[Note.—This study of a gibbon was suggested by the writings of Mr Wallace, the veteran natural philosopher, still alive, who shares with Charles Darwin the honour of proposing the theory of Natural Selection. His writings not being at hand where this is written, his exact words cannot be quoted; but certainly it was because he intimated in some way how much was to be learned by the observation of an adolescent orang-outang, domesticated under natural conditions, that I undertook the upbringing and education of a young gibbon when it was offered to me. The results, for which much of the credit belongs to my wife, seem to justify completely the shrewd anticipations of Wallace.]
1. CHILDREN OF AIR, IN GENERAL
Children of air, without the wings to fly,
Like apes, we mount the trees to reach the sky.
Why not? Are not our arms better than wings, the implements of an inferior species? A very slight knowledge of anatomy is enough to let one know that nobody can have both wings and arms. The why of that is inscrutable; [217] ]but the fact is undeniable. The Almighty has written that in the skeletons of all creation.
What fools we are, when we try to improve on the works of God! In His eyes, it is but as yesterday since our parents, with bent backs and feeble knees, came out of the wood, and, “hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,” they stumbled on their humble human way. Fine roads and cars, big houses and convenient clothes we have procured ourselves; but let us not unwisely forget our origin, nor fail to recognise the Mystery of Mysteries, from which we emerged, and into which we shall soon again subside.
There is something so ridiculous in human pride, it is so silly as well as so sinful, that it is profitable to dwell in thought upon the touches of Nature that link us to our humbler kindred, even to those of our monkey cousins, surviving still. Well might Goethe glory, as we know he did, in his discovery of the intermaxillary bone—the little bone which the apes have between the jaws, but which men were always supposed to lack, until the poet and anatomist found it, latent and disused, but visible yet in every son of man.
On this and many other such likenesses, it is needless now to dwell. Encyclopædias are cheap, and the works of Charles Darwin. Rather consider [218] ]what has been noticed less, and is equally remarkable, the likenesses in feelings, habits and gestures, which depend less upon the bones and muscles than upon the nerves, and upon the spiritual springs, still more impalpable than nerves.
In learning to swim, for example, the first lesson is, do not lift the arms out of the water; for in water or anywhere else, when men are excited, up go their arms. This is not merely a conventional stage gesture. It has become so, because it is a spontaneous movement in real life. Why? Surely, because our arboreal ancestors, whether it was a lion in their way that frightened them or a bull, would take to the trees, and the uplifted arms were the first step to safety. Besides, the little babies in the trees, long, long ago, had to hang on to their mothers by their arms. The whole significance of the gesture lies in its spontaneity. It is by taking thought that we run. We have to learn to walk, no less than to dance; but the baby, newly born, lifts up his little arms, and thinks of what he is doing no more than does an adult in despair, or a drowning man that is sinking in the sea.
Let Aristotle and Confucius say what they will about the best road in the middle, the habits of innumerable ages cannot be unlearned at dictation. [219] ]In the hour of danger men are apt to revert, and grope for an escape upwards, like the apes, feeling that that must be the right direction—Excelsior. So “to the hills they lift their eyes” and run, when hills are visible and trees are not.