China Learn

So then, instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey, and that we are as far removed from the perfect God, as, let us say, the ants are removed from ourselves. We are very clever, we are quite sure of that; we are often a little cocky about our cleverness, because we have a mind. But the biologist comes in to tell us that the mind after all is a very late development, as far as articulate thinking is concerned, and that among the things which go into the make-up of our moral fiber, we have besides the mind a set of animal or savage instincts, which are much more powerful and are in fact the explanation why we misbehave individually and in our group life. We are the better able to understand the nature of that human mind of which we are so proud. We see in the first place that, besides being a comparatively clever mind, it is also an inadequate mind. The evolution of the-human skull shows us that it is nothing but an enlargement of one of the spinal vertebrae and that therefore its function, like that of the spinal cord, is essentially that of sensing danger, meeting the external environment and preserving life-not thinking. Thinking is generally very poorly done. Lord Balfour ought to go down to posterity on the strength of his one saying that “the human brain is as much an organ for seeking food as the pig’s snout.” I do not call this real cynicism, I call it merely a generous understanding of ourselves.

We begin to understand genetically our human imperfections.

Imperfect? Lord, yes, but the Lord never made us otherwise. But that is not the point. The whole point is, our remote ancestors swam and crawled and swung from one branch to another in the primeval forest in Tarzan fashion, or hung suspended from a tree like a spider monkey by an arm or a tail.’ At each stage, considered by itself, it was rather marvelously perfect, to my way of thinking. But now we are called upon to do an infinitely more difficult job of readjustment.

When man creates a civilization of his own, he embarks upon a course of development that biologically might terrify the Creator Himself. So far as adaptation to nature is concerned, all nature’s creatures are marvelously perfect, for those that are not perfectly adapted she kills off. But now we are no longer called upon to adapt ourselves to nature; we are called upon to adapt ourselves to ourselves, to this thing called civilization. All instincts were good, were healthy in nature; in society, however, we call all instincts savage. Every mouse steals-and he is not the less moral or more immoral for stealing-every dog barks, every cat doesn’t come home at night and tears everything it can lay its paws upon, every lion kills, every horse runs away from the sight of danger, every tortoise sleeps the best hours of the day away, and every insect, reptile, bird and beast reproduces its kind in public. Now in terms of civilization, every mouse is a thief, every dog makes too much noise, every cat is an unfaithful husband, when he is not a savage little vandal, every lion or tiger is a murderer, every horse a coward, every tortoise a lazy louse, and finally, every insect, reptile, bird and beast is obscene when he performs his natural vital functions. What a wholesale transformation of values! And that is the reason why we sit back and wonder how the Lord made us so imperfect.

If this biological view helps us to appreciate the beauty and rhythm of life, it also shows our ludicrous limitations. By presenting to us a more correct picture of what we are as animals, it enables us to better understand ourselves and the progress of human affairs. A more generous sympathy, or even tolerant cynicism, comes with a truer and deeper understanding of human nature which has its roots in our animal ancestry. Gently reminding ourselves that we are children of the Neanderthal or the Peking man, and further back still of the anthropoid apes, we eventually achieve the capacity of laughing at our sins and limitations, as well as admiring our monkey cleverness, which we call a sense of human comedy. This is a beautiful thought suggested by the enlightening essay of Clarence Day, This Simian World. Reading that essay of Day’s, we can forgive all our fellowmen, the censors, publicity chiefs, Fascist editors, Nazi radio announcers, senators and lawmakers, dictators, economic experts, delegates to international conferences and all the busybodies who try to interfere with other people’s lives. We can forgive them because we begin to understand them.

