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

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“Tailed Apes, upright Apes, Baboons and Monkeys of low degree: I am tired living on trees. I am getting too old and fat to climb, and cannot go up in the air every time I want to sleep. My eyes are bad, and can’t tell a rotten limb from a sound one. Only two days ago, while eating a cocoanut, the limb broke on which I was sitting, and I fell to the ground, striking a porcupine; and there has been a sick monkey ever since. Just before the big rain I was chased up a tree by a hyena, when, before I got out of reach, he seized my tail, already reduced to a stump, and I had to let go of either the tree or my tail. I stuck to the tree, but to-day I am a tailless Ape! Why should the ground be conceded to tigers and snakes? The earth was made for monkeys. Our food is mostly on the ground, and it is easier to walk on a level than up and down. We can run faster than we can climb. We cannot fly, like the birds, and there is no easy way for such big folks to get up a tree. But we dare not come to the ground. If we do we must fight some brute. The tigers want the earth; and we can’t afford to maintain perpetual war. I am, therefore, for peace, and so favor killing off our enemies. If the forces of the trees will but combine, dropping their disputes about the milk that is in the cocoanut, they can conquer the forces of the earth. Resolve, then, monkeys all, to make a fight for the land, and not be so often found up a stump. True to your ape-hood, join me in an oath to drive out the ground-beasts. Everything in this valley will then be ours. We shall have the plants and berries, and frogs, and little fishes. We can then lie down to sleep without falling off, and run about without getting tired. Whoever loves monkeykind will, therefore, follow my advice. Now, all of you who are resolved to drive out the beasts which claim this land, swear with me by scratching your top rib while I crack this butternut and eat the kernel.”