ll be bad for
their bodies. Instead of roaming far and wide over the country, getting
vigorous exercise, they will use their hands to catch and tame horses,
build carriages, motors, and then when they want a good outing they
will "go for a ride," with their bodies slumped down, limp and
sluggish, and losing their spring.

Then too their brains will do harm, and great harm, to their bodies.
The brain will give them such an advantage over all other animals that
they will insensibly be led to rely too much on it, to give it too free
a rein, and to find the mirrors in it too fascinating. This organ, this
outgrowth, this new part of them, will grow over-active, and its many
fears and fancies will naturally injure the body. The interadjustment
is delicate and intimate, the strain is continuous. When the brain
fails to act with the body, or, worse, works against it, the body will
sicken no matter what cures doctors try.

As in bodily self-respect, so in racial self-respect, they'll be
wanting. They will have plenty of racial pride and prejudice, but that
is not the same thing. That will make them angry when simians of one
color mate with those of another. But a general deterioration in
physique will cause much less excitement.

They will _talk_ about improving the race--they will talk about
everything--but they won't use their chances to _do_ it. Whenever a new
discovery makes life less hard, for example, these heedless beings will
seldom preserve this advantage, or use their new wealth to take more
time thereafter for thought, or to gain health and strength or do
anything else to make the race better. Instead, they will use the new
ease just to increase in numbers; and they will keep on at this until
misery once more has checked them. Life will then be as hard as ever,
naturally, and the chance will be gone.

They will have a proverb, "The poor ye have always with you,"--said by
one who knew simians.

Their ingenious minds will have an answer to this. They will argue it
is well that life should be Spartan and hard, because of the discipline
and its strengthening effects on the character. But the good effects of
this sort of discipline will be mixed with sad wreckage. And only
creatures incapable of disciplining themselves could thus argue. It is
an odd expedient to get yourself into trouble just for discipline's
sake.

The fact is, however, the argument won't be sincere. When their nations
grow so over-populous and th