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"King!"

"And so on, to the end of the chapter. This school of philosophers,
while it has been very ingeniously supported, is not, however, the
one most in favor just at this moment in the academy of Leaphigh--"

"Just at this moment, Doctor!"

"Certainly, sir. Do you not know that truths, physical as well as
moral, undergo their revolutions, the same as all created nature?
The academy has paid great attention to this subject; and it issues
annually an almanac, in which the different phases, the revolutions,
the periods, the eclipses, whether partial or total, the distances
from the centre of light, the apogee and perigee of all the more
prominent truths, are calculated with singular accuracy; and by the
aid of which the cautious are enabled to keep themselves, as near as
possible, within the bounds of reason. We deem this effort of the
monikin mind as the sublimest of all its inventions, and as
furnishing the strongest known evidence of its near approach to the
consummation of our earthly destiny. This is not the place to dwell
on that particular point of our philosophy, however; and, for the
present, we will postpone the subject."

"Yet you will permit me, Dr. Reasono, in virtue of clause 1, article
5, protocol No. 1 (which protocol, if not absolutely adopted, must
be supposed to contain the spirit of that which was), to inquire
whether the calculations of the revolutions of truth, do not lead to
dangerous moral extravagances, ruinous speculations in ideas, and
serve to unsettle society?"

The philosopher withdrew a moment with my Lord Chatterino, to
consult whether it would be prudent to admit of the validity of
protocol No. 1, even in this indirect manner; whereupon it was
decided between them, that, as such admission would lay open all the
vexatious questions that had just been so happily disposed of,
clause 1 of article 5 having a direct connection with clause 2;
clauses 1 and 2 forming the whole article; and the said article 5,
in its entirety, forming an integral portion of the whole
instrument; and the doctrine of constructions, enjoining that
instruments are to be construed like wills, by their general, and
not by their especial tendencies, it would be dangerous to the
objects of the interview to allow the application to be granted.
But, reserving a protest against the concession being interpreted
into a precedent, it might be well to concede that as an act of
courtesy, which was denied as a right. Hereupon, Dr. Reasono
informed me that these calculations of the revolutions of truth DID
lead to certain moral extravagances, and in many instances to
ruinous speculations in ideas; that the academy of Leaphigh. and, so
far as his information extended, the academy of every other country,
had found the subject of truth, more particularly moral truth, the
one of all others the most difficult to manage, the most likely to
be abused, and the most dangerous to promulgate. I was moreover
promised, at a future day, some illustrations of this branch of the
subject.

"To pursue the more regular thread of my lecture," continued Dr.
Reasono, when he had politely made this little digression, "we now
divide these portions of the created world into animated and
vegetable nature; the former is again divided into the improvable,
and the unimprovable, and the retrogressive. The improvable embraces
all those species which are marching, by slow, progressive, but
immutable mutations, towards the perfection of terrestrial life, or
to that last, elevated, and sublime condition of mortality, in which
the material makes its final struggle with the immaterial--mind with
matter. The improvable class of animals, agreeably to the monikin
dogmas, commences with those species in which matter has the most
unequivocal ascendency, and terminates with those in which mind is
as near perfection as this mortal coil will allow. We hold that mind
and matter, in that mysterious union which connects the spiritual
with the physical being, commence in the medium state, undergoing,
not, as some men have pretended, transmigrations of the soul only,
but such gradual and imperceptible changes of both soul and body, as
have peopled the world with so many wonderful beings--wonderful,
mentally and physically; and all of which (meaning all of the
improvable class) are no more than animals of the same great genus,
on the high road of tendencies, who are advancing towards the last
stage of improvement, previously to their final translation to
another planet, and a new existence.

"The retrogressive class is composed of those specimens which, owing
to their destiny, take a false direction; which, instead of tending
to the immaterial, tend to the material; which gradually become more
and more under the influence of matter, until, by a succession of
physical translations, the will is eventually lost, and they become
incorporated with the earth itself. Under this last transformation,
these purely materialized beings are chemically analyzed in the
great laboratory of nature, and their component parts are separated;
thus the bones become rocks, the flesh earth, the spirits air, the
blood water, the gristle clay and the ashes of the will are
converted into the element of fire. In this class we enumerate
whales, elephants, hippopotami, and divers other brutes, which
visibly exhibit accumulations of matter that must speedily triumph
over the less material portions of their natures."

