Chapter III

At length as an ape he was fain
The nuts of the forest to rive,
Till he took to the low-lying plain,
And proceeded his fellows to knive.
Thus did cannibal men first arrive
One another to swallow and maul;
And the strongest continued to thrive
While the weakliest went to the wall.

_Envoy_

Prince, in our civilized hive,
Now money’s the measure of all;
And the wealthy in coaches can drive
While the needier go to the wall.

_Grant Allen._

EVOLUTION

As from the old nest birds escape,
As sheds its leaves the living tree,
So if evolved from worm or ape
What odds if we at last are free?

If once but dust or ape or worm,
A growing brain and then a soul,
Sure these are but prophetic germ
Of that which makes our circle whole.

_John Albee._

From THE SONG OF MYSELF

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I am an
encloser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs:
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches
between the steps,
All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing. I know I was
even there,
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the
lethargic mist,
And took my time and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
Long I was hugg’d close--long and long.
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like
cheerful boatmen;
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings--
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided
me,
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay
it.
For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and
deposited it with care.
All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and
delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

_Walt Whitman._

From THE DEATH SONG OF
TALIESIN

Stir in the dark of the stars unborn that desire
Only the thrill of a wild dumb force set free,
Yearn of the burning heart of the world on fire
For life and birth and battle and wind and sea,
Groping of life after love till the spirit aspire,
Into Divinity ever transmuting the clod,
Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher,
Out of the Nothingness world without end unto God.

_Richard Hovey._

From RAIN IN SUMMER

Thus the seer, with vision clear,
Sees forms appear and disappear
In the perpetual round of strange
Mysterious change
From birth to death, from death to birth,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,
Till glimpses more sublime
Of things unseen before
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning for evermore
In the rapid, rushing river of time.

_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._

SIMILAR CASES

There was once a little animal
No bigger than a fox
And on five toes he scampered
Over Tertiary rocks.
They called him Eohippus,
And they called him very small,
And they thought him of no value--
When they thought of him at all;
For the lumpish old Dinoceras
And Coryphodon so slow
Were the heavy aristocracy
In days of long ago.
Said the little Eohippus,
“I am going to be a horse!
And on my middle finger-nails
To run my earthly course!
I’m going to have a flowing tail!
I’m going to have a mane!
I’m going to stand fourteen hands high
On the psychozoic plain!”
The Coryphodon was horrified,
The Dinoceras was shocked,
And they chased young Eohippus
But he skipped away and mocked.
Then they laughed enormous laughter
And they groaned enormous groans,
And they bade young Eohippus
Go view his father’s bones.
Said they, “You always were as small
And mean as now we see,
And that’s conclusive evidence
That you’re always going to be.”
“What! Be a great tall handsome beast
With hoofs to gallop on?
_Why! You’d have to change your nature!_”
Said the Loxolophodon.
They considered him disposed of,
And retired with gait serene;
That was the way they argued
In “the early Eocene.”

There was once an Anthropoidal Ape
Far smarter than the rest,
And everything that they could do
He always did the best;
So they naturally disliked him
And they gave him shoulders cool,
And when they had to mention him,
They said he was a fool.
Cried this pretentious Ape one day,
“I’m going to be a Man!
And stand upright, and hunt, and fight,
And conquer all I can!
I’m going to cut down forest trees
To make my houses higher!
I’m going to kill the Mastodon.
I’m going to make a fire!”
Loud screamed the Anthropoidal Apes
With laughter wild and gay;
They tried to catch that boastful one
But he always got away.
So they yelled at him in chorus,
Which he minded not a whit;
And they pelted him with cocoanuts,
Which didn’t seem to hit.
And then they gave him reasons,
Which they thought of much avail,
To prove how his preposterous
Attempt was sure to fail.
Said the sages, “In the first place,
The thing cannot be done.
And, second, if it _could_ be
It would not be any fun!
And, third, and most conclusive,
And admitting no reply,
_You would have to change your nature_!
We should like to see you try!”
They chuckled then triumphantly,
These lean and hairy shapes,
For these things passed as arguments
With the Anthropoidal Apes.

There was once a Neolithic Man,
An enterprising wight,
Who made his chopping implements
Unusually bright.
Unusually clever he,
Unusually brave,
And he drew delightful Mammoths
On the borders of his cave.
To his Neolithic neighbours,
Who were startled and surprised,
Said he, “My friends, in course of time
We shall be civilized!
We are going to live in cities!
We are going to fight in wars!
We are going to eat three times a day
Without the natural cause!
We are going to turn life upside down
About a thing called gold!
We are going to want the earth and take
As much as we can hold!
We are going to wear great piles of stuff
Outside our proper skins!
We are going to have diseases!
And accomplishments!! and sins!!!”
Then they all rose up in fury
Against their boastful friend,
For prehistoric patience
Cometh quickly to an end.
Said one, “This is chimerical,
Utopian! absurd!”
Said another, “What a stupid life!
Too dull, upon my word!”
Cried all, “Before such things can come,
You idiotic child,
_You must alter human nature_!”
And they all sat back and smiled.
Thought they, “An answer to that last
It will be hard to find!”
It was a clinching argument
To the Neolithic Mind!

