speech.
He called it "Big Thinks" to distinguish it from "Little Thinks,"
the sane every-day interests of life. If ever I made a remark
he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to say
it again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word
wrong here or there, to all the milder of the Beast People.
He thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible.
I invented some very curious "Big Thinks" for his especial use.
I think now that he was the silliest creature I ever met;
he had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctive silliness
of man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey.

This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these brutes.
During that time they respected the usage established by the Law,
and behaved with general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn
to pieces,--by the Hyena-swine, I am assured,--but that was all.
It was about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference
in their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation,
a growing disinclination to talk. My Monkey-man's jabber multiplied
in volume but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.
Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,
though they still understood what I said to them at that time.
(Can you imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and
guttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?)
And they walked erect with an increasing difficulty. Though they
evidently felt ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come
upon one or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable
to recover the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily;
drinking by suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day.
I realised more keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about
the "stubborn beast-flesh." They were reverting, and reverting very
rapidly.

Some of them--the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise,
were all females--began to disregard the injunction of decency,
deliberately for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages
upon the institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearly
losing its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.

My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day
he became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition
from the companion on my right hand