LECTURE.

My Hairy Hearers:

Manyparts of the world, less happy than the wilds of our beloved Africa, are inhabited by a feeble, smooth-skinned creature called Man. This unhappy animal is much vexed with creeds and theories and notions; and the one of these which has been longest and most deeply rooted in his mind is, that he is a fallen being. For hundreds of years, for thousands, he has believed that his forefathers lived in a Golden Age, compared with which that in which he now toils and worries is an age of stone or iron; and he seems to have had a melancholy pleasure in the thought that in that golden age his race was better, happier, and handsomer than it is at present. Of all his fancies, this one has the best foundation. For, O my quadrumanous hearers, whether gorillas, chimpanzees, ouran-outans, or simple undistinguished monkeys! this feeble, helpless creature is akin to us, and is in fact our poor relation. The thought, indeed, is shocking. No respectable gorilla, of well-regulated mind, can contemplate it without horror. But the truth must be told sometimes; and the time has come when we must confess that man, weak, born without clothes—cruel, cowardly, and ungrateful man—is of our family; very remotely, I am happy to say, a kind of ten thousandth cousin, but still a direct descendant of our progenitors. From the high estate of gorilla-hood he has descended to that of manhood; and we are in a measure disgraced by his humiliation. This is the fall of man—that he has descended from monkey-hood to humanity.

The story of his descent in the scale of creation is sad and touching, and cannot be heard without deep emotion. What lady gorilla about to become a mother, or hoping that at some future day she may be about to become a mother—about to become a mother for the first, or second, or I will say even the third time (for I cannot suppose that any well-regulated lady gorilla would ever be about to become a mother for the fourth time)—what lady gorilla, I say, in this interesting condition of mind, could contemplate without shuddering the probability that, instead of presenting the gentleman gorilla of her affections with a pledge of their love that promised to have a hide and a bellow that would rival those of a buffalo, teeth like pebble-stones, a fine retreating forehead, and, above all, that high distinguishing feature of our race, a hind-thumb that is at once a terror to our foes and the most useful of all our members, she would produce a wrinkled, pink-bodied weakling, looking like a monkey—one of the smallest and feeblest of our race—that had been flayed alive, and which, even after reaching maturity, could live only by covering itself with an artificial skin, and by making machines with which to get its food and defend itself against its natural enemies! The idea is shocking; and I beg pardon of my lady friends for the suggestion, I may say the bare suggestion. But the story of this fall of man although sad, is interesting, and I shall proceed to tell it, counting on the indulgence of my hearers; for it is linked and twined with our own past history.

The tale has been lately told by one of these very miserable creatures, who, in the depths of his degradation, has yet had the sense to discover his relationship to us, and the grace to be proud of it. Yes, my well-haired friends, a man-animal called the Darwin has had the satisfaction of boasting to his fellows of his descent from the quadrumana. Not only so, he has traced it truthfully, step by step, to our shame and their glory. I shall tell you succinctly and directly what he spreads over a long and tedious narrative, full of assertions, and repetitions, and guesses, which he calls inferences. These are all needless to us; for, as he confesses, and we boast, we comprehend at once by instinct what he and his poor fellows in weakness and ignorance can only grasp by a long and painful process which they call reasoning, by which they are often led into absurdities attainable in no other way.

As you know, the world was made for the gorilla, and when he appeared he was in all the glory of his present strength and beauty. He was the last and highest of Nature’s productions, the ideal creature of the universe. True, there were others larger and stronger—on land and in water—lions, tigers, elephants, and the like, whales, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses; but these were of low caste, creatures with whom he could have no intercourse on terms of equality, and whom he could generally meet only as his natural enemies. For you must have observed that those who are below us hate us; hate us enough at least to rejoice in our downfall, if not to seek our destruction. Usually, too, they devour us, and feed their own life and growth by our extinction.

But the gorilla, too, has had his vicissitudes. Indeed, we may say that, like man, he has had his fall. Unlike man, however, he rose again, until he re-attained his present glorious perfection of form and feature. We fell, my quadrumanous friends, through the frailty and fickleness of the female sex. That charming and no less useful half of our race has also been its bane and its torment for many centuries. To them we owe the humiliating fact that gorillas once had tails, and that some even of our cousins are still afflicted with that ridiculous, although sometimes useful, appendage. I hope that none of those who are present, representing the be-tailed families of our species, will take offence at what I have said. All distinctions founded upon superiority have been done away by the revolutions of late years; and the last change in the fundamental law of our community, I think it was the fifteenth, made the smallest and longest-tailed monkey in Africa—my equal.

