"An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men"
About this Quote
Darwin lands the punch with a deceptively casual image: a monkey bingeing on brandy, then swearing it off for good. The line reads like a barroom anecdote, but it’s doing real intellectual work. Darwin is staging a miniature experiment in self-preservation, then using it as a mirror for human irrationality. The monkey learns from a single disastrous data point; people, supposedly the crown of nature, keep returning to the same poison. The joke is that “wisdom” here isn’t philosophy or moral refinement. It’s simple behavioral adaptation.
The intent is less to flatter animals than to puncture human exceptionalism. Victorian culture loved ranking species on a ladder that conveniently ended at “man,” with reason and restraint as the defining upgrades. Darwin, the scientist who helped detonate that ladder, twists the knife: if abstention after harm is wisdom, the monkey can outscore the gentleman. The subtext is evolutionary, not sentimental. He’s implying that what we call vice might be a mismatch between modern temptations and older cognitive wiring, and that “rational man” is often just a story men tell after the fact.
Context matters: Darwin wrote in an era when temperance debates, colonial trade, and class-coded drinking habits were political live wires. By choosing brandy - a respectable spirit - he makes the target uncomfortably close to home. It’s satire disguised as natural history: a reminder that nature doesn’t care about our self-image, only about what behavior survives.
The intent is less to flatter animals than to puncture human exceptionalism. Victorian culture loved ranking species on a ladder that conveniently ended at “man,” with reason and restraint as the defining upgrades. Darwin, the scientist who helped detonate that ladder, twists the knife: if abstention after harm is wisdom, the monkey can outscore the gentleman. The subtext is evolutionary, not sentimental. He’s implying that what we call vice might be a mismatch between modern temptations and older cognitive wiring, and that “rational man” is often just a story men tell after the fact.
Context matters: Darwin wrote in an era when temperance debates, colonial trade, and class-coded drinking habits were political live wires. By choosing brandy - a respectable spirit - he makes the target uncomfortably close to home. It’s satire disguised as natural history: a reminder that nature doesn’t care about our self-image, only about what behavior survives.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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