Monkeys rest only during sleep.  Old age does not affect their nimbleness; they can be fattened, for I have seen baboons as sleek as seals, but, like Gibbon, Henry Buckle, and Marshal Vendome, they prove that the energy of a strong will can bear up under such burdens.  Madame de Stael, too, managed to combine a progressive embonpoint with the undiminished brilliancy of her genius, though it is certain that adipose tissue does not feed the flame of every mind.  Charles Dickens in his “American Notes” expresses the opinion that no vigor of mental constitution could be proof against the influence of solitary confinement; but the narrow monkey-cages of our zoological prisons show that the minds of the little captives can stand the test of even that ordeal.  They play with their shadows, if the nakedness of their four walls does not afford any other pastime.

Docility, on the other hand, is a rather ambiguous test of intelligence.  The willingness and the ability to learn may supplement their mutual deficiencies, but differ as radically as patience and genius.  Dogs master the tasks of their education by their earnest endeavor to please their master; Jacko excels them in spite of his waywardness.  Some boys win college-prizes by memorizing their lessons in conformity with the wishes of a dreaded or beloved preceptor, others by dint of natural aptitude and a love of knowledge based on spontaneous inquisitiveness; and every circus-trainer knows that teachers who understand to avail themselves of that gift can teach a monkey tricks which can neither be coaxed nor kicked into the skull of the most docile dog.  Besides, the domestic dog is a considerably modified variety of the family to which he belongs, and in order to appreciate the difference between the natural intelligence of the canines and the quadrumana we should compare the docility of the monkey with that of the wolf or the jackal.  In the submissiveness of the dog the hereditary influence of several thousand generations has developed a sort of artificial instinct that qualifies him for the exigencies of his servitude; but submissiveness per se, however valuable for plastic purposes, is certainly not a characteristic concomitant of superior intelligence.  In the soul of the Hindoo, the Chinese, and the Eastern Slav, the long-inculcated duty of subordination has become almost a second nature, while the most intelligent tribes of the ancient Greeks were famous—­or, from a Chinese point of view, perhaps infamous—­for a strong tendency in the opposite direction.

Patience is not a prominent gift of our four-handed relatives, but compensating nature has endowed them with the genius of self-help and its adjuvant talents,—­observation, causality, imitativeness, covetousness, and self-asserting pluck.  They also possess a fair share of such faculties as inquisitiveness, vigilance, and perseverance, all rudiments, indeed, but the rudiments of supremacy.

FELIX L. OSWALD.