Her body had the slenderness of a
greyhound’s, and her pretty pointed paws tapped the responsive ground
lightly as she ran. After she had attained nubile years she was sought
by many males of her own race; but her fastidiousness caused her to
reject them all, and the care of those under whose protection she had
been placed so seconded and supported her in her resolution, that it
seemed as if she would pass her life in the sweet serenity of virgin
solitude. [Here some slight hissing and giggling was heard from the
younger females, and a groan came from an ancient one, who was said to
have very unfavorable opinions of the taste of the whole male sex.] But,
alas! she was one day removed to a rural district in the hill-country
where her protectors made their dwelling. At that place was a dog, a
coarse, vulgar creature, rude, shaggy, unkempt, grisly, uncouth, a kind
of slave of the soil, who had been bought with the acres, and who was
never allowed to come within the house, hardly near it, but was driven
to find a fitting harborage in the stables and out-buildings. Yet after
a period—will it be believed?—such is the influence of propinquity, the
beautiful Kaloolah cast aside that maidenly reserve and fastidious
exclusiveness by which she had hitherto been distinguished, and shocked
her protectors by forming a _mésalliance_ with the Bear; for so the low
brute was fitly called. The consequence duly appeared in the form of a
miserable mongrel, a grisly, gaunt, lean-bodied, huge-pawed, awkward
creature, without either the high-bred elegance of its mother or the
rugged strength of its father, a shame to both its parents, an offence
to the household, and a living witness of the dreadful consequences of a
practical disregard of the great principle of sexual selection.
* * * * *
No other modification or development of our race has taken place, in the
direct line, than those of which I have told you. None other was
necessary. We at last returned to, and have since maintained, that
perfection of beauty in face and form which makes the gorilla the
paragon of animals, and which causes the few specimens of our effete
cousin, man, who venture within our haunts to come without their
females, being naturally unwilling to expose the partners of their beds
and their bosoms to the temptation of our superior attractions. [Here
the lecturer glanced aside at a knot of females in his audience, and
tried to look modest, but failed.] Even the Darwin, who boasts of his
descent from our noble race, would, shrink from such a test of his
principle of sexual selection. We, I confess, are not proud, and should
have no objection to such visitors, a generosity of feeling which he
himself has had the grace to acknowledge.[4]
Footnote 4:
See the passage in Latin in chapter i. of “The Descent of Man.”
One overture was made to a female of our race which, if it had been
accepted, might have resulted in a very great and striking modification
of our traits. The incident has a direct connection with the subject of
my lecture; for it was through this female, and partly in consequence of
this affair, that our family tree divided into two great branches, and
one of them degenerated into Man. It so happened, by one of those
deplorable freaks of nature from which no race, however noble, is
entirely free, that a male gorilla was born deformed. In his infancy he
was almost without hair, and the great thumb upon the hinder
extremities, to which chiefly we owe our proud distinction of being a
four-handed race, was a puny thing, useless except for walking; and, in
fact, of no more value than the big toe of some of the inferior animals.
As he grew up, a sparse coat of soft hair did appear upon his body; but
the deformed thumb of course never developed or changed; it only grew in
proportion to his growth, and remained a miserable toe. Yet, will it be
believed? certain of our young females, with the unaccountable caprice
of their sex, showed a hankering after this young fellow. They found
him, in their own phrase “so interesting!” “He was so different,” they
said, “from the old humdrum style of gorilla gentlemen.” They called him
elegant. Gorilla girls of the period, who might have commanded the
devoted service of individuals of the opposite sex much more worthy of
their attention, in fact, of individuals of mature age, and
distinguished position, well-haired, and with gigantic hind thumbs—[Here
the lecturer was observed to rub his coat well up, and to gradually
advance one of his hind feet on the stump on which he was
standing]—giddy creatures who might have won the favor of such persons
who abounded then, and who are—in fact—I may say—who are—sometimes—to be
found even now, actually preferred the society of this effeminate, this
more than effeminate creature. And yet, in the interests of science, I
must tell the exact truth; according to tradition, he was not quite a
weakling. He was nimble and strong, but it was in a different way from
that of the other males of his race. In his singularity was his charm.
He was also lazy, listless, and indifferent. He took no notice of the
fairer sex, even of those who were most devoted to him, and most open in
their admiration. He might have lived without lifting a finger; for they
delighted in nothing so much as in serving him. Making of the
peculiarity that was the very occasion of their admiration an excuse for
him and for themselves, they said, “Poor fellow! how can he be expected
to get his living with that soft coat, and with no hind thumbs?” And so
they ministered to him, each one hoping that she might be the one whom
he found essential to his happiness. He was often seen stretched upon
the grass, or lolling against a tree, with half a score of these
infatuated young creatures grouped around him, waiting upon him,
bringing him cocoanuts, endeavoring to win from him some special
acknowledgment of thankfulness—some mark of preference.