"And yet, Doctor, there are facts that militate against the theory;
the elephant, for instance, is accounted one of the most intelligent
of all the quadrupeds."

"A mere false demonstration, sir. Nature delights in these little
equivocations; thus, we have false suns, false rainbows, false
prophets, false vision, and even false philosophy. There are entire
races of both our species, too, as the Congo and the Esquimaux, for
yours, and baboons and the common monkeys, that inhabit various
parts of the world possessed by the human species, for ours, which
are mere shadows of the forms and qualities that properly
distinguish the animal in its state of protection."

"How, sir! are you not, then, of the same family as all the other
monkeys that we see hopping and skipping about the streets?"

"No more, sir, than you are of the same family as the flat-nosed,
thick-lipped, low-browed, ink-skinned negro, or the squalid,
passionless, brutalized Esquimaux. I have said that nature delights
in vagaries; and all these are no more than some of her
mystifications. Of this class is the elephant, who, while verging
nearest to pure materialism, makes a deceptive parade of the quality
he is fast losing. Instances of this species of playing trumps, if I
may so express it, are common in all classes of beings. How often,
for instance, do men, just as they are about to fail, make a parade
of wealth, women seem obdurate an hour before they capitulate, and
diplomatists call Heaven to be a witness of their resolutions to the
contrary, the day before they sign and seal! In the case of the
elephant, however, there is a slight exception to the general rule,
which is founded on an extraordinary struggle between mind and
matter, the former making an effort that is unusual, and which may
be said to form an exception to the ordinary warfare between these
two principles, as it is commonly conducted in the retrogressive
class of animals. The most infallible sign of the triumph of mind
over matter, is in the development of the tail--"

"King!"

"Of the tail, Dr. Reasono?"

"By all means, sir--that seat of reason, the tail! Pray, Sir John,
what other portion of our frames did you imagine was indicative of
intellect?"

"Among men, Dr. Reasono, it is commonly thought the head is the more
honorable member, and, of late, we have made analytical maps of this
part of our physical formation, by which it is pretended to know the
breadth and length of a moral quality, no less than its boundaries."

"You have made the best use of your materials, such as they were,
and I dare say the map in question, all things considered, is a very
clever performance. But in the complication and abstruseness of this
very moral chart (one of which I perceive standing on your
mantelpiece), you may learn the confusion which still reigns over
the human intellect. Now, in regarding us, you can understand the
very converse of your dilemma. How much easier, for instance, is it
to take a yard-stick, and by a simple admeasurement of a tail, come
to a sound, obvious and incontrovertible conclusion as to the extent
of the intellect of the specimen, than by the complicated,
contradictory, self-balancing and questionable process to which you
are reduced! Were there only this fact, it would abundantly
establish the higher moral condition of the monikinrace, as it is
compared with that of man."

"Dr. Reasono, am I to understand that the monikin family seriously
entertain a position so extravagant as this; that a monkey is a
creature more intellectual and more highly civilized than man?"

"Seriously, good Sir John! Why you are the first respectable person
it has been my fortune to meet, who has even affected to doubt the
fact. It is well known that both belong to the improvable class of
animals, and that monkeys, as you are pleased to term us, were once
men, with all their passions, weaknesses, inconsistencies, mode of
philosophy, unsound ethics, frailties, incongruities and
subserviency to matter; that they passed into the monikin state by
degrees, and that large divisions of them are constantly evaporating
into the immaterial world, completely spiritualized and free from
the dross of flesh. I do not mean in what is called death--for that
is no more than an occasional deposit of matter to be resumed in a
new aspect, and with a nearer approach to the grand results (whether
of the improvable or of the retrogressive classes)--but those final
mutations which transfer us to another planet, to enjoy a higher
state of being, and leaving us always on the high road towards final
excellence."

"All this is very ingenious, sir; but before you can persuade me
into the belief that man is an animal inferior to a monkey, Dr.
Reasono, you will allow me to say that you must prove it."

