led about by the mulatto turnkey,
the one human being with whom he, dimly understanding what is fit
for him, will at all consort; and having wild pines thrown down to
him from the Poui tree above by the spider monkey, whose gambols he
watches with pardonable envy. Like the great Mr. Barry Lyndon (the
acutest sketch of human nature dear Thackeray ever made), he cannot
understand why the world is so unjust and foolish as to have taken a
prejudice against him. After all, he is nothing but a strong nasty
brute; and his only reason for being here is that he is a new and
undescribed species, never seen before, and, it is to be hoped,
never to be seen again.

In a cage near by (for there is quite a little menagerie here) are
three small Sapajous, {90} two of which belong to the island; as
abject and selfish as monkeys usually are, and as uninteresting;
save for the plain signs which they give of being actuated by more
than instinct,--by a 'reasoning' power exactly like in kind, though
not equal in degree, to that of man. If, as people are now too much
induced to believe, the brain makes the man, and not some higher
Reason connected intimately with the Moral Sense, which will endure
after the brain has turned to dust; if to foresee consequences from
experience, and to adapt means to ends, be the highest efforts of
the intellect: then who can deny that the Sapajou proves himself a
man and a brother, plus a tail, when he puts out a lighted cigar-end
before he chews it, by dipping it into the water-pan; and that he
may, therefore, by long and steady calculations about the
conveniences of virtue and inconveniences of vice, gradually cure
himself and his children of those evil passions which are defined as
'the works of the flesh,' and rise to the supremest heights of
justice, benevolence, and purity? We, who have been brought up in
an older, and as we were taught to think, a more rational creed, may
not be able yet to allow our imaginations so daringly hopeful a
range: but the world travels fast, and seems travelling on into
some such theory just now; leaving behind, as antiquated bigots,
those who dare still to believe in the eternal and immutable essence
of Goodness, and in the divine origin of man, created in the
likeness of God, that he might be perfect even as his Father in
heaven is perfect.

But to return to the animals. The cage next to the monkeys holds a
more pleasant beast; a