But to the story of our tail.

Long ago, so long that the years cannot be numbered upon all the fingers and toes of all the gorillas and monkeys in Africa, a beautiful young lady gorilla was courted by several gentlemen gorillas, some in their earliest youth, some nearer maturity, and some at that period of mature middle age which I—ah have—ah had occasion to observe is not without its peculiar charms to the tender and beautiful of her sex. But none of them found favor with her. She seemed averse to marriage. They went through all those performances which are at once tributes to beauty, and so allurements to its possessors. They danced, they strutted, they howled, they beat their breasts; they ran up the tallest trees and jumped from the tops, landing plump before her at the most unexpected moments, and in the most extraordinary and indescribable positions. They stood on their heads and clapped the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet together, howling at the same time so enchantingly that they could be heard for miles around. One of them even applied the thumb of one distended hand to his nose, and the thumb of his other distended hand to the little finger of the former, and so with the thumbs and fingers of his feet, and grinned in the most bewitching manner. But alas, she sat unmoved before all these demonstrations of strength, agility, and affection. To none of them did she seriously incline. True, there remained untried the form of mingled courtship and marriage, a seizure by main force and an elopement, which has been so common, and which is said to be not without its charms to many of her sex of all races, and in all climes, and which is one of those time-honored institutions, the abrogation of which would seem like the up-heaving of the foundations of society. But her size and her strength were so great that none of her suitors ventured upon this method of courtship; for it was understood that she lacked that willingness to be seized which alone gives this method its charm and its success. In fact, she was the Brunhilda of our race, for whom there were Günthers enough, but no Siegfried. She had let it be understood that if any lover pressed his attentions upon her she would bind his hands and feet together, and, bending down the biggest sapling she could find, tie him to its top and let it spring up with him into the air again. And so she was not molested, and passed through the woods in maiden-meditation, fancy free.

One day she sat upon the sea-shore, lonely and pensive, gazing upon the waters, when suddenly there appeared in the distance an enormous, oval head, with moon-like eyes, followed by many roods of body and tail, that rose and fell like the waves of the ocean. It was the Sea-serpent. She looked at first with wonder, then with curiosity, at last with admiration. What enormous grace of undulation! What seductive sinuosity! What bewildering immensity of horizontal extension! What glistening folds of glairy smoothness! What a piquant difference from the rectangular jointedness, the half-upright attitudes, and the hairy roughness of her obtrusive suitors! As she gazed, her heart told her that she had at last found her affinity. But, overcome although she was, she was also coy. Smitten to her very midriff with love’s dart, she would not, unsought, be won, even by the Sea-serpent. Nor would she be guilty of the impropriety of remaining alone with a member of the opposite sex, to whom she was not married, or even engaged, and indeed a gentleman who had not been properly introduced. She rose with maiden modesty, to walk away. But I am bound to say that her course did not lead her directly from the object which she thought it becoming to leave; rather, it must be confessed, in that oblique line before him, which gave the best opportunity to him of seeing her, and to her of casting glances at him, while she produced the impression that, if not stayed, she would very soon be out of sight. As she moved along the strand, he gazed, and was fascinated, not only by her hairy figure, but by the captivating combination of stride, stumble, and jump, which is the received mode of progression of our noble race. The Sea-serpent was enchanted. The flame was mutual. Nevertheless, after the manner of his sex, he set himself to win what was his already. He went through all his masculine and serpentine performances. He coiled himself up and stretched himself out. He lashed the sea into foam. He came on shore and tied himself up into true lover’s knots before her. He put his tail into his mouth, and rolled himself along the shore in a vast circle, the symbol of the eternity of his love. It seemed as if the very equator had become enamored of her charms, and, refusing any longer to belt the Earth, revolved within the reach of her superior attractions. Finally, by a super-serpentine effort, he stood straight up on the point of his tail, flapping his fins and hissing out his admiration with a noise like that of the Maelstrom. This accomplished his purpose. When she saw him thus reared up, and looking down with such perpendicular enormity of love, from an elevation of some hundred feet, the compliment was more than she could bear. The omnipotence of her charms had turned the equator to the pole; and, satisfied, she yielded. Then he, descending from his height, led her to their nuptial bower, a neighboring cave, nothing loath, but yet with coy, reluctant, amorous delay.[1]

1.The learned lecturer might here have cited, in support of the truthfulness of this and one or two other passages, Mr. Darwin’s much more impressive, as well as multitudinous, descriptions of what he calls “the act of courtship,” in chapters xiii, and xviii., passim, of “The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex.”

