"It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man"
About this Quote
Mencken flips Darwin on its head and, in one move, mocks both human vanity and the era’s pious anxiety about evolution. The joke lands because it’s structured like a scientific claim while functioning as social diagnosis: the “average ape” is really the average person, clinging to hierarchy even when the hierarchy indicts him. By suggesting apes would resist being linked to humans, Mencken turns the insult into a mirror. We don’t just dislike the idea of coming from “lower” creatures; we’ve built a whole self-image that depends on never being the lower creature.
The specific intent is not to debate biology but to ridicule the psychology of respectability. In the 1920s, when evolution was still a cultural flashpoint (and fundamentalism was staging courtroom dramas like the Scopes Trial), Mencken made sport of American moral certainty. His line implies that the fiercest opposition to Darwin isn’t intellectual; it’s reputational. If evolution is true, then humans aren’t the final polished product of divine attention, just another primate with better PR.
The subtext is also Mencken’s signature contempt for the “booboisie,” his term for the complacent middle. “Average” does heavy lifting: he’s not attacking a rare fanatic but a mass habit of mind - incurious, status-obsessed, terrified of being ordinary. The sting comes from its reversal: apes don’t need to defend their dignity. Humans do, loudly, and Mencken is betting that we’ll prove him right by bristling.
The specific intent is not to debate biology but to ridicule the psychology of respectability. In the 1920s, when evolution was still a cultural flashpoint (and fundamentalism was staging courtroom dramas like the Scopes Trial), Mencken made sport of American moral certainty. His line implies that the fiercest opposition to Darwin isn’t intellectual; it’s reputational. If evolution is true, then humans aren’t the final polished product of divine attention, just another primate with better PR.
The subtext is also Mencken’s signature contempt for the “booboisie,” his term for the complacent middle. “Average” does heavy lifting: he’s not attacking a rare fanatic but a mass habit of mind - incurious, status-obsessed, terrified of being ordinary. The sting comes from its reversal: apes don’t need to defend their dignity. Humans do, loudly, and Mencken is betting that we’ll prove him right by bristling.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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