SOME HUMAN INSTINCTS. 165 



enforce the blows himself. Over the sinister orgies of blood of certain 

 depraved and insane persons let a curtain be drawn, as well as over 

 the ferocity with which otherwise fairly decent men may be animated, 

 when (at the sacking of a town, for instance), the excitement of vic- 

 tory long delayed, the sudden freedom of rapine and of lust, the con- 

 tagion of a crowd, and the impulse to imitate and outdo, all combine 

 to swell the blind drunkenness of the killing-instinct, and carry it to 

 its extreme. No ! those who try to account for this from above down- 

 ward, as if it resulted from the consequences of the victory being 

 rapidly inferred, and from the agreeable sentiments associated with 

 them in the imagination, have missed the root of the matter. Our 

 ferocity is blind, and can only be explained from below. Could we 

 trace it back through our line of descent, we should see it taking more 

 and more the form of a fatal reflex response, and at the same time be- 

 coming more and more the pure and direct emotion that it is. 



In childhood it takes this form. The boys who pull out grass- 

 hoppers' legs and butterflies' wings, and disembowel every frog they 

 catch, have no thought at all about the matter. The creatures tempt 

 their hands to a fascinating occupation, to which they have to yield. 

 It is with them as with the " boy-fiend " Jesse Pomeroy, who cut a 

 little girl's throat, "just to see how she'd act." The normal provo- 

 catives of the impulse are all living beasts, great and small, toward 

 which a contrary habit has not been formed all human beings in 

 whom we perceive a certain intent toward us, and a large number of 

 human beings who offend us peremptorily, either by their look, or 

 gait, or by some circumstance in their lives which we dislike. In- 

 hibited by sympathy, and by reflection calling up impulses of an oppo- 

 site kind, civilized men lose the habit of acting out their pugnacious 

 instincts in a perfectly natural way, and a passing feeling of anger, 

 with its comparatively faint bodily expressions, may be the limit of 

 their physical combativeness. Such a feeling as this may, however, 

 be aroused by a wide range of objects. Inanimate things, combina- 

 tions of color and sound, bad bills of fare, may in persons who com- 

 bine fastidious taste with an irascible temperament, produce real ebul- 

 litions of rage. Though the female sex is often said to have less 

 pugnacity than the male, the difference seems connected more with 

 the extent of the motor consequences of the impulse than with its fre- 

 quency. "Women take offense and get angry, if anything, more easily 

 than men, but their anger is inhibited by fear, and other principles of 

 their nature, from expressing itself in blows. The hunting-instinct 

 proper seems to be decidedly weaker in them than in men. The latter 

 instinct is easily restricted by habit to certain objects, which become 

 legitimate " game," while other things are spared. If the hunting- 

 instinct be not exercised at all, it may even entirely die out, and a man 

 may enjoy letting a wild creature live, even though he might easily 

 kill him. Such a type is now becoming frequent ; but there is no 