"Ay, ay, or me, either," put in Captain Poke, waspishly.

"Were I to cite my proofs, gentlemen," continued the philosopher,
whose spirit appeared to be much less moved by our doubts than ours
were by his position--"I should in the first place refer you to
history. All the monikin writers are agreed in recording the gradual
translation of the species from the human family--"

"This may do very well, sir, for the latitude of Leaphigh, but
permit me to say that no human historian, from Moses down to Buffon,
has ever taken such a view of our respective races. There is not a
word in any of all these writers on the subject."

"How should there be, sir? History is not a prediction, but a record
of the past. Their silence is so much negative proof in our favor.
Does Tacitus, for instance, speak of the French revolution? Is not
Herodotus silent on the subject of the independence of the American
continent?--or do any of the Greek and Roman writers give us the
annals of Stunin'tun--a city whose foundations were most probably
laid some time after the commencement of the Christian era? It is
morally impossible that men or monikins can faithfully relate events
that have never happened; and as it has never yet happened to any
man, who is still a man, to be translated to the monikin state of
being, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that he can know
nothing about it. If you want historical proof, therefore, of what I
say, you must search the monikin annals for evidence. There it is to
be found with an infinity of curious details; and I trust the time
is not far distant, when I shall have great pleasure in pointing out
to you some of the most approved chapters of our best writers on
this subject. But we are not confined to the testimony of history,
in establishing our condition to be of the secondary formation. The
internal evidence is triumphant; we appeal to our simplicity, our
philosophy, the state of the arts among us, in short, to all those
concurrent proofs which are dependent on the highest possible state
of civilization. In addition to this, we have the infallible
testimony which is to be derived from the development of our tails.
Our system of caudology is, in itself, a triumphant proof of the
high improvement of the monikin reason."

"Do I comprehend you aright, Dr. Reasono, when I understand your
system of caudology, or tailology, to render it into the vernacular,
to dogmatize on the possibility that the seat of reason in man,
which to-day is certainly in his brains, can ever descend into a
tail?"

"If you deem development, improvement and simplification a descent,
beyond a question, sir. But your figure is a bad one, Sir John; for
ocular demonstration is before you, that a monikin can carry his
tail as high as a man can possibly carry his head. Our species, in
this sense, is morally nicked; and it costs us no effort to be on a
level with human kings. We hold, with you, that the brain is the
seat of reason, while the animal is in what we call the human
probation, but that it is a reason undeveloped, imperfect, and
confused; cased, as it were, in an envelope unsuited to its
functions; but that, as it gradually oozes out of this straitened
receptable towards the base of the animal, it acquires solidity,
lucidity, and, finally, by elongation and development, point. If you
examine the human brain, you will find it, though capable of being
stretched to a great length, compressed in a diminutive compass,
involved and snarled; whereas the same physical portion of the genus
gets simplicity, a beginning and an end, a directness and
consecutiveness that are necessary to logic, and, as has just been
mentioned, a point, in the monikin seat of reason, which, by all
analogy, go to prove the superiority of the animal possessing
advantages so great."

"Nay, sir, if you come to analogies, they will be found to prove
more than you may wish. In vegetation, for instance, saps ascend for
the purposes of fructification and usefulness; and, reasoning from
the analogies of the vegetable world, it is far more probable that
tails have ascended into brains than that brains have descended into
tails; and, consequently, that men are much more likely to be an
improvement on monkeys, than monkeys an improvement on men."

I spoke with warmth, I know; for the doctrine of Dr. Reasono was new
to me; and by this time, my esprit de corps had pretty effectually
blinded reflection.

"You gave him a red-hot shot that time, Sir John," whispered Captain
Poke at my elbow; "now, if you are so disposed, I will wring the
necks of all these little blackguards, and throw them out of the
window."

I immediately intimated that any display of brute force would
militate directly against our cause; as the object, just at that
moment, was to be as immaterial as possible.

"Well, well, manage it in your own way, Sir John, and I'm quite as
immaterial as you can wish; but should these cunning varments
ra'ally get the better of us in the argument, I shall never dare
look at Miss Poke, or show my face ag'in in Stunin'tun."

