imals--that is, it possesses the faculty
of observation in an unusual degree. What we call curiosity in the ape
is the basic form of the characteristic which we call attention or
observation in man. Its seeming great activity in the ape is what might
naturally be expected in an observant animal when removed from its
natural habitat to a location where all around it is new and strange.
Man under like circumstances is as curious as the ape, while the latter
in its native trees probably finds little to excite its special
attention. In both man and the ape it needs novelty to excite curiosity.

Again, the ape is imitative in a high degree. This faculty also it does
not share with the lower animals, but does with man, imitation being
one of the methods by which he has attained his supremacy. Observation,
imitation, education, are the three levers in the development of the
human intellect. The first two of these the ape possesses in a marked
degree. It is susceptible also to the last, being very teachable.
Education certainly exists to some extent among the apes in their
natural habitat, perhaps to as great an extent as it did in primitive
man. In the latter case it is doubtful if there was much that could be
called designed education, the young gaining their degree of knowledge by
observing and imitating their elders. The same is certainly the case
among the apes.

We may reasonably ask what there is in the life and character of the
apes to give them this mental superiority over the remaining lower
animals. It is certainly not due to the arboreal life and powers of
grasp of these animals, for in those respects they resemble the lemurs,
which are greatly lacking in intelligence. Whether the monkeys emerged
from the lemurs or the two groups developed side by side is a question
as yet unsettled; at all events they are closely similar in conditions
of existence. Yet while the monkeys are the most intelligent and
teachable of animals, the lemurs are among the least intelligent of the
mammalia. There is here a marked distinction which is evidently not due
to difference of structure or habitat, and must have its origin in some
other characteristic, such as difference in life habits.

There is certainly nothing in the diet of the ape to develop
intelligence. The frugivorous and herbivorous animals do not need
cunning and shrewdness to anything like the extent necessary in
carnivorous animals. They do not need to pursue or lie in w