Part 2

In this deplorable condition of affairs, we were saved by the action of the same great principle of sexual selection to which we owed our degradation. By a female came our fall, and through a female came our salvation. A gorilla maiden of tender years, and whose sea-serpentine appendage was yet in its earliest stages of development, saw the time approaching when she would be courted and perhaps claimed and taken by some two-legged termination of an elongated sea-monster. She shrank from the prospect and shuddered at her impending fate. She was a strong-minded female, and she determined to free herself, and if possible her race, from the dreadful consequences of the indiscretion of her ancestress. Like that ancestress, she shunned the opposite sex, withdrew from society, and gave herself up to solitary wanderings. The problem which she had undertaken to solve was difficult; for then not only gorillas, but all living things had tails. But when was female ingenuity and perseverance ever baffled in regard to marriage! In that matter, we of the stronger sex are mere puppets in the female hands. We often think we have our own way, but it is chiefly by allowing us to think so that our weaker charmers have theirs. Chance aided her as chance so often does those who wait and watch with determined purpose.

One day, as she sat by the borders of a large lagoon, a huge pair of nostrils appeared on the surface of the waters. They wheezed and snorted for a few moments; and then an enormous head came forth, garnished with little ears and huge, stony teeth. The head was followed by a still more enormous body; but, oh joy! oh delight, and prospect full of hope! a body to which there was appended the smallest conceivable of tails; in fact, a tail which to her tail-wearied eyes was of inconceivable smallness. It was a hippopotamus. In her turn she was charmed, was won upon the instant. What happiness might be hoped for in a life with a male creature having so gigantic a body and such an infinitesimally little tail! What terminal transformation, what caudal beauty, might not be looked for in the progeny of such a father! Her resolution was taken on the instant. That hippopotamus should marry her. But the accomplishment of her design proved to be far from easy. The hippopotamus came up out of the water, and she supposed that he would run directly to her. To her surprise, he took no notice of her, but splashed along the sedgy margin of the great pool, thrusting his huge snout into the mud and stirring up the bottom until he and the water were alike befouled. She threw herself in his way and trod the shore with dainty, mincing steps, her tail undulating after her in graceful folds. To her disgust, he seemed unconscious of her presence. He lifted his head, indeed, and gave her a lazy look of indifference, but turned immediately again to his loafing through the mud and water. The hippopotamus is not a lively animal, not of an inquiring mind, almost without curiosity, and, I am grieved to say, utterly without sentiment. What was to be done? She could not seize upon him and marry him out of hand; or, if she could have done so, she would have been no nearer her end. If she had been able to seize that vast, enchanting, and exquisitely almost-tailless body, and carry it off with her to her bower, of what use to her would have been the indifferent mass of flesh? For strong minded as a female may be, and even strong bodied, the unalterable decrees of nature have placed a limit to the efficiency of her will, although not to that of her wiles. Our forecasting and self-sacrificing ancestress might perhaps have stood guard over her male favorite, keeping him well fed and contented within her solitary seraglio; but she would have been thereby no nearer to her hopes of dandling in her arms a new-born and almost tailless progeny.

She grasped the situation at a glance, and mastered it after a moment’s reflection. With the readiness of her sex in such matters, she instantly formed her resolution. Her female instinct taught her that, although a hippopotamus might be without curiosity, without politeness, and even without a disposition to gallantry, he could not be male and yet without sexual vanity. As he would not fall in love with her, she decided to make him believe that she was enamored of him; and, being female, she also determined that, although she set out with the intention of captivating him and yielding to him, she would make him pay well for his indifference. She retreated to her former position, and sitting down on the bank, remained there looking at her victim until he waded into deep water and sank out of sight.

The next day, when he came out upon his haunt, she was there again, and he could not but see that she watched him closely; and when, after stirring up the mud and treading down the sedges (a proceeding which she seemed to regard with the liveliest interest), he walked down into the depths, as he was about disappearing he turned his head, and his last glimpse of the upper world showed him the young lady gorilla gazing pensively on his vanishing form. When she saw him turn his head she smiled within herself; for she saw that she had put a hook into his nostrils. Again and again he found her there, always gazing quietly at him; and each day he lingered longer at his amphibious disporting.

