ment from ape to man is considered to have come in successive generations, but the negroes are said to attain the result in the individual, by way of metempsychosis. Froebel speaks of negro slaves in the United States believing that in the next world they shall be white men and free, nor is there anything strange in their cherishing a hope so prevalent among their kindred in West Africa. But from this the traveller goes on to quote another story, which, if not too good to be true, is a theory of upward and downward development, almost thorough enough for a Buddhist philosopher. He says, 'A German whom I met here told me that the blacks believe the damned among the negroes to become monkeys; but if in this state they behave well, they are advanced to the state of a negro again, and bliss is eventually possible to them, consisting in their turning white, becoming winged, and so on.'[1]
To understand these stories (and they are worth some attention for the ethnological hints they contain), it is necessary that we should discard the results of modern scientific zoology, and bring our minds back to a ruder condition of knowledge. The myths of human degeneration and development have much more in common with the speculations of Lord Monboddo than with the anatomical arguments of Professor Huxley. On the one hand, uncivilized men deliberately assign to apes an amount of human quality which to modern naturalists is simply ridiculous. Everyone has heard the story of the negroes declaring that apes really can speak, but judiciously hold their tongues lest they should be made to work; but it is not so generally known that this is found as serious matter of belief in several distant regions — West Africa, Madagascar, South America, &c. — where monkeys or apes are found.[2] With this goes another
- ↑ Froebel, 'Central America,' p. 220; see Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 401. For other traditions of human descent from apes, see Farrar, 'Chapters on Language,' p. 45.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' p. 440; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 178; Cauche, 'Relation de
387; Koeppen, vol. ii. p. 44; J. J. Schmidt, 'Völker Mittel-Asiens,' p. 210.
