Studies in Life and Sense

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 37 IlI. MONKEYS. There is little doubt that our quadrumanous neighbours are by no means viewed with favour, or held in high esteem, by the vast majority of mankind. Probably with the exception of interested zoologists, possessed of an inherent weakness for the study of man's nearest allies, or of certain...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 37 IlI. MONKEYS. There is little doubt that our quadrumanous neighbours are by no means viewed with favour, or held in high esteem, by the vast majority of mankind. Probably with the exception of interested zoologists, possessed of an inherent weakness for the study of man's nearest allies, or of certain Eastern sects whose veneration of the monkey-race forms an obligatory part of their creeds, the genus homo regards his poor relations in a zoological sense, with the same disfavour with which, in his most civilised aspect, he looks upon the same relatives in a social sense. Curiosity and disgust are, in fact, the ruling ideas of ordinary mankind, when it surveys the monkey-tribes from China to Peru as literally represented in our collections of living animals, or when respectably preserved for national instruction in our museums. Why this should be so, is perhaps more difficult to trace than most of us would imagine. There are more unlikely theories than those which attribute the proverbial hostility of near relatives as the cause of the common repudiation by mankind of the chattering ape and mischievous monkey. Poetry, ever the earliest teacher of mankind, has never viewed the Simian race with favour; and popular culture has been largely content to travel in the poet's wake. Too much the reflex of humanity itself, on the one hand, to be readily accepted as a desirable acquaintance, and too little human?in the best sense of that term?in some of its ways, on the other, to expedite a close alliance with mankind, the ape-type has been ostracised, whilst the rat and mouse have been petted, the hare domesticated, the pig fondled, and even the cruel octopus itself lionised. There exist German legends which picture rats and mice under the guise of human souls. He wou...