I didn't know what he meant. When he added, "Why, these crowds,"
I turned and asked, "Why, what about them?" I wasn't sure whether
he had an idea or a headache.

"Other creatures don't do it," he replied, with a discouraged
expression. "Are any other beings ever found in such masses, but
vermin? Aimless, staring, vacant-minded,--look at them! I can
get no sense whatever of individual worth, or of value in men as
a race, when I see them like this. It makes one almost despair
of civilization."

I thought this over for awhile, to get in touch with his attitude.
I myself feel differently at different time about us human-beings:
sometimes I get pretty indignant when we are attacked (for there
is altogether too much abuse of us by spectator philosophers) and
yet at other times I too fell like a spectator, an alien: but even
then I had never felt so alien or despairing as Potter. "Let's
remember," I said, "it's a simian civilization."

Potter was staring disgustedly at some vaudeville sign-boards.

"Yes", I said, "those for example are distinctively simian. Why
should you feel disappointment at something inevitable?" And I
went on to argue that it wasn't as though we were descended from
eagles for instance, instead of (broadly speaking) from ape-like
or monkeyish beings. Being of simian stock, we had simian traits.
Our development naturally bore the marks of our origin. If we
had inherited our dispositions from eagles we should have loathed
vaudeville. But as cousins of Bandarlog, we loved it. What could
you expect?