“I should hardly think that a man of your fertile resources would have let so small a thing as that stand in his way,” said Doctor Livingstone. “When a man is able to make a reputation for himself like yours, in which material facts are never allowed to interfere with his doing what he sets out to do, he ought not to be daunted by the need of a tail. If you could make a cherry-tree grow out of a deer’s head, I fail to see why you could not personally grow a tail, or anything else you might happen to need for the attainment of your ends.”
“I was not so anxious to get the accent as all that,” returned the Baron. “I don’t think it is necessary for a man to make a monkey of himself just for the pleasure of mastering a language. Reasoning similarly, a man to master the art of braying in a fashion comprehensible to the jackass of average intellect should make a jackass of himself, cultivate his ears, and learn to kick, so as properly to punctuate his sentences after the manner of most conversational beasts of that kind.”
“Then you believe that jackasses talk, too, do you?” asked Doctor Darwin.
“Why not?” said the Baron. “If monkeys, why not donkeys? Certainly they do. All creatures have some means of communicating their thoughts to each other. Why man in his conceit should think otherwise I don’t know, unless it be that the birds and beasts in their conceit probably think that they alone of all the creatures in the world can talk.”
“I haven’t a doubt,” said Doctor Livingstone, “that monkeys listening to men and women talking think they are only jabbering.”
“They’re not far from wrong in most cases if they do,” said Doctor Johnson, who up to this time had been merely an interested listener. “I’ve thought that many a time myself.”
“Which is perhaps, in a slight degree, a confirmation of my theory,” put in Darwin. “If Doctor Johnson’s mind runs in the same channels that the monkey’s mind runs in, why may we not say that Doctor Johnson, being a man, has certain qualities of the monkey, and is therefore, in a sense, of the same strain?”
“You may say what you please,” retorted Johnson, wrathfully, “but I’ll make you prove what you say about me.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Doctor Livingstone, in a peace-making spirit. “It would not be a pleasant task for you, compelling our friend to prove you descended from the ape. I should think you’d prefer to make him leave it unproved.”
“Have monkeys Boswells?” queried Thackeray.