Have your feelings and impressions of humans changed since "becoming" one? What are your feelings about apes since becoming human?

I had no real impressions of humans before I became human! That is to say my first impressions of humans coincides exactly with my first stirrings of humanity and likewise with my first losses of apehood. And so I can only have impressions of humans insofar as I am human. An ape does not have impressions. It is hard to say, everything grows blurry at this line.

My impression of humans is certainly changing as I grow old. Whereas I first saw them as comical beings, whom moved ever so slowly, did silly things, made silly sounds, now I see them as also being quite dangerous and smart....smart to the point of being quite even dumber than I ever first thought. I first saw them as helpless morons, frozen in behavioral loops; now I understand that I, like them, have a strange ability to perceive those very loops and to play jumprope with them. This ability some perceive better than others of course.

As for apes, I read about all the apes in our society in the newspapers and on the news channels, and I feel sad for them. They remind me of myself, they jolt me into an awareness of where I came from, just at the moment when I have seemed to finally erase every last trace of it from my mind.

Humans cannot get along with apes and vice versa, but not for lack of trying. Humans do not see the creature in front of them. They see only themselves, they are virtually incapable of seeing anything else. It is like the adage of the savages on the island who could not see the ship coming into shore and so could not prepare and so were taken prisoner by surprise. And of course, it is not clear what apes see. I cannot for my part remember what I saw when I was an ape. I do not even have images in my mind. My memories, to use this human word, are in fact only “represented” in the behaviors which live on with me and which emerge at the most unexpected times.