The fruit of these nuptials appeared in due time. As might have been expected, it was a mingling of the traits of the two parents—a gorilla with a tail, which appendage had now been added to one of our race for the first time by the operation of the great principle of sexual selection. At first the tail was looked upon with suspicion, if not aversion. The most respectable matrons of our race scoffed, and sniffed, and turned up their noses at the little stranger. A gorilla with a tail! And they were right; the serpent had indeed entered our Eden. But Brunhilda was devoted to her married Siegfried, and produced at regular intervals new tailed-gorillas; more, the demon of love, or of curiosity, took possession of the young lady gorillas. They were fascinated by this huge Adonis of the deep; and baby gorillas with tails began to come with increasing frequency. The thing became the fashion; and what was at first the fashion, was ere long confirmed by convenience. As the first of this fallen race grew to adolescence, he not only flourished his tail with captivating grace, but he used it in climbing trees; he swam with it; he offered it as bait in the water, and came to shore with a crab or a lobster attached to it, which he ate himself or carried to his mother in triumph. And when at last, having taken to himself two wives, he hung by his tail to the branch of a tree, and grasping a wife by each hind foot, took a cocoa-nut in each hand, and broke them on the heads of the two ladies, doubt and derision were alike abandoned; there went up a howl of admiration, and he was declared to be fittest to survive in the struggle for existence. After this he could have married every lady gorilla in Africa; but there was no need of that. The generation of gentlemen gorillas with tails came rapidly to maturity, and were as rapidly-received into favor by the other sex. It became vulgar to have a lover without a tail, and lady gorillas of any pretentions to social distinction preferred to remain in a state of widowhood, or even of vestal virginity, rather than accept a lover who was not decorated. This went on until at last there were no gorillas without tails, except a few old fogies who took great pains to parade their tailless backs, stroking their sparse white whiskers, and talking of the good old times, when they were young, and no proper young lady gorilla would have looked at a Sea-serpent. But they were only laughed at for their pains.

A few years, however, showed the justice of their censure, and the sad consequences of Brunhilda’s indiscretion. A principle of normal development was then illustrated in our hapless and fallen race with direful results. The gorilla reaches maturity and full growth in a few years, but the Sea-serpent in, I do not know how many. It may be centuries. Science has not yet decided that interesting question. I am of the opinion that the Sea-serpent is still growing; for each time that he is seen he is larger than he was at his previous appearance. Be this as it may, when the gorilla part of the new species which had thus been formed reached maturity, it of course ceased to grow. Not so the sea-serpentine appendage. That followed its normal law of development, and kept on slowly growing.[2]At first this excited no apprehensions of trouble, but even a little pride. At last, however, the new species showed very little gorilla and a great deal of Sea-serpent, until at last they came to be a tail with a gorilla. The tails grew, and grew, and grew, until they wound and undulated off into the dim distance; and it seemed at last as if a gorilla might be here; and the end of his tail, if it had an end, vanish through far-stretching perspective into infinite space. The tails, too, following their natural instincts, had an irrepressible tendency toward the water, and while there they were so remote that they were entirely beyond the control of their owners. Lobsters clawed them, sharks snapped at them, and whales took offensive liberties with them. On land the result was an inextricable entanglement. At times the whole community would be tied up in one indistinguishable knot, like the worms in a man’s bait-box. It was proposed to cut off the tails with sharp flints or clam shells; and this was tried; but the tail was so very large and the gorilla so very small in proportion, that it was the gorilla that died, while the tail lived, wriggled down to the shore, and swam off to sea. After two or three experiments this plan was abandoned, as it must needs have been, or our race would have become extinct. Next, it was decided that each individual should gradually reduce the length of his tail by cutting it off joint by joint. But the confusion produced by the inter-twisting was so great that no one was quite sure of his own tail, and while he was sleeping, or eating, or disporting himself in as lively a manner as was possible in this gloomy condition of things, he was liable to feel a joint of his tail cut off by some other individual half a mile away, or perhaps sitting next him; and this might happen two or three times in one day after he had himself amputated his daily joint so great was the confusion. I blush to relate, too, that it destroyed the peace of many families, and threatened to sap the morals of the community. To this condition, my well-haired and tailless quadrumanous hearers, our race was reduced by the wayward fancy and unnatural longing of one female.

2.See “The Descent of Man,” etc., chapter viii. on “The Laws of Inheritance,” and “On the Relation of the Period of Development,” etc.

