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THE FALL OF MAN:
OR,
THE LOVES OF THE GORILLAS.
To CHARLES DARWIN, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., etc., etc., etc.
Sir:
To you is dedicated this faithful report of a humble attemptto confirm, explain, and elucidate the wonderful and irrefragabletheory of which you are the discoverer and the promulgator. Ofwhich dedication the appropriateness is manifest. What other dispositionof the work of your learned kinsman would be so fitting asto lay it at your feet, hind-thumbless although they be? He followsyou feebly and afar. But remember that he tells only what he knows,and does not attempt to soar with you to the dizzy heights of speculation,or dive with you into the depths of disbelief. Deign, sir, toaccept this modest tribute to the fame of one who has done so much toelevate our conception of ourselves and of the great scheme of creation;and look with the generous eye of exalted genius upon thehonest and simple effort of a co-laborer who strives, with you, to convincethe world that a Shakespeare may be but an oyster raised to theone-thousandth power, or even a Darwin the cube root of a ring-tailedmonkey.
INTRODUCTION.
One morning in the spring of the present year I, the editor, or ratherthe reporter, of the following lecture, found myself in a forest ofWestern Africa. I was neither searching for the source of anythingnor hoping to meet anybody. But, as I walked on my lonelyway, I did soon come upon a man, much be-tattered and bronzed, whowas plainly an Anglo-Saxon. He was bathing his feet in a muddylittle spring, from which a tiny rill ran out and lost itself in the le