164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and the chasing instincts must have become ingrained. Certain per- 

 ceptions must immediately, and without the intervention of inferences 

 and ideas, have prompted emotions and motor discharges ; and both of 

 the latter must, from the nature of the case, have been very violent, 

 and therefore, when unchecked, of an intensely pleasurable kind. It 

 is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us 

 that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a fight or a hunt is 

 promised as part of the fun.* 



As Rochefoucauld says, there is something in the misfortunes of 

 our very friends that does not altogether displease us ; and an apostle 

 of peace will feel a certain vicious thrill run through him, and enjoy 

 a vicarious brutality, as he turns to the column in his newspaper at 

 the top of which " shocking atrocity " stands printed in large capitals. 

 See how the crowd flocks round a street-brawl ! Consider the enor- 

 mous annual sale of revolvers to persons, not one in a thousand of 

 whom has any serious intention of using them, but of whom each one 

 has his carnivorous self-consciousness agreeably tickled by the notion, 

 as he clutches the handle of his weapon, that he will be rather a dan- 

 gerous customer to meet. See the ignoble crew that escorts every 

 great pugilist parasites who feel as if the glory of his brutality 

 rubbed off upon them, and whose darling hope, from day to day, is to 

 arrange some set-to of which they may share the rapture without en- 

 during the pains ! The first blows at a prize-fight are apt to make a 

 refined spectator sick ; but his blood is soon up in favor of one party, 

 and it will then seem as if the other fellow could not be banged and 

 pounded and mangled enough the refined spectator would like to re- 



* It is not surprising, in view of the facts of animal history and evolution, that the 

 very special object blood should have become the stimulus for a very special interest and 

 excitement. That the sight of it should make people faint is strange. Less so that a 

 child who sees his blood flow should forthwith become much more frightened than by the 

 mere feeling of the cut. Horned cattle often, though not always, become furiously excited 

 at the smell of blood. In some abnormal human beings the sight or thought of it exerts 

 a baleful fascination. " B and his father were at a neighbor's one evening, and, while par- 

 ing apples, the old man accidentally cut his hand so severely as to cause the blood to flow 

 profusely. B was observed to become restless, nervous, pale, and to have undergone a 

 peculiar change in demeanor. Taking advantage of the distraction produced by the 

 accident, B escaped from the house and proceeded to a neighboring farm-yard, where he 

 cut the throat of a horse, killing it." Dr. D. II. Tuke, commenting on this man's case 

 (" Journal of Mental Science," October, 1885), speaks of the influence of blood upon him 

 his whole life had been one chain of cowardly atrocities and continues : " There can 

 be no doubt that with some individuals it constitutes a fascination. . . . We might speak 

 of a mania sanguinis. Dr. Savage admitted a man from France into Bethlehem Hospital 

 some time ago, one of whose earliest symptoms of insanity was the thirst for blood, which 

 he endeavored to satisfy by going to an abattoir in Paris. The man whose case I have 

 brought forward had the same passion for gloating over blood, but had no attack of acute 

 mania. The sight of blood was distinctly a delight to him, and at any time blood aroused 

 in him the worst elements of his nature. Instances will easily be recalled in which mur- 

 derers, undoubtedly insane, have described the intense pleasure they experienced in the 

 warm blood of children." 