_Charlotte Perkins Gilman._

THE FIRST IDEALIST

A jellyfish swam in a tropical sea,
And he said, “This world it consists of me:
There’s nothing above and nothing below
That a jellyfish ever can possibly know
(Since we’ve got no sight, or hearing, or smell),
Beyond what our single sense can tell.
Now, all that I learn from the sense of touch
Is the fact of my feelings, viewed as such.
But to think they have any external cause
Is an inference clean against logical laws.
Again, to suppose, as I’ve hitherto done,
There are other jellyfish under the sun,
Is a pure assumption that can’t be backed
By a jot of proof or a single fact.
In short, like Hume, I very much doubt
If there’s anything else at all without.
So I come at last to the plain conclusion,
When the subject is fairly set free from confusion,
That the universe simply centres in me,
And if I were not, then nothing would be.”

That minute, a shark who was strolling by,
Just gulped him down, in the twink of an eye;
And he died, with a few convulsive twists.
But, somehow, the universe still exists.

_Grant Allen._

IMMORTALITY

When I was grass, perhaps I may have wept
As every year the grass blades paled and slept
Or shrieked in anguish impotent beneath
The smooth impartial cropping of great teeth--
I don’t remember much what came to pass
When I was grass.

When I was monkey, I’m afraid the trees
Weren’t always havens of contented ease;
Things killed us and we never could tell why;
No doubt we blamed the earth or sea or sky--
I have forgotten my rebellion’s shape
When I was ape.

Now I have reached the comfortable skin
This stage of living is enveloped in,
And hold the spirit of my mighty race
Self-conscious prisoner under one white face--
I’m awfully afraid I’m going to die,
Now I am I.

* * * * *

When I was man, no doubt I used to care
About the little things that happened there,
And fret to see the years keep going by,
And nations, families and persons die,
I didn’t much appreciate life’s plan
When I was man.

_Charlotte Perkins Gilman._

MIDGES IN THE SUNSHINE

If I could see with a midge’s eye
Or think with a midge’s brain,
I wonder what I’d say of the world
With all its joy and pain.
Would my seven brief hours of mortal life
Seem as long as seventy years,
As I danced in the flickering sunshine
Amid my tiny peers?
Should I feel the slightest hope or care
For the midges yet to be;
Or think I died before my time
If I died at half-past three,
Instead of living till set of sun
On the breath of the summer wind;
Or dream that the world was made for me
And all my little kind?
Perhaps if I did I’d know as much
Of Nature’s mighty plan,
And what it meant for good or ill,
As that larger midge, a man!

_Anonymous._

FROM A RECORD

None sees the slow and upward sweep
By which the soul from life-depths deep
Ascends,--unless, mayhap, when free,
With each new death we backward see
The long perspective of our race,
Our multitudinous past lives trace.

_William Sharp._

SUDDEN LIGHT

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
In death’s despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

_Dante Gabriel Rossetti_

OR EVER THE KNIGHTLY YEARS WERE GONE

Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave.

I saw, I took, I cast you by,
I bent and broke your pride.
You loved me well, or I heard them lie,
But your longing was denied.
Vaguely I knew that by and by
You cursed your gods and died.

And a myriad suns have set and shone
Since then upon the grave
Decreed by the king in Babylon
To her that had been his slave.

The pride I trampled is now my scathe,
For it tramples me again.
The old resentment lasts like death,
For you love, yet you refrain.
I break my heart on your hard unfaith,
Yet I break my heart in vain.

Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
That deed beyond the grave,
When I was a king in Babylon
And you were a virgin slave.

_William Ernest Henley._

AVE POST SAECULA

(_Greeting after the Ages_)

I

When I was a king of Egypt
And Priest of the Sun God Ra,
And you a Peruvian captive
Were brought from your home afar,
In a corner one day in my palace
I caught but a glance from your eyes--
Lonely and alien and wistful--
That filled me with glad surprise.

II

The dusky daughters of Kemi
Had mocked at your lily-like face;
They were arrogant in their beauty
Till I made them the slaves of your grace.
Then together in stately barges
We sailed on the Sacred Nile,
And the joy and the peace of Aahlu
Were mine through your loving smile.

III

Mummies together in spices,
Fine linen, and cloth of gold,
They laid us away in a rock-tomb,
And in hieroglyphics told
Our names and our years and achievements,
And they worshipped us when dead
Till their generations had faded
And new races came in their stead.