readiness to the loss of this privilege. What outrages him is
to make him stop wagging his tongue. He becomes most excited and
passionate about the right of free speech, even going so far in his
emotion as to declare it is sacred.

He looks upon other creatures pityingly because they are dumb.
If one of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy.
Even that mere hesitation in speech, know as stammering, he deems
a misfortune.

So precious to a simian is the privilege of making sounds with his
tongue, that when he wishes to punish severely those men he calls
criminals, he forbids them to chatter, and forces them by threats
to be silent. It is felt that his punishment is entirely too cruel
however and even the worst offenders should be allowed to talk part
of each day.

Whatever a simian does, there must always be some talking about it.
He can't even make peace without a kind of chatter called a peace
conference. Super-cats would not have had to "make" peace: they
would have just walked off and stopped fighting.


In a world of super-cat-men, I suppose there would have been fewer
sailors; and people would have cared less for seaside resorts, or
for swimming. Cats hate getting wet, so men descended from them
might have hated it. They would have felt that even going in
wading was sign of great hardihood, and only the most daring young
fellows, showing off, would have done it.