It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the struggle of accepting evolution and our origins in a humorous manner.
H. L. Mencken's quote satirically points out the irony and difficulty many face when contemplating the concept of evolution, suggesting that it might be more believable for an ape to consider itself descended from humans than for humans to accept their own descent from a more primitive ancestor. This underscores the inherent challenges in reconciling our understanding of human evolution with personal beliefs.
In practice
In a debate about evolution where the topic prompts skepticism.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Suddenly absurdism wasnβt an intellectual abstraction, it was actually realism. You could see the way that wealth was begetting wealth, wealth was begetting comfort β and that the cumulative effect of an absence of wealth was the erosion of grace.
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded.
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it.
This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.
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