THE IDEA OF MURDER IN ANIMALS. 805 



Prof. Burnham, and Dr. See; and a journal of high value, the 

 Astrophysical Journal is published through the University Press, 

 under the editorship of Prof. George E. Hale, of the University 

 of Chicago, and Prof. James E. Keeler,of the Allegheny Observa- 

 tory. In its pages will be found many valuable observations and 

 investigations conducted by the university force. 



THE IDEA OF MURDER AMONG MEN AND 



ANIMALS. 



By GUGLIELMO FERKEEO. 



WHOEVER has studied in its particulars the history of the 

 past knows well that human ferocity is an unfathomable 

 abyss. Who could enumerate all the means invented by men to 

 exterminate each other in turn, from the spear and the yataghan to 

 shrapnel, from hemlock to prussic acid, from Greek fire to dyna- 

 mite ? Were we to try and calculate, even roughly, the number 

 of human beings who have died a violent death at the hands of 

 their own kind, even during that period alone which has elapsed 

 since the dawn of history, the total reached would be undoubtedly 

 monstrous. Nor must we be blinded as to the feelings of our an- 

 cestors by the growth of a certain gentleness of manners which 

 has for scarcely a century past been refining human society in 

 Europe ; one of our ancestors' chief amusements consisted in the 

 destruction of other men the extermination of other human be- 

 ings. Homicide has been at all times, in all forms, and under all 

 conditions, individual and collective, a fierce passion of the human 

 race, a most comoion incident of everyday life, inspiring no one 

 with any feeling of horror whatsoever. It is sufficient to recall 

 the fact that among people who reached a noteworthy stage of 

 civilization, such as the Romans, war, which is a systematic homi- 

 cide, or, in other words, ferocity reduced to a science, could be 

 regarded as a financial speculation and a perfectly legitimate one 

 for the educated classes to engage in ; and that what is called 

 history is little more than an interminable series of murders, 

 individual and collective, one more ferocious than the other. 



The present age has witnessed so important an amelioration of 

 habits that we are apt to forget that it is of very recent date, and 

 to see in the ferocity displayed by our ancestors something con- 

 trary to human nature so much so that we have come to stigma- 

 tize all actions of an excessively savage character as " inhuman " 

 and " brutal." A closer analysis will, however, show that this is 

 an illusion ; inasmuch as murderous ferocity, by which I mean 

 the passion for destroying life, would seem to be a characteristic 



