Читать книгу From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age онлайн

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There, accordingly, sprang up an antagonism between the Snakes and the Monkeys, which had all the bitterness of class feeling, as well as of race prejudice, and soon an irrepressible conflict was impending. The Monkeys demanded the extirpation of the Snakes as violently as they had, in the preceding campaign, demanded that of the tigers; and from one end of the highlands to the other was heard the cry, “The snakes must go.”

“Steppers and crawlers,” said Shamboo, “cannot live in the same country. If there is anything a monkey hates it is to tramp on a snake. Only to-day one bit me in the heel, and to-morrow I shall crush his head. Enmity is declared between our race and theirs. A snake in the grass can never be loved by our seed; and so, until there shall be no more Snakes, or else no more Monkeys, the conflict must go on. We came down from the trees to the ground only to find others who had got still closer to the ground, and were climbing the land as we had climbed the trees; and it is a question whether belly or feet shall walk the earth. When the Apes got down off the trees they got up on their feet; and we do not mean to again walk through life on four feet to look for snakes.”