PART III.
UNNATURAL HISTORY.
I.
MONKEYS AND METAPHYSICS.
Monkeys are Metaphysics. — How they found Seeta.— Yet they are not Proud. — Their Sad-Facedness. — Decayed Divinities. — As Gods in Egypt. — From Grave to Gay. — What do the Apes think of us? — The Etiquette of Scratching. — “The New Boy” of the Monkey-House. — They take Notes of us. — Man-Ape Puzzles: — The Soko. — Missing Links.
MONKEYS are metaphysics, and it is no idle work meditating among them.
In the first place, there is an objective difficulty, for the monkeys themselves seem possessed by a demon of unrest, and are perpetually in kaleidoscopic motion. The individual that was here when you began to take a note is nowhere when you have finished. In the interval it has probably turned a dozen somersaults on as many different perches, taken a swing on the trapeze, pulled all the tails it found hanging about, and is now busy scratching a small friend up in the roof. In the next place, there is a subjective difficulty, for in thinking about monkeys the mind cannot relax itself as it would in thinking about cats or parrots, nor get into undress over it as it might over a more trifling subject.