In this deplorable condition of affairs, we were saved by the action of the same great principle of sexual selection to which we owed our degradation. By a female came our fall, and through a female came our salvation. A gorilla maiden of tender years, and whose sea-serpentine appendage was yet in its earliest stages of development, saw the time approaching when she would be courted and perhaps claimed and taken by some two-legged termination of an elongated sea-monster. She shrank from the prospect and shuddered at her impending fate. She was a strong-minded female, and she determined to free herself, and if possible her race, from the dreadful consequences of the indiscretion of her ancestress. Like that ancestress, she shunned the opposite sex, withdrew from society, and gave herself up to solitary wanderings. The problem which she had undertaken to solve was difficult; for then not only gorillas, but all living things had tails. But when was female ingenuity and perseverance ever baffled in regard to marriage! In that matter, we of the stronger sex are mere puppets in the female hands. We often think we have our own way, but it is chiefly by allowing us to think so that our weaker charmers have theirs. Chance aided her as chance so often does those who wait and watch with determined purpose.

One day, as she sat by the borders of a large lagoon, a huge pair of nostrils appeared on the surface of the waters. They wheezed and snorted for a few moments; and then an enormous head came forth, garnished with little ears and huge, stony teeth. The head was followed by a still more enormous body; but, oh joy! oh delight, and prospect full of hope! a body to which there was appended the smallest conceivable of tails; in fact, a tail which to her tail-wearied eyes was of inconceivable smallness. It was a hippopotamus. In her turn she was charmed, was won upon the instant. What happiness might be hoped for in a life with a male creature having so gigantic a body and such an infinitesimally little tail! What terminal transformation, what caudal beauty, might not be looked for in the progeny of such a father! Her resolution was taken on the instant. That hippopotamus should marry her. But the accomplishment of her design proved to be far from easy. The hippopotamus came up out of the water, and she supposed that he would run directly to her. To her surprise, he took no notice of her, but splashed along the sedgy margin of the great pool, thrusting his huge snout into the mud and stirring up the bottom until he and the water were alike befouled. She threw herself in his way and trod the shore with dainty, mincing steps, her tail undulating after her in graceful folds. To her disgust, he seemed unconscious of her presence. He lifted his head, indeed, and gave her a lazy look of indifference, but turned immediately again to his loafing through the mud and water. The hippopotamus is not a lively animal, not of an inquiring mind, almost without curiosity, and, I am grieved to say, utterly without sentiment. What was to be done? She could not seize upon him and marry him out of hand; or, if she could have done so, she would have been no nearer her end. If she had been able to seize that vast, enchanting, and exquisitely almost-tailless body, and carry it off with her to her bower, of what use to her would have been the indifferent mass of flesh? For strong minded as a female may be, and even strong bodied, the unalterable decrees of nature have placed a limit to the efficiency of her will, although not to that of her wiles. Our forecasting and self-sacrificing ancestress might perhaps have stood guard over her male favorite, keeping him well fed and contented within her solitary seraglio; but she would have been thereby no nearer to her hopes of dandling in her arms a new-born and almost tailless progeny.

She grasped the situation at a glance, and mastered it after a moment’s reflection. With the readiness of her sex in such matters, she instantly formed her resolution. Her female instinct taught her that, although a hippopotamus might be without curiosity, without politeness, and even without a disposition to gallantry, he could not be male and yet without sexual vanity. As he would not fall in love with her, she decided to make him believe that she was enamored of him; and, being female, she also determined that, although she set out with the intention of captivating him and yielding to him, she would make him pay well for his indifference. She retreated to her former position, and sitting down on the bank, remained there looking at her victim until he waded into deep water and sank out of sight.

The next day, when he came out upon his haunt, she was there again, and he could not but see that she watched him closely; and when, after stirring up the mud and treading down the sedges (a proceeding which she seemed to regard with the liveliest interest), he walked down into the depths, as he was about disappearing he turned his head, and his last glimpse of the upper world showed him the young lady gorilla gazing pensively on his vanishing form. When she saw him turn his head she smiled within herself; for she saw that she had put a hook into his nostrils. Again and again he found her there, always gazing quietly at him; and each day he lingered longer at his amphibious disporting.