In vain did other males approach these besotted damsels. In vain did
they howl, and spring from tree to tree! In vain did they even dance
with an extravagance—a frenzy of strength and agility which had never
before been known in the annals of gorilla courtship, and which could be
surpassed only by few of the many similar scenes described by the
Darwin. It was as nothing compared with the listless languor of the
soft-coated, and hind-thumbless fellow.
But, in like manner, vain was the devotion of these silly young
creatures. No one of them found favor in his eyes. At last he sent
sorrow and despair into their souls by telling them in secret, one by
one, that although she was very good, and although to have cocoanuts,
and fruit, and water brought to him by such a nice waiter-girl was very
pleasant, and he was very much obliged, he thought it only fair, under
the circumstances, and considering her obvious expectations, to say that
he was not a marrying gorilla. In fact, he never could be fond of such
roughly-haired creatures as even she-gorillas were; and that, until he
found one whose coat was even softer and slighter than his own, he
should remain a bachelor. They heard his avowal in silent grief, each
one saying in her heart that his conditions were cruelly difficult to
comply with; in fact, as she turned the matter over in her mind—quite
im-pos-si-ble. And each one silently resolved that she would admit the
addresses of no other gentleman gorilla, let him dance before her never
so furiously; but all her life would remain the virgin widow of her
living love. Such, the Darwin tells, has been the determination of the
females of other races, dogs, guinea-hens, etc.[5]
Footnote 5:
See “The Descent of Man, etc.,” chapter xiv., _passim_; where,
however, the reader will find recorded multitudinous instances of
fickleness, faithlessness, and forgetfulness on the part of “widows;”
unfeminine forwardness, and even of downright “seduction” on the part
of matrons and even of maidens of the bird family.
Among this interesting—I must say interesting, although infatuated—group
of gorilla girls was one who took this determination more seriously to
heart than the others did. She gave herself up to loneliness and
melancholy musings. She left the delights of caves and woods and the
companionship they bring, and wandered forth upon the plains, level and
lonely, rockless, treeless, and dismal with sunlight. Her thought, day
and night, was, “How can I rid myself of this disgusting coat of coarse
hair? and if I could do so, should I find favor in his eyes?”
As she was one day near the edge of the great desert, musing on her
ever-present theme, she became gradually conscious that she was not
alone; then that a tall personage was in her presence; and then that a
great exhibition of fuss and feathers was going on before her. It was an
ostrich, one of the largest and most distinguished of his race. He had
seen her frequently come to this place, so unfrequented by her people,
and walk about it with slow and pensive air. What was her motive? What
could it be but one? Was not he there? There was nothing else there but
the sand and the sunlight; and yet she came almost daily. He drew the
same conclusion that the hippopotamus did, but without equal reason or
good fortune. Under the circumstances, however, and misled as he was,
what could he do but make himself agreeable to the lady, and pay some
attention to her? No he-creature with a spark of masculine spirit in him
could do less. So he began to strut up and down before her, and to
expand his wings and his tail. He ran violently about. He lifted up his
voice and squawked. He ate sand, and, burrowing in it with his huge bill
and finding the hoof and leg-bone of a horse that had died many years
before in the desert, he brought it triumphantly, and, laying it down at
her feet, ate it up before her eyes. Could anything be more
agreeable—any attention more flattering to the female heart? What, then,
must have been her gratification when after a few moments she saw him
again eat up one just like it? Deeming himself quite irresistible after
this last performance, he fluttered directly toward her. The family of
man has its stories and traditions, all of which have some foundation in
fact, but are much magnified or perverted or misunderstood. This story
of their ancestors they tell, transferring the heroine to their own
race, and making him a male swan called Jupiter, and her a kind of
female man called Leda. According to man, the swan was received with
open arms; but the gorilla girl fled from the ostrich. His intentions, I
have no doubt, were strictly honorable; while in the man story I regret
to say the Jupiter’s were not; but they were none the less unwelcome to
her. Mistaking her flight for the coquetry of her sex, he pursued; and
although love for another and consequent aversion to him lent her wings,
he had real wings, as well as long legs, and by the use of both he was
gaining on the object of his pursuit, when not far off she saw the
object of her affections. She sped toward him and flung herself panting
into his arms. He held her there for a moment, and then moved, partly by
gratitude for her many services, and partly by the feeling that,
although he did not want her himself, yet, as she had thought of him, no
one else should have her, he laid her lightly down, and with a club made
such a vigorous attack upon the ostrich that the latter soon turned and
fled back to his sand, his hen, and his horsehoofs.[6]
Footnote 6:
The learned lecturer here gives but a feeble imitation of a passage,
upon “the courtship of birds,” cited in “The Descent of Man,” etc.,
chapter xiv., of which, widely circulated as that popular work is, I
need here reproduce only the concluding part, if, indeed, even in the
interests of science, I could venture to give more:
—“elle refuse constamment ses caresses; les avances empressées, les
agaceries, les tournoiements, les tendres roncoulements, rien ne peut
lui plaire ni l’emouvoir; gonflee, boudeuse, blottie dans un coin de
sa prison, elle n’en sort que pour boir et manger, on pour repousser
avec une espèce de rage des caresses devenus trop pressantes.”
