civilized simian, every day of his life, in addition to whatever
older facts he has picked up, will wish to know all the news of
all the world. If he felt any true concern to know it, this
would be rather fine of him: it would imply such a close solidarity
on the part of this genus. (Such a close solidarity would seem
crushing, to others; but that is another matter.) It won't be
true concern, however, it will be merely a blind inherited instinct.
He'll forget what he's read, the very next hour, or moment. Yet
there he will faithfully sit, the ridiculous creature, reading of
bombs in Spain or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting on all
the news he can get of the kind our race loved when they scampered
and fought in the forest, news that will stir his most primitive
simian feelings,--wars, accidents, love affairs, and family quarrels.

To feed himself with this largely purposeless provender, he will pay
thousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night;
and they will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother
or obscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets
will be read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this
lazy race will not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't
like to eat in the morning without their papers, such slaves they
will be to this droll greed for knowing. They won't even think it
is droll, it is so in their blood.

Their swollen desire for investigating everything about them,
including especially other people's affairs, will be quenchless.
Few will feel that they really are "fully informed"; and all will
give much of each day all their lives to the news.

Books too will be used to slake this unappeasable thirst. They