The crowd runs to kick him, or slays him,
And afterwards sees it was blind;
Then we set up his statue, and praise him
As a credit to all mankind.”
5. CO-OPERATION
Whether or not the guess is right that in that hubbub among the monkeys in the Simla trees there was a rudimentary heresy hunt, or, in other words, that the monkeys were screeching whatever in monkey language intimated, “Bad form, bad form,” “Order, order,” it cannot be surprising to find solidarity such as theirs facilitated, or even made possible, by what can only be called [192] ]a kind of language. If Max Müller had been beside Dr Murphy one day in 1905 in Simla, and seen what Dr Murphy then saw, he would probably have abandoned the proud claim he has made for humanity to a monopoly of speech. We must be content with the more modest boast of developing it.
The doctor noticed a monkey sitting on the flat roof of a small house in Simla, where lived a man who roasted gram and sold it. The little brown fellow was visibly hankering after the gram exposed for sale on a tray before the door. He leaned over and looked long at the man beside it. Then the doctor saw him go to a short distance and confer with four or five others, two of whom returned with him, and three little heads bent over the roof to study the situation and the unconscious seller of gram.
Then one of them went down the water-pipe behind the house, walked boldly round to the front of it, and openly, before the eyes of the astonished man, took a handful and ran away. The man snatched a stick and chased him; and Dr Murphy noticed with surprise that, of two possible roads, the fugitive took the least convenient for himself, but the one that best kept the man out of sight and reach of his stall. As soon [193] ]as he was gone, the two remaining monkeys hurried down and helped themselves to handfuls and escaped away, to be presently rejoined by their daring colleague, who had drawn away the man.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this incident. These monkeys must somehow have been able to speak together and trust each other. To every union of several we may apply what Heraclitus said of every unit,—“Its character is its fate.” Solidarity is possible in exact proportion to the degree of honesty prevailing. So the monkeys must have had a rudimentary kind of honesty as well as a rudimentary kind of speech; and that was why they could act on Moltke’s maxim—“Erst wägen, dann wagen” (“First ponder, then dare,” or, in commoner words, “Think before you act”), and then carry out their plans and co-operate well. We would be absent-minded beggars indeed if we did not see here the germ of that tribal solidarity from which all human civilisation has gradually evolved. Let us never forget our humble beginnings, or despise our poor relations.