[Illustration]
Whether this incident in the history of our species is to be altogether
deplored, I do not feel competent to decide. True, the perfection of the
gorilla form and the purity of its traits were preserved. We remained at
the head of the animal creation, unequalled in our combination of beauty
and strength; but might we not by this profferred alliance have been
elevated? Might we not have hoped to add to all our other superiority
the beauty and the power of wings? Might we not have become as the
angels—nay, very angels ourselves? Might not we, instead of poor,
feeble, pusillanimous man, have furnished the traits which were to be
sublimed into the forms of archangels and ministering spirits? Might not
we have become seraphs and our children cherubs? Man has his Raphael, as
he has his Darwin, whose imagination framed from things actual things
impossible—winged men and pin-feathered man-children—creatures never
known on Earth or in Heaven. But the Darwin himself is my authority for
telling you that, if our kinswoman had yielded to her winged suitor, the
Raphael would have only needed to paint gorilla portraits. Think of the
change, the superiority, as well in beauty as in truthfulness, that
would have been made in his works if female caprice had not prevented
this application of the principle of sexual selection? This, however,
was not to be; and that it was not, is one of those mysterious
dispensations at which we must wonder, but to which we are taught that
we must thankfully submit.
[Illustration]
This affair, strange to say, had a direct influence in the development
of that singular and enfeebled variety of our species known as Man. Our
kinswoman was more set by it than ever before in her aversion to all
other suitors, and in her devotion to the one object of her love. The
momentary clasp of his arms, and his defence of her against another
suitor not only bound her to him more strongly than before, but seems to
have developed in her a strange faculty which never was known before in
any of our species, and which has never appeared in any other in the
direct line. Her solitary wanderings were now more limited in extent
than they were before this remarkable occurrence. Her experience of the
desert kept her within the line of sand which she sometimes approached,
but never passed again. Yet she continued to muse alone, and constantly
upon the one theme, her strong, thick coat of hair, now become odious to
her, and how it might be softened and diminished. Pining away in her
despair, she leaned one day against a tree, and remained there for a
long time wrapped in sad reverie. Coming to herself again, she was about
to continue her walk, when she found that she could not move away. Her
arm, from the shoulder to the elbow, stuck fast to the tree. It was a
gum-tree, and she had not seen that a broad stream of thick, half-dried
gum was on that part of the trunk against which she leaned. The hair on
the outside of her arm had been imbedded in the gum, which, drying as
she leaned, held her fast, a prisoner. She looked about for help. None
was near, not even that cold and cruel gorilla who had told her that he
could not love her. Nothing was left but to tear herself away by main
strength. Summoning all her fortitude and her force, she threw herself
forward and fell upon the ground with a scream that might have been
heard afar off, for she had torn out by the roots every hair that had
touched the tree.
For many days she suffered in her loneliness; but her pain passed
gradually away. But then came the depressing thought that she must now
be more repulsive than before, a mutilated creature, with a bare patch
on one arm, from the shoulder to the elbow. At first this was worse to
bear than the pain of the injury; but ere long she was led from despair
to hope by a strange way of thinking which man calls reason, which I
have mentioned before, and which I am happy to say is unknown to
gorillas; and the consequence of which, in this case, will cause you all
to sympathize with me in my felicitations. The thought that if the
object of her love longed for a female with a coat softer and finer and
sparser than his own, he might, as she said, therefore (but who of us
can tell what _therefore_ means?), possibly like one better yet who had
no hairy coat at all. And she thought, too, that as she had deprived
herself by accident of a small part of her coat, she might (using again
the unmeaning word) therefore get rid of the whole of it intentionally
by the same means. “At least,” she said, “I shall be in no worse
condition than I am now, as far as he is concerned, and what do I care
for the others? And if I die, there is but one gone that cares little to
remain.” She went to the tree. The gum had flowed again; and in like
manner, and with like pain as before, she bared her lower arm of hair.
Thus she went on, week after week, as she could endure the torment, and
find gum-trees in their flow, until at last she had bared her whole
body.
During this process she kept herself more secluded than ever, lest by
chance he to please whom she suffered should see her before her
sacrificial transformation was complete. She shuddered at the thought of
his catching her half made up, in a sort of grand fleshly deshabille.
