The Sacred Fire

FAR away and long ago a gibbon slid down a tree. Once on the ground he did not feel like climbing up again. Life seemed so much better below than above; only he realized he had to change a thing or two in his mode of living. He had to walk erect, for instance, rather than crawl on all fours. He had to perfect as well the use of his anterior limbs and to make hands out of them. And so it was that when the gibbon raised his head toward heaven and stretched his arms forward, he himself came to proceed forward as well. He was started on the way to human form. It was then that the animal that was once gibbon or akin to the gibbon ventured out on its big climb again, not on the branches of a tree, but on the rungs of the ladder of civilization. Man burned the animal bridges behind him, for he saw no other way of living but to make the best of whatever humanity he possessed. Today, if you see an aeroplane soaring in the sky, you may know it is all due to that enterprising gibbon that slid down the tree. Had he been content to remain swinging on the branches, that which today passes for mankind might have been just another form of gibbon.