Diogenes’s Invectives

The Apes and I

Atlas – Air France n°80 – February 1973

Madame, you ask politely why I don’t go away and live with the apes. I must choose, you insist, between being a man and accepting civilization, or returning to the trees like an animal. You affirm that I would make a quite presentable ape, and that presentable ape, and that — should I decide to make the donation of my person to a zoo — you yourself would go so far as to bring me peanuts, on the condition of course that I behave suitably and make the children laugh.

Your letter, Madame, put me in a very thoughtful mood. Here is the situation: I had never before considered returning to an arboreal life, in all of my two thousand years on earth. We have our oversights, you know, and often they last a long time, as the duke of Saint-Simon remarked.

But a tree! That green paradise, inhabited by birds and visited by butterflies and druids collecting mistletoe! That paradise ruled by the knowledge of good and evil! The more I think of it, the more it evokes in me a nostalgia for those days long gone, that blessed time when the ancestor of whom I am but a sad reincarnation swung from branch to branch, shouting raucously and interrupting his play only to peel a fruit or scratch a flea, preferably with the back left hand, for it was essential to know how to use one’s four hands.

Yes, Madame, you have touched me to the very soul with your suggestion. When I compare this barrel, which is nonetheless a beautiful one, to my ancestor’s tree, I am conscious of how much I have descended; for indeed, man has descended from the apes, that is, from species of ape. But I must add that though we are all descended from that ape, some of us seem to have descended faster than others.

In fact, it would perhaps be more accurate to speak of a fall rather than a descent…

But enough of this nostalgia. Let’s consider: why don’t I go live with the apes? Why am I here in the middle of Athens, my head full of contradictory philosophies and troublesome sciences, among the sophists, the crooks, the fools, and the swindlers? And why, having chosen to live here, have I not allied myself either with those who find everything good, or those who complain that society means alienation? Yes, yes, Madame, you’re right, I must choose. And yet… no. In any event, not between those two positions. For if you carry each of them to its logical extreme, one dictates that you oppose change, since everything is good as it is now, and the other dictates that you retire to the wilderness, where alienation poses no threats.

The real reason which discourages me from joining the apes and which keeps me among men is this: their wisdom — the apes’, I mean, not man’s.

Listen to this story told by Konrad Lorenz in a book by his friend Friedrich Hacker, a psychiatrist.

There was a tribe of baboons in the African bush, discovered by the anthropologist De Vore. It was headed by an apparently doddering old male, who was often carried by his assistants, since he could hardly stand up. As you are perhaps aware, baboon hierarchies are expressed through various pantomimes, of which the most significant is the “menacing yawn”: to intimidate his inferiors, the baboon shows his teeth, which are enormous. The old king of this tribe did not neglect the ritual, which was very effective: when he opened his mouth, his subjects respectfully executed his will.

An interesting peculiarity of the royal jaw, however, was that it had no teeth! Why then did the tribe obey, the general rule being that authority is proportional of the size of the teeth?

De Vore did not have to wait long to learn the answer to this question. One day, as he was following the tribe through the bush, everyone stopped: a lion was sleeping on the path. And here is the scene that the scholar observed: The old king tottered forward alone on his trembling legs and stood before the sleeping beast, motioned to his subjects to walk around him, and stayed there until the last one had passed. Then, still tottering, he returned to the head of the troop.

And you want me to go away with the apes, Madame? To see with my own eyes the leader walking first to danger and his followers obeying him, not for his teeth, but for his wisdom? To live among respectful youth? Among respected elders? But do you want to bring an end to philosophy? For what in the devil would it be good for among sages like that?

Philosophy, Madame, is the most precious flower of human thought. If you don’t believe me, ask Plato. Now, there would be no philosophers if there were not swindlers, fools, sophists, and crooks.

So let thanks be offered to these benefactors for having given us the gift of philosophy, of which I myself, in my barrel, am no small part. Hoping to hear from you again, Madame, I remain…■

Diogenes.