in the
brute creation. There are many instances on record of instruction given
by the adults to the young. But this agency is in its embryo stage, and
its influence must be small. Again, each tribe of lower animals is apt
to fall into a fixed circle of life acts, to become so closely adapted
to some situation or condition that any change of habits would be likely
to prove detrimental. This is a state of affairs tending to produce
stagnation and vigorously to check advance. Many instances of this could
be cited from human history, while it is the common condition with the
animals below man.

To return to the apes, the considerations above taken lead to the
conclusion that it is chiefly, if not solely, to their social habits
that they owe their mental quickness. While only in minor traits
communal, they are eminently social, and have doubtless derived great
advantage from this. The lemurs, which share their habitat and resemble
them in organization, are markedly unsocial, and are as mentally dull as
the apes are mentally quick. Possibly, the thought powers of the apes
once set in train, there may have been something in the exigencies of
arboreal life that quickened their powers of observation; but we are
constrained to believe that the main influence to which they owe their
development is that of social habits, in which they stand at a high, if
not the highest, level among the distinctly social animals.

The thought capacities of the ape intellect are general, not special.
The mind of these animals remains free and capable of new thought in new
situations. It is fully alive to the needs and dangers of arboreal life,
and advances no farther in its native habitat because there is nothing
more of importance to be learned. But while fixed it is not stagnant.
When the ape is taken from its native woods and put among the many new
conditions arising on shipboard and in human habitations, we quickly
perceive indications of its mental alertness. Its faculties of
observation and imitation are actively exercised, and new habits and
conceptions are quickly gained. Could the apes be made to breed freely
in captivity, so that a domestic race, comparable to that of the dogs,
could be obtained, their mental powers might, perhaps, be cultivated to
an extraordinary degree, yielding instances of thought approaching that
of man. The ape is especially notable for its tendency to attempt new
acts of itself, not waiting to be taught, as in th