In this sense, I come more and more to appreciate the wisdom and insight of the great Chinese monkey epic, Hsiyuchi. The progress of human history can be better understood from this point of view; it is so similar to the pilgrimage of those imperfect, semi-human creatures to the Western Heaven-the Monkey Wuk’ung representing the human intellect, the Pig Pachieh representing our lower nature, Monk Sand representing common sense, and the Abbot Hsiiantsang representing wisdom and the Holy Way. The Abbot, protected by this curious escort, was engaged upon a journey from China to India to procure sacred Buddhist books. The story of human progress is essentially like the pilgrimage of this variegated company of highly imperfect creatures, continually landing in dangers and ludicrous situations through their own folly and mischief. How often the Abbot has to correct and chastise the mischievous Monkey and the sensuous Pig, forever led by their sadly imperfect minds and their lower passions into all sorts of scrapes! The instincts of human fraility, of anger, revenge, impetuousness, sensuality, lack of forgiveness, above all self-conceit and lack of humility, forever crop up during this pilgrimage of mankind toward sainthood. The increase of destructiveness goes side by side with the increase of human skill, for like the Monkey with magical powers, we are able today to walk upon the clouds and turn somersaults in the air (which is called “looping-the-loop” in modern terms), to pull monkey hair out of our monkey legs and transform them into little monkeys to harass our enemy, to knock at the very gates of Heaven, brush the Heavenly Gate Keeper brusquely aside and demand a place in the company of the gods.

The Monkey was clever, but he was also conceited; he had enough monkey magic to push his way into Heaven, but he had not enough sanity and balance and temperance of spirit to live peacefully there. Too good perhaps for this earth and its mortal existence, he was yet not good enough for Heaven and the company of the immortals. There was something raw and mischievous and rebellious in him, some dregs unpurged in his gold, and that was why when he entered Heaven he created a terrific scare there, like a wild lion let loose from a menagerie cage in the streets of a city, in the preliminary episode before he joined the pilgrims’ party. Through his inborn incorrigible mischief, he spoiled the Annual Dinner Party given by the Western Queen Mother of Heaven to all the gods, saints, and immortals of Heaven. Enraged that he was not invited to the party, he posed as a messenger of God and sent the Bare-Footed Fairy on his way to the feast in a wrong direction by telling him that the place of the party had been changed, and then transformed himself into the shape of the Bare-Footed Fairy and went to the feast himself. Quite a number of other fairies had been misled by him in this way. Then entering the courtyard, he saw he was the first arrival. Nobody was there except the servants guarding the jars of fairy wine in the corridor. He then transformed himself into a sleeping sickness insect and stung the servants into sleep and drunk the jars of wine. Half intoxicated, he tumbled into the hall and ate up the celestial peaches laid out at table. When the guests arrived and saw the despoiled dinner, he was already off for some other exploits at the home of Laotse, trying to eat his pills of immortality. Finally, still in disguise, he left Heaven, partly afraid of the consequences of his drunken exploits, but chiefly disgusted because he had not been invited to the Annual Dinner. He returned to his Monkey Kingdom where he was the king and told the little monkeys so, and set up a banner of rebellion against Heaven, writing on it the words “The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.” There followed then terrific combats between this Monkey and the heavenly warriors, in which the Monkey was not captured until the Goddess of Mercy knocked him down with a gentle sprig of flowers from the clouds.

So, like the Monkey, forever we rebel and there will be no peace and humility in us until we are vanquished by the Goddess of Mercy, whose gentle flowers dropped from Heaven will knock us off our feet. And we shall not learn the lesson of true humility until science has explored the limits of the universe. For in the epic, the Monkey still rebelled even after his capture and demanded of the Jade Emperor in Heaven why he was not given a higher title among the gods, and he had to learn the lesson of humility by an ultimate bet with Buddha or God Himself. He made a bet that with his magical powers he could go as far as the end of the earth, and the stake was the title of “The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven,” or else complete submission. Then he leaped into the air, and traveled with lightning speed across the continents until he came to a mountain with five peaks, which he thought must be as far as mortal beings had ever set foot. In order to leave a record of his having reached the place, he passed some monkey urine at the foot of the middle peak, and having satisfied himself with this feat, he came back and told Buddha about his journey. Buddha then opened one hand and asked him to smell his own urine at the base of the middle finger, and told him how all this time he had never left the palm.

It was only then that the Monkey acquired humility, and after being chained to a rock for five hundred years, was freed by the Abbot and joined him in his pilgrimage.

After all, this Monkey, which is an image of ourselves, is an extremely lovable creature, in spite of his conceit and his mischief. So should we, too, be able to love humanity in spite of all its weaknesses and shortcomings.