And I felt stirring in me, germs
of a new and higher consciousness--yearnings of love towards the mother
ape, who fed me and carried me from tree to tree. But I grew and grew; and
then the weight of my destiny fell upon me. I saw year by year my brow
recede, my neck enlarge, my jaw protrude; my teeth became tusks; skinny
wattles grew from my cheeks--the animal faculties in me were swallowing
up the intellectual. I watched in myself, with stupid self-disgust, the
fearful degradation which goes on from youth to age in all the monkey
race, especially in those which approach nearest to the human form. Long
melancholy mopings, fruitless stragglings to think, were periodically
succeeded by wild frenzies, agonies of lust and aimless ferocity. I flew
upon my brother apes, and was driven off with wounds. I rushed howling down
into the village gardens, destroying everything I met. I caught the birds
and insects, and tore them to pieces with savage glee. One day, as I sat
among the boughs, I saw Lillian coming along a flowery path--decked as Eve
might have been, the day she turned from Paradise.
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