Part II—Theory

A little monkey climbed down a swaying vine, hand over hand, until his face was close to a quiet pool of sweet water. The day before at evening, he had done the same thing. His mother and his ancestors for generations had done likewise. And always they chattered at the monkey they saw in the water, and finally in anger snatched at him, and their little fingers troubled the water and the monkey vanished. Then they drank eagerly, turned quickly, and clambered swiftly up to rest.

Today the little monkey began to chatter, then stopped. He moved, and the monkey in the water moved. He brushed away some hairs from his face and the water monkey. Then something happened. He stopped chattering and peered again and again at the face in the water. He put his little paw over his eyes and slowly took it away. Then he forgot his thirst, raised his head and gazed fixedly before him, wrinkling his forehead and remaining very quiet. And the more distant his gaze, the less he seemed to observe, and the deeper became the wrinkles.

The night came quickly and the tragedies of the darkness began. The little monkey had long ago forgotten his momentary abstraction and was curled in a slumbering ball high among the dense foliage of a jungle tree.... If there is such a thing as prophecy; if the first beginnings of great and momentous things make themselves felt abroad, then the cool night wind carried with it more than the scent of orchids and the calls of the night folk. It must have vibrated with the sense of the end of a great regime. The dominance of animals was tottering, the beginning of the end of earthly evolution. Something introspective had come to pass—a glimpse of the ego—a momentary flash of self consciousness. The little face in the water was not really another monkey. And the end of this realization was to be man.

But one such revelation was of no avail, and whether the little monkey was finally caught by his arch enemies—the serpents or leopards—or sometime slipped and fell into his pool we shall never know. But his memory can never die, for he was the first Seer; his eyes were the first to look Beyond and Within.

Then the new thing happened to great ape-like creatures. Day after day they would stop in their swift, hand over hand swinging through the tree-tops and gaze into space for a moment. These primitive penseurs were at a disadvantage, for when their less psychic brethren caught them off guard they promptly crept up and slew them. But relentless and remorseless as the waters of the open sea, these waves of abstraction rolled on. And like bits of drifting wreckage, came tossed and tumbled thoughts, dumb and inarticulate, groping and quite inadequate for any use.

The first periods of self-realization were like trances or obsessions, wholly subconscious and involuntary. For that which we have not conceived, we cannot intentionally formulate. With feet and hands clasped about branches, the great ape beings swayed back and forth in the ecstasy of day dreams. Then from the inward view, the inner sight with unseeing eyes of what they could not name, they came gradually to look again upon the outer world. And now was wrought the great change, for linked ideas flashed upon their confused brain, twin stars of thought which in their grand-apesons might evolve into knowledge of cause and effect, and the greatest of all things thoughtful-correlation.

Against single thinkers, the thoughtless ones could easily prevail. And all the more easily because in the beginning it was as it shall be in the end—the law of compensation allots brawn to one, and mind to another, as dominant attributes. This abstraction was a thing apart, and unlike all other changes which had come in the past. When one stumbled upon a new way of opening cocoanuts, or experienced witless facility in walking upright for a few steps, one naturally kept the knowledge to oneself. Why should any new-found ability be shared! But these disturbing, inexplicable trances often led to a greater interest in one’s neighbor or one’s mate.

Ah, one’s mate! One had not thought of this before, except as a pleasing something to be kept near one. Blindly one had captured it somehow and one felt that one would tear that fellow ape apart with teeth and sheer muscle if he came nearer one’s mate; and if ... but here some buzzing fly was sure to distract, or a troublesome itching of one’s back which required one’s whole attention, and then, ... well there was always something else, or food or sleep.

Not only to the great bull apes came these lightning glimpses of self, but to the females. But there was a difference. The correlation was direct. The momentary loss due to introspection was all but negatived by the instantaneous return to the objective: a return which was like the ascent of the diver with his pearl: a swift recovery of consciousness leavened with the unfathomable mystery of intuition. And through all the throes of thought conception, when bull apes travailed with wrinkled brows and aching heads for the sustained glimmer which ever faded and died out, their mates went about, ambling on crooked knuckles, and their little pig eyes shot swiftly their message to one another—they understood.

They understood and waited quietly. And for this waiting they shall have naught but praise, superlative praise. For it is not difficult to wait in ignorance. Thus the crystal waits for its perfect growth: the seed for the century-delayed warmth and water. But with understanding to have patience: to feel, however dumbly and blindly, the future of equality, of splendid unanimity of interest and respect, and to play one’s hopeless, inarticulate part and wait—this is very wonderful.

And this was the part of the female apes, and the ape women. And the difference between these was too fine for any written words. But as nearly as may be it was the difference between waiting, and waiting with understanding. And there were ape women when as yet there were no ape men for them to mate with. They followed the law and accepted any bull ape who broke through their subconscious restraint—that restraint and appraisement which worked for evolution a hundred thousand years ago—and will tomorrow. So the bulls continued to come wooing like great brutal things of lust and brawn. And the ape women, with a last sidewise glance at their sisters, went with them.

And the bull apes, they too obeyed the law, and performed the three functions of their life—they sought their food, escaped their enemies, and enjoyed their mates. But they also did a fourth thing equally important in the long run, which was hardly classifiable, because it was instinctive and its selfishness obscured by heredity. They killed every weakling, or crippled bull or disabled female. One great brawny female had to use tooth and muscle to save her baby. Thus for once the law failed. And the failure of the law was due to intuition. And this was the second great result of the vision of the Seer.

The bulls had made but little use of their new-found self-realizations. But now the ape woman fought for her babe’s life and won. Weak and small he certainly was, but he possessed wonderful quickness, and every pursuit and attempt on his life was unsuccessful. And he grew up and became a failure as an ape. For he tired of catching flies, and scratching and sunning and sleeping did not seem to fill up all the hours of daylight. He played with stones and gathered them in heaps, and then fled. For at this point all the bull apes in sight, having forgotten yesterday’s identical experience, rushed up, expecting that such labor must mean new-found food. Then he found hollow trees and beat upon them for hours with palm or stick. But he sought no mate, which was perhaps fortunate, for he would doubtless have returned maimed, or else been slain outright by the outraged female.

Then one day came to pass the third wonderful thing. A great woman, who had left her fang marks on every bull who had tried to woo her, came shuffling along and joined the weakling. He fled only a short distance and then returned fearlessly. For deceit and treachery were still to be evolved, and when the mighty ape woman showed favor to him he knew that it was truth. He accepted her, and continued to fear the world and to potter about with his stones, and bright-colored blossoms, and his banging of hollow trees. Then he commenced making club-like affairs, and sat outside the burrows of small animals and smashed them when they appeared. And one day he smashed the head of a female ape, who, following the fourth law had attempted to slay him, the unbearable weakling. Her mate was roused to such a pitch, that his self-consciousness dominated and he hunted his victim down. And this was the end of the weakling, who yet had carried out his destiny.

When the great ape woman bore a child, it fulfilled the promise of the little monkey’s first ecstasy. The prophecy of the night wind had come to pass. Here was balance of brawn and mind. Against his twin thoughts, his correlation, his weapons, his resources, opponents melted away. And this first ape man found ape women ready: waiting and understanding.