One day he came and she was not there; at least she was not visible; but, concealed in a neighboring thicket, she watched the effect of her absence. The hippopotamus arrived as usual, and looked for her at her accustomed seat. Not seeing her, he came fully out upon the shore and gazed around. He trotted heavily about, peering inquisitively from his little eyes. He sniffed the air, but the wind blew from the shore, and she remained undiscovered. Deprived of his audience, his performances that day were brief and spiritless, and he soon sought the bottom of the lagoon. The next day she was there, and he trotted directly up to her. But she rose and walked shyly away, keeping her eyes softly bent upon him. He approached quickly; but at once she fled away at a pace that defied pursuit; for she was much the nimbler. At a convenient distance, she paused and made eyes at him. Seeing that he could not overtake her, he went back into the water. She returned to her post of observation, when he began those performances which the Darwin says the male always goes through to please and win the female. He bellowed and gnashed his teeth, he rolled over and over in the mud and water, in the most captivating manner. He went into deeper water and lashed about in it until he made it boil like a pot. In vain; she sat immovable, although she continued her pensive gaze; and when he again approached her she fled, and this time actually vanished from his sight. The next day both were there again, and he repeated his performance. Again she was charmed, but still unyielding. In a frenzy of repressed hippopotamic feeling, he approached her; and, could he believe his little eyes? she did not flee. He wiggled his tiny tail with the rapidity of a Yankee clock’s pendulum, all unconscious that he was thus attracting attention to the greatest, although the least conspicuous, of his charms. All at once, fired and stimulated by vanity and love, it occurred to him that if he could and should exhibit himself in a position and with a movement more like her own, he would be irresistible. He had observed that she walked chiefly upon her hind legs; and he therefore determined to approach her walking upon his. He heaved himself upward two or three times with difficulty, and without success; for he was one of the heavy fathers of his clumsy race. But at last he attained his end, and approached her, walking in a ponderous imitation of her own graceful gait. It was an awful and overpowering exertion. The great historian of the fallen race of Darwin, one of them called Gibbon, did not have a more trying task when he bent his hippopotamic figure, and knelt before his beloved one, who was obliged to call her servants to help him up. He was paid only with a peal of laughter; but our ponderous ancestor was rewarded by seeing on the face of his charmer a pensive and delighted smile. It roused him to an exertion almost incredible. Inflamed with love, and his vanity tickled to the point of frenzy, he did what the Darwin says all lovers do to win their loves, he danced. Moving slowly and stiffly at first, he soon launched into a break-down that was a marvel to all living creatures. With jaws wide open, and nostrils distended, he thundered about the shore, flinging his forefeet into the air with frantic and gigantic abandonment. If one of his hind legs stuck deep in the soft margin of the pool, and interrupted his performance, it was but for a moment; he drew it out with a suddenness and force that made a report that startled all the birds within a mile, and plunged again into his amorous saltation. It was the most tremendouspas seulever executed. At last he stopped, panting; and, plumping down upon his knees, joined his fore-paws in supplication. Of course our ancestress then yielded—so the Darwin says that no female can resist a dancing lover—and in due time she was rewarded by the appearance of a little gorilla with a tail so small as to be hardly visible.

The event stirred our community far more than if the bantling had been born without a head. The mothers of newly-born gorillas, with the old-fashioned tail, undertook at first to decry the peculiar feature of the new-comer. But this effort, although natural, was in vain; and in brief, the little tail now, like the great tail in earlier ages, became the fashion, and carried all before it. The hippopotamus, although, I am sorry to say, he was already married, and the father of a family, was persuaded by other lady gorillas to illustrate the great principle of sexual selection. Many other hippopotamuses were led astray, to the great disturbance of the connubial depths of the lakes and rivers of that region; and the result was that in the course of a generation or two the great tails had disappeared, and the story of their origin came to be regarded as an old wive’s fable.

For a very considerable time—I will not undertake to say how many hundred thousand years; and in such matters a hundred thousand years or so is a mere trifle—gorillas had little tails: now they have none. It has been supposed by a predecessor of the Darwin that these tails were worn off by being sat down upon, and so gradually disappeared at once from the face of the earth and the back of the gorilla. I am not prepared to say, at this stage of the inquiry into the theory of development, that such an abatement of our caudal appendages was not possible. But I deal here with facts, not with fancies; and, in fact, such was not the manner of their disappearance; for, indeed, the tails were so very small, and tucked themselves away so very closely and comfortably when we sat down, that the friction necessary to their abatement was never effectually established. It happened through another manifestation of the principle of sexual selection, and in this wise.

