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€fiterial Section ot Rearst’s Sunday Hiscrican, Atlanta, April 27, wu.
The Spirit of the Monkey Still Rules
Copyright, by the Star Ooropany. Great Britain Rights Reserved
F any man doubts that the
human race has come up from
the lower animals, or that it
has passed through the dif
ferent lower forms of animal
life, he ought to be convinced
by the fact that the lower
animals survive in us still and control us.
Pessimism is a bad thing. But it is useful
for human beings to realize occasionally how
little they amount to, and how much work they
must do, how far they must travel before they
shall be fit to call themselves civilized or really
HUMAN.
#. 4 #
GREED and VANITY—these are the most
powerful forces in human beings.
And there is just one way to rule human
beings by appealing to their vanity, and ap
pealing to their selfishness.
The cunning politician, when he wants to get
votes and have the crowd behind him. appeals
to the two mean passions, vanity and avarice.
In the old days, successful war, gratifying
national vanity, was the great weapon, the great
influence.
In these days, w r hat we call PROSPERITY,
that is to say, money, gratification for the
avaricious and the greedy, is the great weapon.
The old leader of the savage tribe in America
said to his red-skinned followers: “Come with
me and we shall bring back scalps and glory.
And you can dance around the fire and brag to
the squaws.”
The modern leader of the American tribe,
Democratic or Republican, says: “Come with
me, and I will GIVE YOU MONEY. I’ll pay
you higher wages, or I will get you things for
iess by reducing the cost of living. I will give
you work at good wages—and short hours.
Stick to me, and you will be richer, have more,
and do lesc to get it.”
There was a leader long ago, who spoke neith
er of vanity nor of wealth. He spoke of the poor
that needed protection, of children that were
outrageously and cruelly treated, of women,
shamefully judged and unjustly treated. He
had nothing to oiler to men’s vanity, nothing to
offer to their greed—THEY CRUCIFIED HIM.
4 * *
There is nothing puzzling about the picture on
this page to the man who knows how other
men have been ruled.
The monkey on the chair with his ministerial
portfolio under his left arm, and the shower of
decorations pouring from his right hand, repre
sents European government as it is now—
REPRESENTS THE SYSTEM BY WHICH
NAPOLEON WITH HIS BIG INTELLECT
GOVERNED IN HIS DAY.
He inherited from a tired revolution a nation
To Future Ages, Our Civilization Will Look a Good Deal Like This Picture.
It Isn’t a Pleasant Picture, hut It Is not a Bad Reproduction of Things as Theg
Are in This World.
The Monkey Representing Vanity and Low Cunning, the Swine Representing,
Greed and the Lowest Passions, Portray Fairly Well Our Beautiful “Civilization ”.
The Exceptions to This Picture are Honorable AND FEW.
How Many Human Beings Do YOU Know That Do Not Bear a Very Strong
Resemblance to the Frivolous Monkey, or to the Still Lower Animals That He
Showers with his Childish “Decorations?”
How Long Will It Take the Human Race to Eliminate the Monkey and the
Swine from Its Nature, and Be Real and Entirely Made Up of MEN?
that considered itself radical, and said that it
was devoted to the rights of man. forever
pledged to unselfish, brotherly action.
It was Napoleon who invented the Legion of
Honor, with its little red ribbon that a man
wears in his buttonhole, tp show that he is bet
ter than somebody else, with its grand cross,
its sash of silk, or “grand cordon.”
Napoleon said cynically and truly: “I pin one
of these crosses onto the chest of your ardent
radical. And in a minute I make him a con
servative, and a supporter of the Empire.”
Napoleon, the cunning, far-seeing man, under
stood human nature well. He invented his
Legion of Honor and endless other dignities to
feed the vanity of those who thought them
selves republicans and radicals—and they
flocked around his throne, and gave him all
the millions of men he wanted to kill in foreign
wars.
He dealt successfully with the crowd beneath
him, as this monkey, handing out his decora
tions, deals with the crowd of swine below HIM.
They fasten the medals to their necks, or to
their tails, and go off happy and contented,
vainly believing that they are better than some
other pigs of their own size and weight.
4 * #
Nobody knows the suffering, the struggling of
the men and women in this country and in
every country piteously trying to be “better than
somebody else,” or to be recognized by some
body else as an equal.
The smallest town has its “society leader,”
blissfully vain in her belief in her own superi
ority, and its crowds of bitterly disappointed,
siri' ing, struggling women—and men as well—
trying to enter the charmed circle of silly social
vanity.
There are two struggles in America, one for
advancement socially, and the other for ad
vancement financially.