Fortune favored her, and no one saw her until her whole body was as
smooth as the inside of her hand. Then she restrained her impatience,
and fed and nursed herself with a care she had not taken for many
months, that she might regain all the litheness and the grace that she
felt that she had lost. Even when she thought that she had gained all
this (but how little seemed the all!), she hesitated and kept shyly to
herself for many days—a foolish backwardness, of which I am sure no
young gorilla lady before me would be guilty! But at last, feeling that
nothing more was to be gained by delay, and that her fate might as well
be decided first as last, she sallied forth.
Fortune favored her again; for she soon saw at a short distance the
object of her search. At first she started to run to him; but hardly had
she taken a few steps when she hesitated, halted, and finally turned
away, overcome by a feeling entirely new to her. She had been for many
weeks preparing herself, through pain and care, to please this very male
gorilla, whom in former days she waited on and cooed to and coaxed,
without a thought except of the pleasure she had and the pleasure she
hoped for, although in vain. But now that she had some reason to hope
that she would find the favor that she longed for, she shrunk within
herself and feared to offer him that which it was her only desire in
life that he should want and take.
With that change in her mind that made her say “therefore,” there had
come another in her soul that made her say the still stranger words, “I
am ashamed.” And so she turned away from him whom she had set out to
find. But before she turned he had caught sight of her; and, struck by
such a strange object as an entirely smooth-skinned female of his race,
he immediately followed her. She fled, spurred on by her strange,
conflicting apprehensions—first, lest he should like her, next, lest he
should not. He gained upon her rapidly and soon came up with her, and
she sank upon the ground before him. He stood and looked at her, and she
saw that there was no recognition in his eyes; but there was something
else that repaid her for that loss—admiration; and presently he and her
heart began to dance together. He, the lazy, listless fellow of former
days, leaped and curvetted like a young antelope. He bounded his full
height into the air, he roared with that enchanting roar of his, he beat
his breast, he ran up to the top of an enormous tree, and came near
killing her by flinging himself down so close to her that had she not
swayed lightly aside, he would have dashed her to pieces. But never was
a female before in so precious a peril; and as he stood before her,
panting with exertion, she sidled up to him, and, laying her head upon
his shoulder, and taking his hands, she led them lightly and tenderly
over her soft, smooth limbs and body, that, all unknown to him, had
suffered such torment for his delight. After that, as men would say, she
was his’n and he was her’n. This is the kind of language that they call
poetical.
She did not tell him that she was the same old girl that had made love
to him before. That secret she kept very profoundly and deceitfully
hidden in her own bosom, until it was brought out by another incident
that has a direct bearing upon our subject. She was just about to bring
forth the first fruit of their happiness, and he was off gathering the
daintiest food that he could find for her, when she thoughtlessly
strolled near the edge of the sandy desert, and walked along it, musing
to herself and wondering if her child would be as handsome as its
father, when suddenly she looked up, and there, at a short distance from
her, stood the great ostrich who had before persecuted her with his
attentions. He darted toward her; and she, fleeing as rapidly toward her
cave as her condition would permit, was soon met again by the same
defender as before, who this time, after a brief contest, slew the
ostrich before her eyes. The effect of this shock was that that night
her child was born. It was the most remarkable birth in the history of
our race; yet not of our race, for it was not a gorilla that she
produced; and here began the new departure. It was a male child which,
to look forward a few years, had not the hind thumb of his mother but
the toe of his father, and had even less and finer hair than he, and
besides (a trait which his mother attributed to her critical encounter
with the ostrich), he walked constantly erect, and with straight legs,
like that large, feathered biped. Moreover, he inherited from his mother
those strange thoughts, “therefore” and “I am ashamed.”
Then, explaining her terror to the father of the child whose birth it
had hastened, she confessed to him, she was almost obliged to confess,
that she was the poor girl who had loved him so long, and whom he had
protected before against the too ardent courtship of the same suitor; he
could hardly believe his ears, and his curiosity was excited to know the
manner of her transformation. At first she refused to tell; but he asked
her again and again; and after some months had passed and she had
brought forth her second child—this time a girl, with a smooth body,
like herself, and without a hind thumb, like the father, and with the
straight, ostrich-way of walking, in a moment of female triumph at this
charming success of the principle of development, and of the greater
principle of sexual selection, she confessed to what artifice she owed
her hairless skin.
He was now naturally not with her so much as during the first months of
their union, and his behavior toward her was more placid and serene.
Every gorilla matron among my hearers must have had the same experience.
Pursuit must always be more or less eager; possession must always be
more or less quiet. And if any of my lady hearers have been dissatisfied
or disturbed by the manifestation of this inevitable and eternal
truth—[Here there was a movement among the females, and one rose and
shrieked out, “Disturbed! dissatisfied! To be sure we are. You’re all a
set of brutes. Sea-serpents, and hippopotamuses, and ostriches are
nothing to you!” The males just turned their heads with bland, pitying
smiles, and then gave their attention again to the lecturer, who
continued]—if, I say, they have been dissatisfied or disturbed by the
manifestation of this inevitable and eternal truth, to which the
relations of male and female are merely not an exception, they only show
that they expect that the operations of laws of nature will be suspended
for the gratification of their pride. During one of his absences, in the
still noon of a summer’s day, she heard a faint scream in the distance.
