Jeeves: ‘Alike’ and ‘akin’, confounded, will assemble a brother
From a scarecrow to endear the unknown horizon and smother
All differences, till we wonder how we came to lose our straw
And must-glands, and find our feet - and find the flaw,
The habit of leaning on brooms, the vacant stare,
As pointers to our origins!... Presume not genes to scan,
Reducing the archetype to a beanbag and the claim that egotism,
Spite and sexual stereotypes are driven by them -
And then plead immunity from questions of human rights,
Human dignity and the sacredness of life and its delights!
Our uniquely human gifts have much to do
With how we perceive and treat our fellow...
Bertie: I see! For ‘apes’, read ‘barbarians’, Jeeves!
Jeeves: As a good
Athenian, I enjoyed this dialectic and trusted you would.
But one fact ignored could render my whole case unsound:
Pongo’s relations are not so thick on the ground.
Self-aware, we must do whatever is best fro him.
Bertie: By becoming his ‘brethren in pain’.¹
Jeeves: Let that be our hymn!