This Simian World | Page 2

certain definite kinds of material. Because this yeast is in us
there may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting mankind;
but because of our line of descent there are also queer limitations.

III
In those distant invisible epochs before men existed, before even the
proud missing link strutted around through the woods (little realizing

how we his greatgrandsons would smile wryly at him much as our own
descendants may shudder at us, ages hence) the various animals were
desperately competing for power. They couldn't or didn't live as equals.
Certain groups sought the headship.
Many strange forgotten dynasties rose, met defiance, and fell. In the
end it was our ancestors who won, and became simian kings, and
bequeathed a whole planet to us--and have never been thanked for it.
No monument has been raised to the memory of those first hairy
conquerors; yet had they not fought well and wisely in those far-off
times, some other race would have been masters, and kept us in cages,
or show us for sport in the forest while they ruled the world.
So Potter and I, developing this train of thought, began to imagine we
had lived many ages ago, and somehow or other had alighted here from
some older planet. Familiar with the ways of evolution elsewhere in the
universe, we naturally should have wondered what course it would take
on this earth. "Even in this out-of-the-way corner of the Cosmos," we
might have reflected, "and on this tiny star, it may be of interest to
consider the trend of events." We should have tried to appraise the
different species as they wandered around, each with its own set of
good and bad characteristics. Which group, we'd have wondered, would
ever contrive to rule all the rest?
And how great a development could they attain to thereafter?

IV
If we had landed here after the great saurians had been swept from the
scene, we might first have considered the lemurs or apes. They had
hands. Aesthetically viewed, the poor simians were simply grotesque;
but travelers who knew other planets might have known what beauty
may spring from an uncouth beginning in this magic universe.
Still--those frowsy, unlovely hordes of apes and monkeys were so
completely lacking in signs of kingship; they were so flighty, too, in
their ways, and had so little purpose, and so much love for absurd and
idle chatter, that they would have struck us, we thought, as unlikely
material. Such traits, we should have reminded ourselves, persist. They
are not easily left behind, even after long stages; and they form a
terrible obstacle to all high advancement.

V
The bees or the ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their
smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They
could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And
in these orderly insects there are obviously a capacity for labor, and
co-operative labor at that, which could carry them far. We all know that
they have a marked genius: great gifts of their own. In a civilization of
super-ants or bees, there would have been no problem of the hungry
unemployed, no poverty, no unstable government, no riots, no strikes
for short hours, no derision of eugenics, no thieves, perhaps no crime at
all.
Ants are good citizens: they place group interests first.
But they carry it so far, they have few or no political rights. An ant
doesn't have the vote, apparently: he just has his duties.
This quality may have something to do with their having groups wars.
The egotism of their individual spirits is allowed scant expression, so
the egotism of the groups is extremely ferocious and active. Is this one
of the reasons why ants fight so much? We have seen the same
phenomenon occur in certain nations of men. And the ants commit
atrocities in and after their battles that are--I wish I could truly
say--inhuman.
But conversely, ants are absolutely unselfish within the community.
They are skilful. Ingenious. Their nests and buildings are relatively
larger than man's. The scientists speak of their paved streets, vaulted
halls, their hundreds of different domesticated animals, their pluck and
intelligence, their individual initiative, their chaste and industrious lives.
Darwin said the ant's brain was "one of the most marvelous atoms in
the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man"--yes, of present-day
man, who for thousands and thousands of years has had so much more
chance to develop his brain. . . .A thoughtful observer would have
weighed all these excellent qualities.
When we think of these creatures as little men (which is all wrong of
course) we see they have their faults. To our eyes they seem too orderly,
for instance. Repressively so. Their ways are more