But, faint as it was, it seemed unlike those that are sometimes heard in
the forest solitudes, and yet like a sound she remembered to have heard
before, she could not recollect when or where. In the course of a few
weeks it was explained, when one day he appeared, accompanied by another
smooth-skinned gorilla girl, who she saw at once was one of those whose
love he had before despised, and who was now his wife. To be brief, he
found that of the ten who had devoted themselves to him, and who had
vowed to have no other love, only three had yielded to the courtship of
his rivals, and the remaining six he persuaded to qualify them selves
for his admiration, and the nuptials which they had so long and so
eagerly coveted. They all illustrated equally well with his first wife
the beautiful principles of development and sexual selection, and soon
he was surrounded with a large and growing family of smooth-skinned,
hind-thumbless, erectly-walking children, of whom the males chiefly
said, “therefore,” and the females, “I am ashamed.”
The appearance of this new family in the gorilla country caused a
profound sensation throughout our species. The tradition of the
sea-serpent alliance and its deplorable consequences were remembered and
discussed. The conservative feeling was fully aroused. A mass-meeting,
in the nature of a general _conseil de famille_, was held; and it was
finally decided that, to prevent confusion and the deterioration of the
race (for what consequences might not be apprehended from female fancy
for smooth-skinned, hind-thumbless lovers, who walked like ostriches!
what wide-spread disaster might not ensue upon the application of the
principle of sexual selection under these new circumstances!), that this
new family of non-descript creatures, who, whatever they might be, were
certainly not gorillas, should be driven from our borders. Whatever
might have been the wishes of the new family in this regard, they (most
of them being yet of tender years) could not resist such a determination
on the part of a whole tribe, and they submitted. The world was before
them where to choose; and they chose to go northward toward the borders
of the great sea. Ere long they were seen moving in that direction, the
father of the family lounging listlessly in his old way in advance, the
females following, carrying the provender and such of the children as
were too small to walk. And thus began the first migration. This was the
first step in the Fall of Man, which he, in one of those traditions of
which I spoke, has embodied and perverted into a tale which he calls,
and well calls, “The Expulsion from Paradise.”
* * * * *
One of the most ruinous steps in the descent of this new species, which
gradually deteriorated until it became Man and produced the Darwin, was
the living in what they call huts or houses, which, as you all know, are
a kind of small, movable cave, very hot and dry, and shut up against the
air. This, men like the Darwin say, became necessary to protect them
against the inclemency of the weather. There was no such necessity. On
the contrary, it is the use of this contrivance which has made the new
creature weak, unable to live naturally like his ancestor, the gorilla,
and obliged him to go on year after year, and generation after
generation, adding impediment to impediment, and incumbrance to
incumbrance, that he may supply artificial wants which grow upon him
year by year, till at last—the poor besotted creature! he deems that one
of his species happiest who has most possessions, that is, most occasion
of care and trouble. His hut he has at last deprived of the only good
quality it once possessed, its movableness (for it would be a nice thing
to be able to take your cave around with you when food becomes scarce,
instead of being obliged to go after the food and then return to the
cave); and, in his self-delusion, he now builds it of some heavy,
immovable material, and fills it so full of all kinds of gim-cracks that
his highest praise of one of these immovable caves is that it is filled
with all the modern inconveniences; and, to keep these in disorder, he
has a rapacious multitude of his own species whom he calls carpenters,
and masons, and painters, and plumbers. These sorts of man seem to have
come into his family through some operation of the law of sexual
selection with the bird family; for they are all dreaded because of
their bills; and of them all, I am told the plumber’s bill is at once
the most dreadful, and the most inscrutable in its origin.
As I have told you, the hut or house was not first used for protection
against cold and wet. It came in this wise. Many generations after the
first migration a female of the new family was born much lighter in
color than the original rich black tint of the species; and when she
grew up, she preserved this unpleasant peculiarity. But, strange to say,
she was liked by one of the largest and strongest of her species, who
took her for his third wife, and made much of her. She, observing that
things turned black in the sun, took a notion that unless she could be
protected against his rays she also would become black, and lose the
peculiar charm to which she owed her marriage to so desirable a husband,
and his very marked admiration and attention; and yet she could not bear
a cave; it was altogether too damp and gloomy, and, indeed, very
unbecoming to the complexion. She therefore insisted with much pouting
and sulkiness, including some secret slaps and pinches of the other
wives’ children, and alternate fits of temper and sickness that turned
the family topsy-turvy (the good old gorilla family discipline, ladies,
which permitted the use of a stick not larger than the husband’s hind
thumb having sadly deteriorated among these degenerate creatures), that
if her husband really loved her and cared anything to preserve the
beauty he professed so much to admire, he would make something that
would protect her skin against the sun.