One day he came and she was not there; at least she was not visible; but, concealed in a neighboring thicket, she watched the effect of her absence. The hippopotamus arrived as usual, and looked for her at her accustomed seat. Not seeing her, he came fully out upon the shore and gazed around. He trotted heavily about, peering inquisitively from his little eyes. He sniffed the air, but the wind blew from the shore, and she remained undiscovered. Deprived of his audience, his performances that day were brief and spiritless, and he soon sought the bottom of the lagoon. The next day she was there, and he trotted directly up to her. But she rose and walked shyly away, keeping her eyes softly bent upon him. He approached quickly; but at once she fled away at a pace that defied pursuit; for she was much the nimbler. At a convenient distance, she paused and made eyes at him. Seeing that he could not overtake her, he went back into the water. She returned to her post of observation, when he began those performances which the Darwin says the male always goes through to please and win the female. He bellowed and gnashed his teeth, he rolled over and over in the mud and water, in the most captivating manner. He went into deeper water and lashed about in it until he made it boil like a pot. In vain; she sat immovable, although she continued her pensive gaze; and when he again approached her she fled, and this time actually vanished from his sight. The next day both were there again, and he repeated his performance. Again she was charmed, but still unyielding. In a frenzy of repressed hippopotamic feeling, he approached her; and, could he believe his little eyes? she did not flee. He wiggled his tiny tail with the rapidity of a Yankee clock’s pendulum, all unconscious that he was thus attracting attention to the greatest, although the least conspicuous, of his charms. All at once, fired and stimulated by vanity and love, it occurred to him that if he could and should exhibit himself in a position and with a movement more like her own, he would be irresistible. He had observed that she walked chiefly upon her hind legs; and he therefore determined to approach her walking upon his. He heaved himself upward two or three times with difficulty, and without success; for he was one of the heavy fathers of his clumsy race. But at last he attained his end, and approached her, walking in a ponderous imitation of her own graceful gait. It was an awful and overpowering exertion. The great historian of the fallen race of Darwin, one of them called Gibbon, did not have a more trying task when he bent his hippopotamic figure, and knelt before his beloved one, who was obliged to call her servants to help him up. He was paid only with a peal of laughter; but our ponderous ancestor was rewarded by seeing on the face of his charmer a pensive and delighted smile. It roused him to an exertion almost incredible. Inflamed with love, and his vanity tickled to the point of frenzy, he did what the Darwin says all lovers do to win their loves, he danced. Moving slowly and stiffly at first, he soon launched into a break-down that was a marvel to all living creatures. With jaws wide open, and nostrils distended, he thundered about the shore, flinging his forefeet into the air with frantic and gigantic abandonment. If one of his hind legs stuck deep in the soft margin of the pool, and interrupted his performance, it was but for a moment; he drew it out with a suddenness and force that made a report that startled all the birds within a mile, and plunged again into his amorous saltation. It was the most tremendous _pas seul_ ever executed. At last he stopped, panting; and, plumping down upon his knees, joined his fore-paws in supplication. Of course our ancestress then yielded—so the Darwin says that no female can resist a dancing lover—and in due time she was rewarded by the appearance of a little gorilla with a tail so small as to be hardly visible.

The event stirred our community far more than if the bantling had been born without a head. The mothers of newly-born gorillas, with the old-fashioned tail, undertook at first to decry the peculiar feature of the new-comer. But this effort, although natural, was in vain; and in brief, the little tail now, like the great tail in earlier ages, became the fashion, and carried all before it. The hippopotamus, although, I am sorry to say, he was already married, and the father of a family, was persuaded by other lady gorillas to illustrate the great principle of sexual selection. Many other hippopotamuses were led astray, to the great disturbance of the connubial depths of the lakes and rivers of that region; and the result was that in the course of a generation or two the great tails had disappeared, and the story of their origin came to be regarded as an old wive’s fable.

