dignity of labor is futile. The dignity of labor is not a simian
conception at all. True simians hate to have to work steadily: they
call it grind and confinement. They are always ready to pity the
toilers who are condemned to this fate, and to congratulate those
who escape it, or who can do something else. When they see some
performer in spangles risk his life, at a circus, swinging around
on trapezes, high up in the air, and when they are told he must do
it daily, do they pity /him?/ No! Super-elephants would say, and
quite properly, "What a horrible life!" But it naturally seems
stimulating to simians. Boys envy the fellow. On the other hand
whenever we are told about factory life, we instinctively shudder
to think of enduring such evils. We see some old work-man, filling
cans with a whirring machine; and we hear the humanitarians telling
us, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice,
warm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with
nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: "How deadly! What
montonous toil! Shorten his hours!" His work would seem blissful to
super-spiders,--but to us it's intolerable. "Grind and confinement?"
That's the strong monkey-blood in our veins.

Our monkey-blood is also apparent in our judgments of crime. If a
crime is committed on impulse, we partly forgive it. Why? Because,
being simians, with a weakness for yielding to impulses, we like to
excuse ourselves by feeling not accountable for them. Elephants
would have probably taken an opposite stand. They aren't creatures
of impulse, and would be shocked at crimes due to such causes; their
fault is the opposite one of pondering too long over injuries, and
becoming vindictive in the end, out of all due proportion. If a
young super-elephant were to murder another on impulse, they would
consider him a dangerous character and string him right up. But if