After long cogitation he produced a wonderful structure. He took three
dry saplings, about one-half again taller than himself, and putting one
end of each in the ground, about his own length apart, he joined their
tops, and upon the outside of these he piled dried twigs and broad
leaves, leaving an opening in the front. To this he led his now radiant
beauty, and she took possession with great glee and greater pride. At
first she stayed in it all the time, night and day. She allowed no one
else but her husband to enter. The other wives affected great scorn of
her and her rubbish-hole, as they called it, which they would not go
near or seem to notice; but if their children came to peep in, she drove
them away with blows and sticks and stones. It was her delight to sit
just within the doorway, and nod with condescending affability to the
other females who came to see the great curiosity; and they came from
miles around.
Her pride, and the airs she took upon herself, set the whole female
community agog. She was a wife for whom the wonderful hut had been built
to preserve her complexion. She held up her nose in the air, as if the
earth and the other females on it were too mean for her to look upon. In
the course of a few days the first wife began to make things very
uncomfortable. [“Very proper of her,” screamed one of the matrons—an
exclamation which was followed by a hum of approval.] She spanked her
three children, of whom she had been very fond, on various pretexts; but
in her heart, the boys, because they were boys and looked like their
father, and the girl, because she was his favorite and looked like
herself. She took no notice of her husband, but passed him in glum
silence [“Served him right,” screamed another matron]; in this (mildly
continued the lecturer) showing the proverbial tact and wisdom of her
sex; for the only consequence was that he passed more time than ever at
the hut. At last, one evening, when he had brought her some very fine
fruit, she flung it down untasted, and went into a kind of convulsion.
She screamed, she chattered, she clenched her hands, and gnashed her
teeth, and flung herself upon the ground, kicking and tossing her arms
about. At first he was inclined to administer to her the remedy which
she had applied to the children; but, as he really loved her, he was
weak, and asked what was the matter. At first, there was no answer, only
more screams, more kicking, more flinging of the arms about. At last,
however, it came: “The matter? Her complexion was the matter!” (She was
as black as a crocodile’s back.) “How could he expect her not to have
fits, unprotected as she was from the sun? But what did _her_ complexion
matter? What did he care about that? Why did he not go to his other
wife? She could have a hut built for her, where she could sit and sneer
at every one else.” The consequence, ladies, you all know. She also had
her hut, in the door of which she sat with her nose in the air. And of
this the consequence was that the second wife’s complexion also needed
protection; and soon she too had her hut, and sat with her nose in the
air. Whereupon there was great commotion in the whole community. Was it
to be endured that that fellow’s wives should sit in huts and sniff?
Would a husband of any spirit, not to say a husband who cared anything
for his wives, endure that? There was an outbreak of complexion fever
among all the females. Such a thing as a complexion was never before
heard of; but now every female had one; and nothing would preserve it,
or save her from convulsions, but a hut for its protection. And it was
remarkable that the blacker the female the more sensitive she became on
this subject, and the more imperatively necessary it was that she should
be provided with shelter. And so, ere long, it came to pass that a hut
ceased to be any distinction whatever, and that, when all the females
got what they wanted, the chief value it was to have had in their eyes
was entirely gone, and it would only have been a mark of destitution to
be without one. The thing having become a necessity, and a matter of
course, the males, to save trouble, made huts large enough for all their
females; and as time went on they plastered the twigs and leaves with
clay. The males passed more and more time with their females in these
she contrivances, and became themselves, of course, more and more
effeminate. And thus it was that this new branch of our family became
more and more a house-dwelling species.
* * * * *
It is well known to you that some members of our kindred, although
degenerate family, man, live upon the water, and go about upon it in a
kind of cave with wings. Such folly is incomprehensible to a
thorough-bred and high-toned gorilla, who is eminently conservative, and
likes to stand upon a solid foundation; and how any people who are in
the slightest degree connected with us can seek, or endure, a life upon
that shifting and cruel element that is the proper habitation of fishes
and crocodiles and hippopotamuses, we cannot surmise, or could not, were
it not for our newly-acquired knowledge of the working of the principle
of sexual selection, that great newly-found key to all the mysteries of
life.