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For a very considerable time—I will not undertake to say how many hundred thousand years; and in such matters a hundred thousand years or so is a mere trifle—gorillas had little tails: now they have none. It has been supposed by a predecessor of the Darwin that these tails were worn off by being sat down upon, and so gradually disappeared at once from the face of the earth and the back of the gorilla. I am not prepared to say, at this stage of the inquiry into the theory of development, that such an abatement of our caudal appendages was not possible. But I deal here with facts, not with fancies; and, in fact, such was not the manner of their disappearance; for, indeed, the tails were so very small, and tucked themselves away so very closely and comfortably when we sat down, that the friction necessary to their abatement was never effectually established. It happened through another manifestation of the principle of sexual selection, and in this wise.

A lady gorilla—a young matron, who was generally believed to have her husband very well in hand, partly from his devotion to her, but chiefly through her selfish indifference to him, and who found herself for the second time in that interesting situation which gives every female who considers herself a lady the right to insist upon the gratification of her slightest whim and most fanciful caprice—took a notion that she must eat the soft parts of a very tender young crocodile. She thought that the high musky flavor of such a tit-bit would be of great benefit to her; and, indeed, she threatened that if it were not forthcoming she would surely produce, not a gorilla, but a crocodile, or, at the very least, a gorilla with scales and a long, thick tail. Her husband was a great fisherman, and she sent him out to catch for her the much-desired dainty. He fished all day with fisherman’s luck. He had many exciting nibbles, and some very promising bites, but no baby crocodile. The shades of night were falling fast, and he found that his bait was all gone. He dreaded the scene that would ensue upon his appearance without the object of his lady’s longings. What should he do? In his desperation a bright thought occurred to him. There was his own tail. It was his last chance, and the method was unheard of; but the emergency was great, and he was willing to submit to almost any sacrifice, even that of mutilation, rather than appear empty-handed before the mistress of his affections and his household. He cut off his tail, put it on his fish-bone hook as if he loved it (which he did), and made his last cast, comforting himself as much as he could with the consciousness that, at least, he could come before his longing lady, saying, “I have done what I could,” and being able to show proof of his words. To his delight and surprise, it proved a very killing bait. An infant crocodile, that had just then gone out, in defiance of her mother’s commands, who had warned her particularly against gorillas’ tails, saw this one sink slowly down to her, twiddling invitingly through the twilit water. She thought that she would eat one only this once, just to see how it tasted, and would never do so again. She sprang at it, and was instantly drawn screaming and wriggling out of the water, and the gorilla took her home triumphantly to his expectant spouse, telling her of his sacrifice. Her whim had changed; and the odor that she had so longed for filled her with loathing. But the consciousness that the thing had cost her husband his tail gave it a relish in what she called her heart, if not to her palate, and she managed to eat a morsel.

The next day the remains of the disobedient crocodile child were displayed in her cave, and she told to her gossips the story of the tribute to her charms. She was filled with exultation, and they were stung with envy. She took airs upon herself. She was a wife for whom her husband would stop at no sacrifice, not even that of the appendage to his seat of honor. This could not be borne. The other ladies felt humiliated; and soon several of them were seized with a longing like to hers for a baby crocodile, to be captured in the same manner. One entrapped, or caught with any other bait, would not answer the purpose. Why prolong the recital? The husbands yielded; the bait still proved taking; and the pride of the ladies was fed, if not their appetites. Soon it became an understood thing that any gorilla who was worthy the name of husband and father would sacrifice his tail to provide newly-born crocodiles for his wife; and ere long there was not a masculine tail to be seen in the community. The natural consequences ensued, as the Darwin has explained; and thus, by the operation of the laws of development and of sexual selection, the gorilla became again a tailless animal.