This little aside was secretly conducted, while Dr. Reasono was
drinking a glass of eau sucre; but he soon returned to the subject,
with the dignified gravity that never forsook him.

"Your remark touching saps has the usual savor of human ingenuity,
blended, however, with the proverbial short-sightedness of the
species. It is very true that saps ascend for fructification; but
what is this fructification, to which you allude? It is no more than
a false demonstration of the energies of the plant. For all the
purposes of growth, life, durability, and the final conversion of
the vegetable matter into an element, the root is the seat of power
and authority; and, in particular, the tap-root above or rather
below all others. This tap-root may be termed the tail of
vegetation. You may pluck fruits with impunity--nay, you may even
top all the branches, and the tree shall survive; but, put the axe
to the root, and the pride of the forest falls."

All this was too evidently true to be denied, and I felt worried and
badgered; for no man likes to be beaten in a discussion of this
sort, and more especially by a monkey. I bethought me of the
elephant, and determined to make one more thrust, by the aid of his
powerful tusks, before I gave up the point.

"I am inclined to think, Dr. Reasono," I put in as soon as possible,
"that your savans have not been very happy in illustrating their
theory by means of the elephant. This animal, besides being a mass
of flesh, is too well provided with intellect to be passed off for a
dunce; and he not only has ONE, but he might almost be said to be
provided with TWO tails."

"That has been his chief misfortune, sir. Matter, in the great
warfare between itself and mind, has gone on the principle of
'divide and conquer.' You are nearer the truth than you imagined,
for the trunk of the elephant is merely the abortion of a tail; and
yet, you see, it contains nearly all the intelligence that the
animal possesses. On the subject of the fate of the elephant,
however, theory is confirmed by actual experiment. Do not your
geologists and naturalists speak of the remains of animals, which
are no longer to be found among living things?"

"Certainly, sir; the mastodon--the megatherium, iguanodon; and the
plesiosaurus--"

"And do you not also find unequivocal evidences of animal matter
incorporated with rocks?"

"This fact must be admitted, too."

"These phenomena, as you call them, are no more than the final
deposits which nature has made in the cases of those creatures in
which matter has completely overcome its rival, mind. So soon as the
will is entirely extinct, the being ceases to live; or it is no
longer an animal. It falls and reverts altogether to the element of
matter. The processes of decomposition and incorporation are longer,
or shorter, according to circumstances; and these fossil remains of
which your writers say so much, are merely cases that have met with
accidental obstacles to their final decomposition. As respects our
two species, a very cursory examination of their qualities ought to
convince any candid mind of the truth of our philosophy. Thus, the
physical part of man is much greater in proportion to the spiritual,
than it is in the monikin; his habits are grosser and less
intellectual; he requires sauce and condiments in his food; he is
farther removed from simplicity, and, by necessary implication, from
high civilization; he eats flesh, a certain proof that the material
principle is still strong in the ascendant; he has no cauda---"

"On this point, Dr. Reasono, I would inquire if your scholars attach
any weight to traditions?"

"The greatest possible, sir. It is the monikin tradition that our
species is composed of men refined, of diminished matter and
augmented minds, with the seat of reason extricated from the
confinement and confusion of the caput, and extended, unravelled,
and rendered logical and consecutive, in the cauda."

Well, sir, WE too have our traditions; and an eminent writer, at no
great distance of time, has laid it down as incontrovertible, that
men once HAD caudae."

"A mere prophetic glance into the future, as coming events are known
to cast their shadows before."

"Sir, the philosopher in question establishes his position, by
pointing to the stumps."

"He has unluckily mistaken a foundation-stone for a ruin! Such
errors are not unfrequent with the ardent and ingenious. That men
WILL have tails, I make no doubt; but that they HAVE ever reached
this point of perfection, I do most solemnly deny. There are many
premonitory symptoms of their approaching this condition; the
current opinions of the day, the dress, habits, fashions, and
philosophy of the species, encourage the belief; but hitherto you
have never reached the enviable distinction. As to traditions, even
your own are all in favor of our theory. Thus, for instance, you
have a tradition that the earth was once peopled by giants. Now,
this is owing to the fact that men were formerly more under the
influence of matter, and less under that of mind than to day. You
admit that you diminish in size, and improve in moral attainments;
all of which goes to establish the truth of the monikin philosophy.
You begin to lay less stress on physical, and more on moral
excellences; and, in short, many things show that the time for the
final liberation and grand development of your brains, is not far
distant. This much I very gladly concede; for, while the dogmas of
our schools are not to be disregarded, I very cheerfully admit that
you are our fellow-creatures, though in a more infant and less
improved condition of society."