The first sailors were not gorillas, or their puny descendants, but
squirrels; and it was through the squirrel that the sailor element was
transposed into man’s nature. It happened many ages ago, at least as
many ages as had passed since the occurrence of the events which I have
narrated and explained, that a community of the new species dwelt on the
borders of a great lake. In search of food, or for other purposes, they
often had need to go from one side of the lake to the other, and they
were always obliged to go around, because they could not go across. It
was too far to swim, and there was no other way. But one day a female,
who had been obliged to carry her youngest child half around the shore
and back again two or three times, saw a squirrel shoving a large piece
of bark into the water. He had shaped the bark with his teeth, making
the sides even, and the ends somewhat pointed. It was about twice the
length of his own body, and that was nearly the height of this female;
for squirrels were then not the puny things they are in these degenerate
days. When he had launched his bark, he got upon it, settled himself
well in the middle, and then suddenly raised his tail. The wind blew
gently from shore, and wafted him out upon the water, and gradually
across it, he acting as mast, sail, rudder, crew, and passenger; and she
saw him disappear, a bounding speck upon the opposite side. At first she
wished that she, too, had a long, flat, bushy tail; but the traditions
of the dreadful tail-period of our common ancestors lingered with her
family, and she shrank from the thought. Then she thought that two or
three large palm-leaves would do as well as the tail, or better.
The next day she left her children in the hut, and, coming down to the
lake, she shaped a piece of bark, and, taking her place upon it, hoisted
two palm-leaves. The wind blew more briskly on this day than on the
other, and she was delighted at soon finding herself carried well out
upon the lake. But as she went on, and the breeze freshened, she was
surprised to find that her bark wobbled unpleasantly from side to side,
and even from end to end. The shores of the lake seemed alternately to
rise up into the heavens and to descend to the centre of the earth. She
was pitched forward and pitched backward. Ere long her surprise soon
took the form of disgust, and the seat of the disgust soon shifted from
her head to her stomach. The sensation was equally novel and awful. She
felt herself grow green about the mouth; and, female although she was,
she had no concern about this change in her appearance. Each hair on her
head seemed to shrink from its neighbor. She broke into a cold sweat.
Her limbs relaxed; and the palm-leaves went overboard. She wished that
she might die; and suddenly she thought she was dying, for the hearty
breakfast that she had eaten, to set her up for her voyage, was cast out
into the treacherous waters—an awful catastrophe! She gave herself up
for lost, and, without strength or will to cling to her bark, flung
herself along it, and hoped that the end would soon come. It did come,
but not as she expected that it would. Being no longer able to keep her
balance, she leaned too much on one side, just as a large wave struck
the bark upon the other, and she was upset into the water. The shock
revived her, and, being not yet very far from land, she was just able to
swim back to the shore whence she had started. Creeping up on the bank,
she sat a while musing in the sun, and then went meekly home.
Thinking over her adventure, she compared her performance with that of
the squirrel, and came to the conclusion that her race needed the
infusion of some new blood to fit them for the struggle for existence
upon the water-side, and—loathsome thought—upon the water. She threw
herself in the way of the squirrel, and, being a fascinating female,
soon brought him to that state of mind in which he felt that he could
not be happy without her, and of course that she could not be happy
without him. Indeed, she avowed her admiration for him openly, but told
him that his beauty had but one drawback—his tail. She could not endure
a gentleman with a tail. This confession cast a gloom upon their
intimacy; for his tail was his pride. But she was inexorable, and one
day he appeared tailless. After this she had two children, born, like
her others, tailless, but, unlike their elders, they showed an early
inclination to sail chips in puddles; and when they were well grown she
took them down to the lake-side with her husband. They immediately
fashioned a piece of bark, boarded it, set up the palm-leaf sails, and
flew across the water, untroubled by any of those dreadful symptoms from
which she had suffered. The head of the family gazed with wonder, which
he loudly expressed, that two of his children should perform such an
unprecedented feat; but she sat in silence, musing doubtless upon this
new triumph of the great principle of sexual selection, and thinking of
herself as the mother of all them that go down to the sea in ships, and
do their business upon the great waters. She had never mentioned her
intimacy with the squirrel, and soon afterward picked a quarrel with him
and cut his acquaintance as short as he had cut his tail.
[Illustration]
Denuded of their hair, deprived of their hind thumb, thinking
“therefore” and “I am ashamed,” provided with huts for the land, and the
ability, in at least one family, to manage a bark on the water, the new
species of gorilla now differed so widely from our own that their
degeneration became very rapid, and it required but a short period, only
a few hundred thousand years more, to make them sink into the depth of
manhood.
As time went by, however, there were other applications of the great
principle discovered by the Darwin, which have left some traces upon the
development of the new species. How otherwise could there be such a
multitude of men who have really the habits and traits of other animals?
Asses, for instance: how many men are but asses, with the outside which
they have inherited from their gorilla ancestors—a kind of mixture of
monkey and donkey which, I need not tell you, is never found in our
branch of the family. The very ears have not quite disappeared; for the
Darwin himself says that some men can move their ears, and that length
of the organ has only been diminished somewhat and turned down at the
top. Does not man recognize this, and often call his fellow-man an ass?
But who ever applied that term to a gorilla? And was one of our race, I
ask, ever designated as Old Hoss? But every man knows that some of his
fellow-men are geese, and vultures, and sharks, and foxes, and jackals?
