Chimney sweeps -- Juvenile fiction; Fairy tales -- England
He held very strange theories about a good many things. He had even got
up once at the British Association, and declared that apes had
hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have. Which was a
shocking thing to say; for, if it were so, what would become of the
faith, hope, and charity of immortal millions? You may think that there
are other more important differences between you and an ape, such as
being able to speak, and make machines, and know right from wrong, and
say your prayers, and other little matters of that kind; but that is a
child’s fancy, my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the great
hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you
are no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than
the apes of all aperies. But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered
in one single ape’s brain, nothing will save your
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
greater-greatest-grandmother from having been an ape too. No, my dear
little man; always remember that the one true, certain, final, and
all-important difference between you and an ape is, that you have a
hippopotamus major in your brain, and it has none; and that, therefore,
to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing, at
which every one will be very much shocked, as we may suppose they were at
the professor.—Though really, after all, it don’t much matter; because—as
Lord Dundreary and others would put it—nobody but men have hippopotamuses
in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape’s brain,
why it would not be one, you know, but something else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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