The Soul of the Ape – Eugene N. Marais

Description

A bit about the Eugen Marais for interest sake :
His early years, before and during the Boer War
Marais was born in Pretoria,[1] the thirteenth and last child of Jan Christiaan Nielen Marais and Catharina Helena Cornelia van Niekerk. He attended school in Pretoria, Boshof and Paarl, and much of his early education was in English, as were his earliest poems. He matriculated at the age of sixteen.[2]
After leaving school, he worked in Pretoria as a legal clerk and then as a journalist before becoming owner (at the age of twenty) of a newspaper called Land en Volk (Country and (the Afrikaner) People). He involved himself deeply in local politics.
He began taking opiates at an early age and graduated to morphine (then considered to be non-habit forming and safe) very soon thereafter. He became addicted, and his addiction ruled his affairs and actions to a greater or lesser extent throughout his life. When asked why he took drugs, he variously pleaded ill health, insomnia and, later, the death of his young wife as a result of the birth of his only child. Much later, he blamed accidental addiction while ill with malaria in Mozambique. Some claim his use of drugs was experimental and influenced by the philosophy of de Quincey.[2]
Marais married Aletta Beyers, but she died from puerperal fever a year later, eight days after the birth of their son. Eugène Charles Gerard was Marais’ only child.
In 1897 — still in his mid-twenties – Marais went to London to read medicine. However, under pressure from his friends, he entered the Inner Temple to study law.[2] He qualified as an advocate. When the Boer War broke out in 1899, he was put on parole as an enemy alien in London. During the latter part of the war he joined a German expedition that sought to ship ammunition and medicines to the Boer Commandos via Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). However, he was struck down in this tropical area by malaria and, before the supplies could be delivered to the Boers, the war ended.
After the war
From 1905 Marais studied nature in the Waterberg (‘Water mountain’), a wilderness area north of Pretoria, and wrote in his native Afrikaans about the animals he observed. His studies of termites led him to conclude that the colony ought to be considered as a single organism, a prescient insight that predated the elaboration of the idea by Richard Dawkins. In the Waterberg, Marais also studied the black mamba, spitting cobra and puff adder.[3] Moreover, he observed a specific troop of baboons at length[4], and from these studies there sprang numerous magazine articles and the books My Friends the Baboons and The Soul of the Ape. He is acknowledged as the father of the scientific study of the behaviour of animals, known as Ethology.
Synopsis : The Soul of the Ape is the record of his experiences and observations.
Lost for forty years, the manuscript was only recently discovered and Robert Ardrey, who dedicated his African Genesis to Marais, believes that it ‘presents better than any other book published thus far, the dawning humanity in the psyche of the higher primates.’
The Soul of the Ape is both a rare personal document and a pioneering study of the primitive mind. (less)
used. Soft cover in very goo+ condition, internally fresh with crisp pages, free from any previous owners name, cover bright firm and no spine creases, cover bright and firm, cold pass for Like New