The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
The monkeys are little inferior to the man-like races in their
intelligence and in the general similarity of their feelings and
instincts to those of men. Monkeys live in tribes, and at the head
of each tribe is an old male chief who has won his place by his
strength, courage, and ability. Monkeys have excellent memories and
keen observation, and are able to recognise their friends in a crowd
even after long absences. They are proverbially imitative, have a
strong desire for knowledge, and are exceedingly sensitive and
sympathetic in their natures. Sympathy and curiosity, the two most
prominent traits in simian psychology, are, significantly, the two
most important facts in the psychology of man. Sympathy and
curiosity lie at the foundation of human civilisation, sympathy at
the foundation of morals, and curiosity of invention and science.
The monkey whose diary appears in the closing pages of Romanes’
‘Animal Intelligence’ was possessed of an almost ravenous desire
to know. He spent hour after hour in exploration, examining with the
indomitable patience of a scientist everything that came within the
bounds of his little horizon. And when he had found out any new
thing, he was as delighted over it as a boy who has solved a hard
problem, repeating the experiment over and over until it was
thoroughly familiar to him. Among the many things he discovered for
himself was the use of the lever and the screw. Monkeys are the most
affectionate of all animals excepting dogs and men. This affection
reaches its culmination, as among men, in the love of the mother for
her child. The mother monkey’s little one is the object of her
constant care and affection. She nurses and bathes it, licks it and
cleans its coat, and folds it in her arms and rocks it as if to lull
it to sleep, just as human mammas do. She divides every bite with
her little one, but does not hesitate to chastise it with slaps and
pinches when it is rude. The monkey child is generally very
obedient, obedient enough for an example to many a human youngster.
‘Very touching,’ says Brehm, from whom many of the foregoing
facts are gleaned, ‘is the conduct of the mother when her baby is
obviously suffering. And if it dies she is in despair. For hours,
and even for days, she carries the little corpse about with her,
refuses all food, sits indifferently in the same spot, and often
literally pines to death’.[4]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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