Are there not pigeons among them? Yes, Darwin, pigeons whom they pluck
remorselessly. And is not the plucker frequently a jail-bird? Does not
every countryman of the Darwin believe that there is a lion in his
breast, the rousing of which would be followed by consequences so
dreadful, that of late years he allows him to sleep under the most
irritating provocations? And does not all this bear witness to various
and numberless applications of the principle of sexual selection during
past ages? Frankly, I cannot tell. It may be so, and it may not. The
wisest gorilla knows so little that what we call knowledge is often
merely the name we give to ignorance. And—
* * * * *
How much longer the speaker continued in this vein I cannot say. But as
the audience began to stir uneasily, and many of those in the back rows
went away, and even some of the more distinguished and self-possessed of
the females in the front got up, turned their backs on the lecturer,
and, followed by their attendant males, pushed their way out through the
crowd, I was sure that the lecture was within a sentence or two of its
end, and that if these persons had waited but a few minutes they might
have avoided slighting the speaker and disturbing their fellow-hearers.
At this stage of the reading, I, too, left the place suddenly, the
learned lecturer still speaking; but my motive was of a very different
kind. During the lecture I had noticed a large and portly middle-aged
gorilla look at me from time to time, and with increasing frequency.
Each time, too, the glance was kindlier, and at last was accompanied by
a nod, a beck, or a smile. What did this mean? I doubted; but for a
moment. I considered the subject of the lecture, so stimulating to the
female fancy, the experiences of the sex related in it, so fitted to
awaken the instinct of imitation in the female breast; I thought of
Darwin’s book, which I had read before I started for Africa, and I
remembered the dreadful words: “_et dignoscebat in turba, et advocat
voce, gestuque_,” just, too, as this portly old person was doing. It was
too plain: this middle-aged dame, entering into the spirit of the
lecture, had selected me. And now, being one of those that rose, she
approached me as rapidly as possible. The sweat started from every pore,
and, with double horror, I felt the hair on my body rise, reminding me,
as it did so, of what likeness there was between me and this infatuated
female. There was but one thing to do—to flee.
I got out of the throng as quickly as I could, and, glancing over my
shoulder, I saw that she was following. I plunged into the forest,
goaded by an indefinable terror. The thicket hampered me, but I pushed
on; twigs clung to me, thorns seized me; I tore myself away; but, alas!
I left my clothes. I was gradually stripped of my artificial covering,
and revealed to my pursuer in that state of nature which bore yet
further witness to our kindred. I turned my head again; she was gaining
on me rapidly. The jungle that impeded and bewildered me, offered little
or no restraint to her swift, practised steps. Observing this, I sought
an open glade, which I saw ahead of me, and took to that, hoping—as I
was now weighted only by my revolver, the leathern belt of which had
resisted the laceration which had removed all my other covering—that on
its even surface I might be at least the equal of my pursuer. In vain.
Glancing backward as I ran, I saw her steadily approaching, and always
nodding and beckoning with what seemed to me a loathsome leer. At last
she came so near that I heard her panting breath. In a moment she might
clasp me in her arms. I took the alternative, and turned to fight. My
revolver was a slight weapon against such a creature, but still it was
one of the largest bore; and, if it did not kill or disable my pursuer,
it would at least enrage, and I might thus hope that instead of being
embraced I would be disembowelled. As I faced her, she rose, and laying
her hands upon her breast, bellowed out her admiration. I took steady
aim across my left arm and fired. She sprang into the air, evidently
hit, and as she came down I fired again, with like effect, and she fell
to the ground.
[Illustration]
I gazed a moment at my prostrate and dying admirer; and seeing that she
was incapable of rising or doing me injury, I approached, with a certain
feeling of pity and remorse, to look at her closely. And then I found
that my terror, although justified, was entirely misplaced. I had
mistaken the sex of my pursuer: my enamored female was a male—an enraged
male, of course, and I was saved, not from marriage but from death. But
no; faint, and dying fast, he turned and held out his hand to me.
“Cousin, what made you run? Why did you hurt me so?” he said. I answered
with a feeling of shame that I hope never to have again: “Because I
thought you were a lady that wanted to marry me.” “Oh, no,” he said,
with feeble and interrupted breath, “I only thought you looked something
like a friend of ours who was here a few years ago; and I wanted to take
you to a place where there are some cocoa-nut trees and a fresh spring,
and we’d talk this matter over. And let me tell you something,” he said,
drawing my ear down near his lips. “Don’t go on supposing that every
female that may look at you pleasantly and seek your society has
selected you. Remember me kindly to Du Chaillu. Adieu!”
He died; and I walked slowly on, musing upon my adventure, a more
modest, if not a wiser man, and did not quicken my pace until I
remembered that I was charged with Livingstone’s message to Murchison.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
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