Perhaps they may have a lingua franca among themselves, but against man they conspire together to be dumb; provoking him to speculation by imitating human manners, and then frustrating all his conclusions by suddenly lapsing — into monkeys.
It is difficult enough to catch a monkey’s eye, but to catch one of its ideas is impossible. Neither in look nor in mind will it positively confront man, but just as it lets its eye pass over his, yet never rest upon it full, so its “mind” glances to one side or the other of the human intelligence, but never coincides with it.[1] It may be that they were once all human, that the link still exists, and that in time all will be human again; but meanwhile it is quite certain that race after race is becoming extinct, and that as yet no single individual in all the “wilderness of monkeys” is quite a man.
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Stanley the traveller has told us that sometimes when he entered an African boma, intending to take notes of the strange beings who lived in it, and their odd appearance and eccentric ways, he was greatly disconcerted to find that he himself, and not the natives, was considered singular in that part of the world. They, the savages, were ordinary, every-day folk; but he, their discoverer, was a curious novelty, that deserved, in their opinion, to be better known than he was. So the majority turned the tables on the explorer; for while they were all of one orthodoxy, in looks, habits, and language, the stranger appeared to them a ridiculous exception. He had not a single precedent to cite, or example to appeal to, in
- ↑ For an admirably sympathetic sketch of monkey character — and much more besides — read Miss Frances Power Cobbe’s delightful book, “False Beasts and True.”
