Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/68

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heart of one of the anthropoid apes. He was not happy. He was afflicted with ennui. He felt stirring somewhere in the region of his diaphragm a yearning and capacity for a new life. His ideas were vague; but he resolved to make a break for freedom and try an experiment. He crawled nervously out to the end of his branch, followed by a few of his friends, hesitated a moment; then exclaimed abruptly: 'Here's where I get off,' dropped to the ground, lighted on his feet, and amid a pelting of decayed fruit and cocoanut shells and derisive shouts of 'precisian' and 'hypocrite,' walked off on his hind-legs into another quarter of the jungle and founded the human race. That was the first Puritan.

In the beginning, he had only a narrow vision; for his eyes were set near together, as you will see if you examine his skull in the museum. He had a vision of a single principle, namely, that he was to go upright, instead of on all fours. But he gradually made that principle pervade all his life; for he resolutely refrained from doing anything that he could not do while going upright. As habit ultimately made the new posture easy and natural, he found that there were compensations in it; for he learned to do all sorts of things in the erect attitude that he