"King!"

Here Dr. Reasono announced the necessity of taking a short
intermission in order to refresh himself. I retired with Captain
Poke, to have a little communication with my fellow-mortal, under
the peculiar circumstances in which we were placed, and to ask his
opinion of what had been said. Noah swore bitterly at some of the
conclusions of the monikin philosopher, affirming that he should
like no better sport than to hear him lecture in the streets of
Stunin'tun, where, he assured me, such doctrine would not be
tolerated any longer than was necessary to sharpen a harpoon, or to
load a gun. Indeed, he did not know but the Doctor would be
incontinently kicked over into Rhode Island, without ceremony.

"For that matter," continued the indignant old sealer, "I should ask
no better sport than to have permission to put the big toe of my
right foot, under full sail, against the part of the blackguard
where his beloved tail is stepped. That would soon bring him to
reason. Why, as for his cauda, if you will believe me, Sir John, I
once saw a man, on the coast of Patagonia--a savage, to be sure, and
not a philosopher, as this fellow pretends to be--who had an
outrigger of this sort, as long as a ship's ringtail-boom. And what
was he, after all, but a poor devil who did not know a sea-lion from
a grampus!"

This assertion of Captain Poke relieved my mind considerably; and
laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to
examine the localities, with some particularity, about the
termination of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were
any encouraging signs to be discovered. Captain Poke put on his
spectacles, for time had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as
he said, "whenever he had occasion to read fine print"; and, after
some time, I had the satisfaction to hear him declare, that if it
was a cauda I wanted, there was as good a place to step one, as
could be found about any monkey in the universe; "and you have only
to say the word, Sir John, and I will just step into the next room,
and by the help of my knife and a little judgment in choosing, I'll
fit you out with a jury-article, which, if there be any ra'al vartue
in this sort of thing, will qualify you at once to be a judge, or,
for that matter, a bishop."

We were now summoned again to the lecture-room, and I had barely
time to thank Captain Poke for his obliging offer, which
circumstances just then, however, forbade my accepting.

CHAPTER XII.

BETTER AND BETTER--A HIGHER FLIGHT OF REASON--MORE OBVIOUS TRUTHS,
DEEPER PHILOSOPHY, AND FACTS THAT EVEN AN OSTRICH MIGHT DIGEST.

"I gladly quit what I fear some present may have considered the
personal part of my lecture," resumed Dr. Reasono, "to turn to those
portions of the theme that should possess a common interest, awaken
common pride, and excite common felicitations. I now propose to say
a few words on that part of our natural philosophy which is
connected with the planetary system, the monikin location--and, as a
consequence from both, the creation of the world."

"Although dying with impatience to be enlightened on all these
interesting points, you will grant me leave to inquire en passant,
Dr. Reasono, if your savans receive the Mosaic account of the
creation or not."

"As far as it corroborates our own system, sir, and no farther.
There would be a manifest inconsistency in our giving an
antagonistic validity to any hostile theory, let it come from Moses
or Aaron; as one of your native good sense and subsequent
cultivation will readily perceive."

"Permit me to intimate, Dr. Reasono, that the distinction your
philosophers take in this matter, is directly opposed to a very
arbitrary canon in the law of evidence, which dictates the necessity
of repudiating the whole of a witness's testimony, when we repudiate
a part."

"That may be a human, but it is not a monikin distinction. So far
from admitting the soundness of the principle, we hold that no
monikin is ever wholly right, or that he will be wholly right, so
long as he remains in the least under the influence of matter; and
we therefore winnow the false from the true, rejecting the former as
worse than useless, while we take the latter as the nutriment of
facts."

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