One class is struggling for the little medal of
social distinction that the society monkey can
bestow. And the other is engaged in ardent,
swine-like seeking for financial swill.
Here and there you find a few men or women,
interested in other and better things, trying to
discover new truths, trying to protect those
that need help—but the real crowd, the big
crowd, THE ACTUAL NATION, is made up of
the monkeys and the swine, made up of vanity
and greed—with occasional foolish and mean
ingless moralizing.
4 4 4
Unhappily, men who believe themselves sincere
and that would like to he sincere, thousands
and hundreds of thousands of them, are appar
ently good and unselfish, because they have no
Opportunity to he otherwise.
A man with the intelligence and knowledge of
Thackeray, whose descriptions of snobs proved
that he understood the folly of social distinc
tion, was obliged to confess that his heart would
beat more quickly, if he could walk down Pic
cadilly with a duke on either arm.
A big Socialist leader in the West—a man of
power and intelligence, who does not always
deceive himself, has back of him some tens of
thousands of admirers. These men all declare
themselves “friends of man.” They believe that
they are unselfish, that they want only their
share, and want everybody else to have HIS
share. The leader was asked once: “How many
of your followers would stick to your Socialist
party if they should each inherit §50,000 over
night?”
He replied very honestly: “Perhaps one oul
of a hundred, probably not so many as one out
of one hundred, perhaps one out of a thousand.”
He added, very truly: “However, that doesn’t
matter. The world is made better, not by what
men really are, but by what they think they
are, and by what they try to be.”
4 4 4
Napoleon pinned a decoration on a man who
had sworn to live and die for the REPUBLIC—
and the man promptly swore that he would live
and die for Napoleon and the EMPIRE.
A woman in some little Western town is ad
mitted to some social organization, or invited
to the house of some local aristocratic nobody.
Ami immediately her poor nose goes up into
the air, her heart beats, and her whole view of
the world changes.
A little boy in school is made monitor. And
in a moment he is as vain as though he had
been made Emperor of Russia. His only
thought is to exercise authority, as severely as
possible, upon the boys below- him.
A man is educated, knows something about the
history of the world, begins life for himself,
and plunges into a frantic struggle for the
making of money, that is as unworthy in every
way as the average life of one of those swine
parading before the monkey. He always tells
himself that after awhile he will get his feet
out of the financial trough—but he never does.
« * *
Ours is a rather poor kind of a human race.
Selfish, mean, capable of a selfishness that lasts
throughout life, incapable of abstract thought
for more than half a minute at a time.
We are unworthy human 1. ‘crohes, living on a
wonderful and beautiful planet, surrounded by
cosmic wonders that should lift even our mean
souls above the ground.
Look at the races of a crowd, ugly, angry, un
healthy. You will study a thousand faces be
fore you will find a gleam of abstract thought,
or real ideal longing.
It is well for us to know ourselves as we are.
But luckily, and that is our constant consola
tion, we can look back to conditions infinitely
worse than those we see to-day.
At least, there is a slight grunting of remorse
among the swine. And occasionally some mon
key appears among us with a forehead a little
higher, and a jaw a little smaller, and he tries
to do better than the other monkeys have done.
Fortunately, also, men have only lived on this
planet for about 250,000 years. They have had
a spoken language probably for not more than
150,000 years.
They have still millions upon millions of years
to live here and develop.
We not only hope, WE ABSOLUTELY K'TOW,
that progress in the future equal to the prog
ress that we have made in the past will bring
us up to a stage in civilization in which we shall
have left behind us the swine and the monkey,
in which we shall have developed our brains,
and in which we shall be truly human.
Let those who can work for that better day,
and look with pity and without hatred upon
the monkeys and the swine that form the mass.
And let no man be discouraged because he can
do hut little. To do little and Know that you
are doing little is greatness in itself.
“Once upon a time there came
down from the Thessalian Plains
southward to the city of Athens a
man dissatisfied.
“He entered the Agora and he
came upon Socrates. ’Sir, ’ cried
he, 7 am a very miserable fool. ’
‘The thing is possible, ’ said Soc
rates. ‘For here have I, ’ went on
the discontented one, ‘been striving
these thirty years to build in
Thessaly a Parthenon. And, lol
l can only manage a mud hut. ’
Take heart, my friend, ’ cried
Socrates, ‘for you are in better case
than most. For there are few
enough of men who try to build a
Parthenon, and, of the few, the
most part build themselves a mud
hut and iake it for a Parthenon. ’
“And the Thessalian went hack
to Thessaly and built his temple. ”
Build, your little mud hut, do your best.