This Simian World | Page 9

spend our lives
looking on. Consider our museums for instance: they are a sign of our
breed. It makes us smile to see birds, like the magpie, with a mania for
this collecting--but only monkeyish beings could reverence museums
as we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and quantities in them.
Old furniture, egg-shells, watches, bits of stone. . . . And next door, a
"menagerie." Though our victory over all other animals is now aeons
old, we still bring home captives and exhibit them caged in our cities.
And when a species dies out--or is crowded (by us), off the planet--we
even collect the bones of the vanquished and show them like trophies.
Curiosity is a valuable trait. It will make the simians learn many things.

But the curiosity of a simian is as excessive as the toil of an ant. Each
simian will wish to know more than his head can hold, let alone ever
deal with; and those whose minds are active will wish to know
everything going. It would stretch a god's skull to accomplish such an
ambition, yet simians won't like to think it's beyond their powers. Even
small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how thrifty, will be eager to buy
costly encyclopedias, or books of all knowledge. Almost every simian
family, even the dullest, will think it is due to themselves to keep all
knowledge handy.
Their idea of a liberal education will therefore be a great hodge-pod
only. He who narrows his field and digs deep will be viewed as an alien.
If more than one man in a hundred should thus dare to concentrate, the
ruinous effects of being a specialist will be sadly discussed. It may
make a man exceptionally useful, they will have to admit; but still they
will feel badly, and fear that civilization will suffer.
One of their curious educational ideas--but a natural one--will be
shown in the efforts they will make to learn more than one "language."
They will set their young to spending a decade or more of their lives in
studying duplicate systems--whole systems--of chatter. Those who thus
learn several different ways to say the same things, will command
much respect, and those who learn many will be looked on with
awe--by true simians. And persons without this accomplishment will be
looked down on a little, and will actually feel quite apologetic about it
themselves.
Consider how enormously complicated a complete language must be,
with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds;
the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs;
the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and
inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![1]
Where another race, after the most frightful discord and pains, might
have slowly constructed one language before this earth grew cold, this
race will create literally hundreds, each complete in itself, and many of
them with quaint little systems of writing attached. And the owners of
this linguistic gift are so humble about it, they will marvel at bees, for
their hives, and at beavers' mere dams.
[1] You remember what Kipling says in the Jungle Books, about how
disgusted the quiet animals were with the Bandarlog, because they were

eternally chattering, would never keep still. Well, this is the good side
of it.
To return, however, to their fear of being too narrow, in going to the
other extreme they will run to incredible lengths. Every civilized
simian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever older facts he has
picked up, will wish to know all the news of all the world. If he felt any
true concern to know it, this would be rather fine of him: it would
imply such a close solidarity on the part of this genus. (Such a close
solidarity would seem crushing, to others; but that is another matter.) It
won't be true concern, however, it will be merely a blind inherited
instinct. He'll forget what he's read, the very next hour, or moment. Yet
there he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature, reading of bombs in
Spain or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting on all the news he
can get of the kind our race loved when they scampered and fought in
the forest, news that will stir his most primitive simian feelings,--wars,
accidents, love affairs, and family quarrels.
To feed himself with this largely purposeless provender, he will pay
thousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night; and
they will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother or
obscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets will be
read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this lazy race will
not think it labor to perform