The times dispatch. [volume], June 22, 1913, Page 12, Image 14

About The times dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1903-1914

Image provided by: Library of Virginia; Richmond, VA

                
| If Monkeys Had Become Men
Copyright. 1MJ hv th* Star Company. Great Britain
rights* reserved.
UMAN beings KNOW that
they are the successors on
this earth of some animal
line lower than them
selves.
Life on the planet has
been continuous, an un
broken chain of gradual development,
from the single cell smaller than a inn
head lying in the ocean to the most
highly developed human being.
Science shows how men have come
up, gradually developing and progress
ing, the body and muscles becoming less
important and the brain more import
ant, until finally man, who had been a
weak animal, found himself ruler of the
world. "
But we do not know just exactly
[WHO our ancestors were, what kind of
queer man-shaped creatures preceded
*ns.
We know that the animal most like
us is the highly developed ape. We know
for instance, that the difference be
tween a high-grade white man and the
lowest savage is much greater than be
tween that lowest savage and an intelli
gent ape.
But just what animal was our fore
father, what particular animals were
the ancestors of the various great
branches of the human race, we don't
know.
ITiis, however, we do know absolute
ly, MAN IS NOT THE DESCENDANT
OF ANY KIND OF MONKEY OR
ANIMAL NOW LIVING.
The animals that were men, and that
grew by development of the mind to be
rulers of the earth, have disappeared
entirely. All of our old great-great
grandfathers that lived in the trees and
in the caves have gone.
It will probably take centuries of re
search to establish our genealogy.
It is interesting, studying tins pic
ture curiously conceived, to ask our
seles what the race would have been,
and what the earth would have been
like, if the monkeys that we know had
developed and become rulers, instead of
ourselves.
In considering the monkey and his
character, and what he probably would
have done had he been the final ruler of
animals on this planet, the artist whose
picture we reproduce gives fanciful
sketches of monkey life?and incident
ally makes fun of our own human ambi
tions and weakness.
A monkey king and queen would lo jk
silly, with crown and veil, and royal seal
o o o o o
What Should We Human Beings Be if Monkeys Were Our Ancestors? .
And What Is There About Us Which Proves That We Are Actually %
NOT the Descendants of Monkeys or Like Them? We Have One Quality ?
Unlike the Monkey, and That Is THE POWER TO STICK A T ONE THING, f
and ermine fur. But they would not look
very much sillier than a human king
and queen, playing the part of monkeys,
imagining that fancy clothes can lend
dignity or confer superiority.
The monkey painter, drawing hide
ous designs upon the wall, with his mon
key friend looking in contempt and
wonder at real art on the floor, would
be a pitiful sort of a thing?but he
would not be very different from some
modern painter, whose work is a little
more preposterous than anything that
a monkey mind could conceive.
Our social idleness, our foolish social
ambitions and scrivings are not so dif
ferent from life in a monkey cage,
where the powerful baboon drives the
little, feeble monkeys around with the
superiority of muscle, as the social ba
boon in human life drives the weak
monkeys of humanity around with the
superiority OF MONEY.
o o o o o
If monkeys were capable of thinking
and planning they would probably de
velop a "civilization" not very much un
like* our own.
Some big powerful monkey would get
for himself more than he could possibly
use, and thousands of little, weak mon
keys would worry and starve.
The powerful monkey's wife would
make a fool of herself in many kinds
of monkey extravagance, vanity and
folly?and the wives of weaker mon
keys would worry their husbands and
fret themselves trying to do everything
done by the rich monkey's wife. *
We should probably have in a "civili
zation" of developed monkeys very
many of the things that we have now,
cruelty, dishonesty.
We are N< )T the descendants of any
monkey that we know. But our so-call
ed civilization thus far is not so differ
ent from that which monkeys might
have created, IF IT WERE POSSIBLE
FOR THEM TO CREATE ANY
THING.
o o o o o
But here is a lesson for young men
who want to succeed, a lesson that is
emphasized in the life of every mon
key?monkeys can never do anything
worth while. Monkeys never could
have become rulers of the globe, as men
have become rulers, for the simple rea
son that monkeys CANNOT STICK AT
ONE THING.
Watch a monkey in' his monkey
home some day for five minutes?and
you will see why it is that monkeys re
main monkeys, and could not become
anything better.
The monkey looks fixedly into space,
and you say to yourself, "He is thinking
very earnestly." In a quarter of a min
ute his earnest look is gone and he is in
specting his left foot with care.
Another quarter of a minute and he
has made a wild leap for the bars and is