A lady gorilla—a young matron, who was generally believed to have her husband very well in hand, partly from his devotion to her, but chiefly through her selfish indifference to him, and who found herself for the second time in that interesting situation which gives every female who considers herself a lady the right to insist upon the gratification of her slightest whim and most fanciful caprice—took a notion that she must eat the soft parts of a very tender young crocodile. She thought that the high musky flavor of such a tit-bit would be of great benefit to her; and, indeed, she threatened that if it were not forthcoming she would surely produce, not a gorilla, but a crocodile, or, at the very least, a gorilla with scales and a long, thick tail. Her husband was a great fisherman, and she sent him out to catch for her the much-desired dainty. He fished all day with fisherman’s luck. He had many exciting nibbles, and some very promising bites, but no baby crocodile. The shades of night were falling fast, and he found that his bait was all gone. He dreaded the scene that would ensue upon his appearance without the object of his lady’s longings. What should he do? In his desperation a bright thought occurred to him. There was his own tail. It was his last chance, and the method was unheard of; but the emergency was great, and he was willing to submit to almost any sacrifice, even that of mutilation, rather than appear empty-handed before the mistress of his affections and his household. He cut off his tail, put it on his fish-bone hook as if he loved it (which he did), and made his last cast, comforting himself as much as he could with the consciousness that, at least, he could come before his longing lady, saying, “I have done what I could,” and being able to show proof of his words. To his delight and surprise, it proved a very killing bait. An infant crocodile, that had just then gone out, in defiance of her mother’s commands, who had warned her particularly against gorillas’ tails, saw this one sink slowly down to her, twiddling invitingly through the twilit water. She thought that she would eat one only this once, just to see how it tasted, and would never do so again. She sprang at it, and was instantly drawn screaming and wriggling out of the water, and the gorilla took her home triumphantly to his expectant spouse, telling her of his sacrifice. Her whim had changed; and the odor that she had so longed for filled her with loathing. But the consciousness that the thing had cost her husband his tail gave it a relish in what she called her heart, if not to her palate, and she managed to eat a morsel.

The next day the remains of the disobedient crocodile child were displayed in her cave, and she told to her gossips the story of the tribute to her charms. She was filled with exultation, and they were stung with envy. She took airs upon herself. She was a wife for whom her husband would stop at no sacrifice, not even that of the appendage to his seat of honor. This could not be borne. The other ladies felt humiliated; and soon several of them were seized with a longing like to hers for a baby crocodile, to be captured in the same manner. One entrapped, or caught with any other bait, would not answer the purpose. Why prolong the recital? The husbands yielded; the bait still proved taking; and the pride of the ladies was fed, if not their appetites. Soon it became an understood thing that any gorilla who was worthy the name of husband and father would sacrifice his tail to provide newly-born crocodiles for his wife; and ere long there was not a masculine tail to be seen in the community. The natural consequences ensued, as the Darwin has explained; and thus, by the operation of the laws of development and of sexual selection, the gorilla became again a tailless animal.

Through these vicissitudes, my esteemed quadrumanous hearers, our race has passed in consequence of the weakness and the caprice of that lovely and enchanting sex whose errors we are always so ready to forgive, in consideration of their charms. [Here it was observed that the female gorillas bridled and cast side glances at the males, and chattered in low tones to each other. A few of the ugliest broke out into applause, which was quickly frowned down by the leading matrons, and laughed at by the beauties of the younger sort.] And now let me warn my young female friends against that curse of their sex, the temptation to make low marriages and to form disreputable connections with extravagant and wheeling strangers. There is no surer way to destroy their peace of mind and to ruin their prospects in life. [Here a hum of approval was heard from the matrons, at which the younger belles giggled, tossed their heads, and turned up their noses. One of them, a pert minx, evidently a gorilla girl of the period, had the audacity to call out, “I say, old buffer, how about that hippopotamus?” But the lecturer did not reply, and went on with his subject.] This failing is not peculiar to the females of our noble race. The Darwin tells us that it is found in the dog family. But what might not be looked for in the habits of such low people, who go about continually upon all fours, without raising themselves occasionally as we do on their posterior extremities; who have no thumbs on their hind feet, and who have tails, and not only have them, but wag them, with delight in their possession. The Darwin says that the females of the dog family (he gives them a name, I am sorry to say, which would bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and which therefore I shrink from uttering, and so I use another term that means the same thing)—well, he tells us that the lady-dogs “are not always prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of low degree. If reared with a companion of vulgar appearance” [here the lecturer drew himself up, passed one hand through his hair, and with the other stroked his whiskers], “there often springs up between the pair a devotion which no time can afterward subdue. The passion, for such it really is, becomes of a more than romantic endurance.”[3]Could there be a more effectual warning against the dangers of propinquity and the folly of what simpletons call disinterested affection!

3.The Descent of Man. Chapter xvii.

