Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

The Darwinian idea that monkeys and apes are our closest relatives brought the discomfort to the conscious level. You can still see the unease today in the conventional associations with the word “ape”: to copy slavishly, to be outsized and brutal. To “go ape” is to revert, to become wild, untamed. When we handle something idly, in an exploratory way, we’re “monkeying around.” To “make a monkey” out of someone is to humiliate him. A “little monkey” is a mischievous or playful child. A “monkeyshine” is a prank. To “go bananas” is to lose control—reflecting the fact that monkeys and apes, who indeed love bananas, are not subject to the same social restraints that we are. In Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, monkeys and apes were emblematic of extreme ugliness, of a doomed craving for the status of humans, of ill-gotten wealth, of a vengeful disposition, of lust and foolishness and sloth.⁵ They were accessories—because of their susceptibility to temptation—in the “Fall of Man.” For their sins, it was widely held, apes and monkeys deserved to be subjugated by humans. We seem to have weighed these beings down with a heavy burden of symbols, metaphors, allegories, and projections of our own fears about ourselves.

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Before the outside world knew anything of his long effort to understand evolution, Darwin wrote telegraphically in his 1838 “M” notebook: “Origin of man now proved … He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than [the philosopher John] Locke.”⁶ But what does it mean to understand a baboon?

One of the earliest scientific studies of the chimpanzee in its natural African habitat was made by Thomas N. Savage, a Boston physician. Writing in early Victorian times, he concluded:They exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence in their habits, and, on the part of the mother, much affection for their young … [But] they are very filthy in their habits … It is a tradition with the natives generally here, that they were once members of their own tribe: that for their depraved habits they were expelled from all human society, and, that through an obstinate indulgence of their vile propensities, they have degenerated into their present state and organisation.⁷

Something was bothering Thomas N. Savage, M.D. “Filthy,” “depraved,” “vile,” and “degenerate” are terms of abuse, not scientific description. What was Savage’s problem? Sex. Chimpanzees have an obsessive, unself-conscious preoccupation with sex that seems to have been more than Savage could bear. Their zesty promiscuity may include dozens of seemingly indiscriminate heterosexual copulations a day, routine close mutual genital inspections, and what at first looks very much like rampant male homosexuality. This was a time when proper young ladies were abjured not to inquire too closely into the stamens and pistils—“the private parts”—of flowers; the renowned critic John Ruskin would later harumph, “With these obscene processes and prurient apparitions, the gentle and happy scholar of flowers has nothing to do.”⁸ How was a proper Bostonian physician to describe what he had witnessed among the chimpanzees?

And if he did describe it, even obliquely, did he not run a certain risk—that his readers would conclude he approved what he was chronicling? Or more than “approved.” What had drawn him to chimpanzees in the first place? Why did he insist on writing about them? Were there no worthier matters deserving of his attention? Perhaps, he felt obliged to ensure that even a casual reader would note the great distance separating Thomas Savage from the subjects of his study.*

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William Congreve was the leading playwright of the English comedy of manners around the turn of the eighteenth century. The monarchy had been restored after a bloody struggle with the Puritan religious schismatics who gave their name to rigidity on sexual morality. Each age is repelled by the excesses of the last, so this was a time of moral permissiveness, at least among the dominant elite. Their sigh of relief was almost audible. But Congreve was not their apologist. His ironical and satirical wit was directed at the pretensions, affectations, hypocrisies, and cynicisms of his age—but especially at the prevailing sexual mores. Here, for example, are three fragments of ruling-class dialogue from his The Way of the World:[O]ne makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more.

You should have just so much disgust for your husband as may be sufficient to make you relish your lover.

I say that a man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain dealing and sincerity.⁹