* * * * *

Through these vicissitudes, my esteemed quadrumanous hearers, our race has passed in consequence of the weakness and the caprice of that lovely and enchanting sex whose errors we are always so ready to forgive, in consideration of their charms. [Here it was observed that the female gorillas bridled and cast side glances at the males, and chattered in low tones to each other. A few of the ugliest broke out into applause, which was quickly frowned down by the leading matrons, and laughed at by the beauties of the younger sort.] And now let me warn my young female friends against that curse of their sex, the temptation to make low marriages and to form disreputable connections with extravagant and wheeling strangers. There is no surer way to destroy their peace of mind and to ruin their prospects in life. [Here a hum of approval was heard from the matrons, at which the younger belles giggled, tossed their heads, and turned up their noses. One of them, a pert minx, evidently a gorilla girl of the period, had the audacity to call out, “I say, old buffer, how about that hippopotamus?” But the lecturer did not reply, and went on with his subject.] This failing is not peculiar to the females of our noble race. The Darwin tells us that it is found in the dog family. But what might not be looked for in the habits of such low people, who go about continually upon all fours, without raising themselves occasionally as we do on their posterior extremities; who have no thumbs on their hind feet, and who have tails, and not only have them, but wag them, with delight in their possession. The Darwin says that the females of the dog family (he gives them a name, I am sorry to say, which would bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and which therefore I shrink from uttering, and so I use another term that means the same thing)—well, he tells us that the lady-dogs “are not always prudent in their loves, but are apt to fling themselves away on curs of low degree. If reared with a companion of vulgar appearance” [here the lecturer drew himself up, passed one hand through his hair, and with the other stroked his whiskers], “there often springs up between the pair a devotion which no time can afterward subdue. The passion, for such it really is, becomes of a more than romantic endurance.”[3] Could there be a more effectual warning against the dangers of propinquity and the folly of what simpletons call disinterested affection!

Footnote 3:

The Descent of Man. Chapter xvii.

Let me further illustrate this topic by the story of a beautiful lady-dog, the elegant and high-bred Kaloolah. Worthy to bear the name of that lovely and renowned princess, our Kaloolah lived in a country far beyond the Great Waters. She was the daintiest and most delicate of her sex. Born of the famous Blakkantan tribe, her coat was of jetty brilliancy, soft and fine, and edged with the dark saffron border which is the mark of the highest families of her race. Not one white hair marred the jetty perfection of her exterior, to betray the indiscretion of any of her ancestresses. Her body had the slenderness of a greyhound’s, and her pretty pointed paws tapped the responsive ground lightly as she ran. After she had attained nubile years she was sought by many males of her own race; but her fastidiousness caused her to reject them all, and the care of those under whose protection she had been placed so seconded and supported her in her resolution, that it seemed as if she would pass her life in the sweet serenity of virgin solitude. [Here some slight hissing and giggling was heard from the younger females, and a groan came from an ancient one, who was said to have very unfavorable opinions of the taste of the whole male sex.] But, alas! she was one day removed to a rural district in the hill-country where her protectors made their dwelling. At that place was a dog, a coarse, vulgar creature, rude, shaggy, unkempt, grisly, uncouth, a kind of slave of the soil, who had been bought with the acres, and who was never allowed to come within the house, hardly near it, but was driven to find a fitting harborage in the stables and out-buildings. Yet after a period—will it be believed?—such is the influence of propinquity, the beautiful Kaloolah cast aside that maidenly reserve and fastidious exclusiveness by which she had hitherto been distinguished, and shocked her protectors by forming a _mésalliance_ with the Bear; for so the low brute was fitly called. The consequence duly appeared in the form of a miserable mongrel, a grisly, gaunt, lean-bodied, huge-pawed, awkward creature, without either the high-bred elegance of its mother or the rugged strength of its father, a shame to both its parents, an offence to the household, and a living witness of the dreadful consequences of a practical disregard of the great principle of sexual selection.

* * * * *

No other modification or development of our race has taken place, in the direct line, than those of which I have told you. None other was necessary. We at last returned to, and have since maintained, that perfection of beauty in face and form which makes the gorilla the paragon of animals, and which causes the few specimens of our effete cousin, man, who venture within our haunts to come without their females, being naturally unwilling to expose the partners of their beds and their bosoms to the temptation of our superior attractions. [Here the lecturer glanced aside at a knot of females in his audience, and tried to look modest, but failed.] Even the Darwin, who boasts of his descent from our noble race, would, shrink from such a test of his principle of sexual selection. We, I confess, are not proud, and should have no objection to such visitors, a generosity of feeling which he himself has had the grace to acknowledge.[4]

Footnote 4:

See the passage in Latin in chapter i. of “The Descent of Man.”