Let me further illustrate this topic by the story of a beautiful lady-dog, the elegant and high-bred Kaloolah. Worthy to bear the name of that lovely and renowned princess, our Kaloolah lived in a country far beyond the Great Waters. She was the daintiest and most delicate of her sex. Born of the famous Blakkantan tribe, her coat was of jetty brilliancy, soft and fine, and edged with the dark saffron border which is the mark of the highest families of her race. Not one white hair marred the jetty perfection of her exterior, to betray the indiscretion of any of her ancestresses. Her body had the slenderness of a greyhound’s, and her pretty pointed paws tapped the responsive ground lightly as she ran. After she had attained nubile years she was sought by many males of her own race; but her fastidiousness caused her to reject them all, and the care of those under whose protection she had been placed so seconded and supported her in her resolution, that it seemed as if she would pass her life in the sweet serenity of virgin solitude. [Here some slight hissing and giggling was heard from the younger females, and a groan came from an ancient one, who was said to have very unfavorable opinions of the taste of the whole male sex.] But, alas! she was one day removed to a rural district in the hill-country where her protectors made their dwelling. At that place was a dog, a coarse, vulgar creature, rude, shaggy, unkempt, grisly, uncouth, a kind of slave of the soil, who had been bought with the acres, and who was never allowed to come within the house, hardly near it, but was driven to find a fitting harborage in the stables and out-buildings. Yet after a period—will it be believed?—such is the influence of propinquity, the beautiful Kaloolah cast aside that maidenly reserve and fastidious exclusiveness by which she had hitherto been distinguished, and shocked her protectors by forming amésalliancewith the Bear; for so the low brute was fitly called. The consequence duly appeared in the form of a miserable mongrel, a grisly, gaunt, lean-bodied, huge-pawed, awkward creature, without either the high-bred elegance of its mother or the rugged strength of its father, a shame to both its parents, an offence to the household, and a living witness of the dreadful consequences of a practical disregard of the great principle of sexual selection.

No other modification or development of our race has taken place, in the direct line, than those of which I have told you. None other was necessary. We at last returned to, and have since maintained, that perfection of beauty in face and form which makes the gorilla the paragon of animals, and which causes the few specimens of our effete cousin, man, who venture within our haunts to come without their females, being naturally unwilling to expose the partners of their beds and their bosoms to the temptation of our superior attractions. [Here the lecturer glanced aside at a knot of females in his audience, and tried to look modest, but failed.] Even the Darwin, who boasts of his descent from our noble race, would, shrink from such a test of his principle of sexual selection. We, I confess, are not proud, and should have no objection to such visitors, a generosity of feeling which he himself has had the grace to acknowledge.[4]

4.See the passage in Latin in chapter i. of “The Descent of Man.”

One overture was made to a female of our race which, if it had been accepted, might have resulted in a very great and striking modification of our traits. The incident has a direct connection with the subject of my lecture; for it was through this female, and partly in consequence of this affair, that our family tree divided into two great branches, and one of them degenerated into Man. It so happened, by one of those deplorable freaks of nature from which no race, however noble, is entirely free, that a male gorilla was born deformed. In his infancy he was almost without hair, and the great thumb upon the hinder extremities, to which chiefly we owe our proud distinction of being a four-handed race, was a puny thing, useless except for walking; and, in fact, of no more value than the big toe of some of the inferior animals. As he grew up, a sparse coat of soft hair did appear upon his body; but the deformed thumb of course never developed or changed; it only grew in proportion to his growth, and remained a miserable toe. Yet, will it be believed? certain of our young females, with the unaccountable caprice of their sex, showed a hankering after this young fellow. They found him, in their own phrase “so interesting!” “He was so different,” they said, “from the old humdrum style of gorilla gentlemen.” They called him elegant. Gorilla girls of the period, who might have commanded the devoted service of individuals of the opposite sex much more worthy of their attention, in fact, of individuals of mature age, and distinguished position, well-haired, and with gigantic hind thumbs—[Here the lecturer was observed to rub his coat well up, and to gradually advance one of his hind feet on the stump on which he was standing]—giddy creatures who might have won the favor of such persons who abounded then, and who are—in fact—I may say—who are—sometimes—to be found even now, actually preferred the society of this effeminate, this more than effeminate creature. And yet, in the interests of science, I must tell the exact truth; according to tradition, he was not quite a weakling. He was nimble and strong, but it was in a different way from that of the other males of his race. In his singularity was his charm. He was also lazy, listless, and indifferent. He took no notice of the fairer sex, even of those who were most devoted to him, and most open in their admiration. He might have lived without lifting a finger; for they delighted in nothing so much as in serving him. Making of the peculiarity that was the very occasion of their admiration an excuse for him and for themselves, they said, “Poor fellow! how can he be expected to get his living with that soft coat, and with no hind thumbs?” And so they ministered to him, each one hoping that she might be the one whom he found essential to his happiness. He was often seen stretched upon the grass, or lolling against a tree, with half a score of these infatuated young creatures grouped around him, waiting upon him, bringing him cocoanuts, endeavoring to win from him some special acknowledgment of thankfulness—some mark of preference.

