138 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



will may be a poor slave and the appetites hard task- 

 masters. But under their stern discipline it is grow- 

 ing stronger and more completely subjugating the 

 body. Better slavery to hard taskmasters than rotten- 

 ness from inertia. The first requirement is power, 

 activity, and then this power can be directed to ever 

 higher ends. You cannot steer the vessel until she 

 has sails or an engine ; with no " way on " she will not 

 mind the helm, she only drifts. But the condition of 

 the animal at this stage certainly looks very un- 

 promising. Can the will emancipate itself from ap- 

 petite and control it ? Or is it to remain the slave of 

 the body ? 



In time an emotion appears which marks the in- 

 fluence not directly of the body but of the individual 

 consciousness. This is fear; it is for the body, but 

 not, like hunger, directly of it. It arises in the mind. 

 It results from experience and memory. The first 

 animal which feared took a long step upward. But 

 when and where was the dawn of fear ? I touch a sea- 

 anemone and it contracts. Has it felt fear ? I think 

 not. The action certainly may be purely reflex. 

 Natural selection, not mind, deserves the credit of that 

 action. But I am sure that the cat fears the dog, or 

 the dog the cat, as the case may be. I have little or 

 no doubt that the bird fears the cat. I am inclined to 

 believe that the insect fears the bird and the spider 

 the wasp. But does the highest worm fear? I do 

 not know. I do not see how there can have been any 

 fear until there was a nerve-centre highly enough de- 

 veloped to remember past experiences of danger and 

 fair sense-organs to report the present risk. 



Other emotions soon follow. Anger appears early. 



