“Dear gentlemen from the academy! You have done me the honor of calling me to prepare a report for the academy about my former life as a monkey. Moreover, I can hardly match the height of the assignment. Five years have already separated me from my apehood - a short period, perhaps in calendar terms, but an infinitely long time for someone who gallops through it, and yet I did it, accompanied at different parts of the distance by magnificent people, advice, applause and with the roars of orchestras, but, essentially, in solitude, for those accompanying me remained each time to see the whole picture, far beyond the barrier. I would not have achieved anything like this if I had continued to stubbornly cling to the characteristics of my origin, the memories of my youth. It was precisely the renunciation of any stubbornness that was the highest commandment that I followed; I, a free monkey, have submitted to this yoke...”