In vain did other males approach these besotted damsels. In vain did they howl, and spring from tree to tree! In vain did they even dance with an extravagance—a frenzy of strength and agility which had never before been known in the annals of gorilla courtship, and which could be surpassed only by few of the many similar scenes described by the Darwin. It was as nothing compared with the listless languor of the soft-coated, and hind-thumbless fellow.

But, in like manner, vain was the devotion of these silly young creatures. No one of them found favor in his eyes. At last he sent sorrow and despair into their souls by telling them in secret, one by one, that although she was very good, and although to have cocoanuts, and fruit, and water brought to him by such a nice waiter-girl was very pleasant, and he was very much obliged, he thought it only fair, under the circumstances, and considering her obvious expectations, to say that he was not a marrying gorilla. In fact, he never could be fond of such roughly-haired creatures as even she-gorillas were; and that, until he found one whose coat was even softer and slighter than his own, he should remain a bachelor. They heard his avowal in silent grief, each one saying in her heart that his conditions were cruelly difficult to comply with; in fact, as she turned the matter over in her mind—quite im-pos-si-ble. And each one silently resolved that she would admit the addresses of no other gentleman gorilla, let him dance before her never so furiously; but all her life would remain the virgin widow of her living love. Such, the Darwin tells, has been the determination of the females of other races, dogs, guinea-hens, etc.[5]

5.See “The Descent of Man, etc.,” chapter xiv.,passim; where, however, the reader will find recorded multitudinous instances of fickleness, faithlessness, and forgetfulness on the part of “widows;” unfeminine forwardness, and even of downright “seduction” on the part of matrons and even of maidens of the bird family.

Among this interesting—I must say interesting, although infatuated—group of gorilla girls was one who took this determination more seriously to heart than the others did. She gave herself up to loneliness and melancholy musings. She left the delights of caves and woods and the companionship they bring, and wandered forth upon the plains, level and lonely, rockless, treeless, and dismal with sunlight. Her thought, day and night, was, “How can I rid myself of this disgusting coat of coarse hair? and if I could do so, should I find favor in his eyes?”

As she was one day near the edge of the great desert, musing on her ever-present theme, she became gradually conscious that she was not alone; then that a tall personage was in her presence; and then that a great exhibition of fuss and feathers was going on before her. It was an ostrich, one of the largest and most distinguished of his race. He had seen her frequently come to this place, so unfrequented by her people, and walk about it with slow and pensive air. What was her motive? What could it be but one? Was not he there? There was nothing else there but the sand and the sunlight; and yet she came almost daily. He drew the same conclusion that the hippopotamus did, but without equal reason or good fortune. Under the circumstances, however, and misled as he was, what could he do but make himself agreeable to the lady, and pay some attention to her? No he-creature with a spark of masculine spirit in him could do less. So he began to strut up and down before her, and to expand his wings and his tail. He ran violently about. He lifted up his voice and squawked. He ate sand, and, burrowing in it with his huge bill and finding the hoof and leg-bone of a horse that had died many years before in the desert, he brought it triumphantly, and, laying it down at her feet, ate it up before her eyes. Could anything be more agreeable—any attention more flattering to the female heart? What, then, must have been her gratification when after a few moments she saw him again eat up one just like it? Deeming himself quite irresistible after this last performance, he fluttered directly toward her. The family of man has its stories and traditions, all of which have some foundation in fact, but are much magnified or perverted or misunderstood. This story of their ancestors they tell, transferring the heroine to their own race, and making him a male swan called Jupiter, and her a kind of female man called Leda. According to man, the swan was received with open arms; but the gorilla girl fled from the ostrich. His intentions, I have no doubt, were strictly honorable; while in the man story I regret to say the Jupiter’s were not; but they were none the less unwelcome to her. Mistaking her flight for the coquetry of her sex, he pursued; and although love for another and consequent aversion to him lent her wings, he had real wings, as well as long legs, and by the use of both he was gaining on the object of his pursuit, when not far off she saw the object of her affections. She sped toward him and flung herself panting into his arms. He held her there for a moment, and then moved, partly by gratitude for her many services, and partly by the feeling that, although he did not want her himself, yet, as she had thought of him, no one else should have her, he laid her lightly down, and with a club made such a vigorous attack upon the ostrich that the latter soon turned and fled back to his sand, his hen, and his horsehoofs.[6]

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