shaking them violently.
Then he drops to the floor, casually
scratching around among the empty
peanut shells.
Then he sees another monkey, pulls
the monkey's tail and a race begins that
lasts ten seconds. Both stop as they be
gan, without apparent object.
And so the monkey's day and week
AND LIFE pass.
The monkey is a monkey, he remain
ed a monkey, he lost his chance of being
ruler of the globe BECAUSE HE
COULDN'T STICK AT THE SAME
THING MORE THAN TEN SEC
ONDS.
o o o o o
And, you young men that WANT to
succeed, and you. older men that won
der why you DON'T succeed, ask your
selves whether you are suffering from
the monkey's infirmity:?the inability
to stick at anything for more than ten
seconds.
Going to your work every day and
staying for eight or ten hours isn't
sticking at anything.
To be a real worker, to be one of those
whose qualities made the human race
the ruler of the earth, you must be able
to do THAT WHICH YOU ARE NOT
COMPELLED TO DO.
You must have in yourself a driving
power, the power to concentrate, to
stick at one thing until the thing is done.
We don't know what kind of animal
gradually developing through millions
of years finally gave man control of this
planet,
But this wo do know. Whatever that
animal was who stands back of us as
our ancestor, he was an animal capable
of exercising will power, and of sticking
at one thing until the thing was accom
plished.
All the newspapers in the United
States have recently told the story of
a man who killed five wolves and re
ceived a hundred dollars from the State,
bounty offered for wolf killing.
The wolves were in a hole in a rock,
and they knew that there was a man
outside with a gun, and that their lives
were in danger.
The man knew the wolves were in
there. The question was, which would
win, the man, by getting the wolves, or
the wolves, by keeping away from the
man.
The man MADE UP HTS MIND TO
GET THE WOLVES.
He stayed there one hour, two hours,
ten hours, twenty-four hours, and one
day was passed.
Then he stayed another day.
Then he stayed another day.
Then he stayed a fourth day AND
THEN THE WOLVES CAME OUT
AND THE MAN KILLED THEM AS
THEY CAME OUT AND GOT THE
BOUNTY.
The man was hungry and thirsty, and
the wolves were hungry and thirsty.
The man was outside and the wolves
were inside. ,,
The man got the wolves and got the
bounty BECAUSE HE WAS ABLE TO
STICK AT A THING, IN SPITE OF
HUNGER, IN SPITE OF THIRST,
DETERMINED TO GET THOSE
WOLVES AND GET THE BOUNTY.
THERE HE STAYED ?AND HE
WAS A GOOD TYPE OF THE DE
SCENDANTS OF THAT PRIMITIVE
ANIMAL WHO WAS MAN'S ORIGI
NAL ANCESTOR.
You may be sure that when men were
animals, with long arms and short legs,
and big feet and little foreheads, years
ago, they were like the men of to-day?
here and there one could stick at a thing
and a hundred could not.
But the one who could stick, SUR
VIVED, the one who had patience to.
sit up in a tree until the animal he
wanted came along, ? nd who then had
the determination to kill that animal?
THAT ONE ALWAYS HAD FOOD,
AND HIS YOUNG ONES GOT WHAT
THEY NEEDED.
Whereas those that could not think,
those that could not stick and keep at
a thing died off when famine came?
they did not survive.
There was a cruel application of the
law of the survival of the fittest in
those ancient days, those days of a mil
lion years ago or more, five thousand ?
centuries before the first real man had
lighted the first real fire, before any
animal had learned to make a weapon
by fastening a sharp stone to the end of
a stick, tying it on with the entrails of
a killed enemy.
The snow would fall, or the intense
heat would dry up the springs. Of a
thousand of the animals that were des
tined to become men, nine hundred
would die of cold or of thirst.
The hundred that lived WERE THE
HUNDRED THAT WOULD STICK
AT WHAT THEY UNDERTOOK.
They were the hundred that would '
keep on going through the deep snow
until they found a refuge. They were
the hundred that would keep plodding
over the hot sand in spite of the dust
and scorching sun until they found an
other water hole.
And their descendants are the men of
to-day, men who have conquered all the
animals, traveled all the seas, planted a
flag at the North Pole, and at the South
Pole, BECAUSE THEY COULD
STICK AT A THING ONCE BEGUN,
o o o o o
The monkeys never could have be
come men and rulers of the world, be
cause a monkey cannot stick at any
thing.
And a great many of us human be
ings never can become rulers, even of
ourselves, or succeed in the world, BE
CAUSE WE CAN NEVER STICK AT
ANYTHING.
But even the weakest of us has some
will.
AND THE WEAKEST WILL CAN
BE DEVELOPED BY PRACTICE.
The lesson of this picture is?
Let us not live as the monkeys live,
hopping from a peanut shell to a banana
skin, from the floor of the cage to the
top and back again, all in a half min
ute. Let us take warning by the mon
keys, poor creatures, that never got
anywhere in ?he march of evolution*
let us try to find out what it is that we
.OUGHT to do, and then STICK AT IT.
?