440 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. 



** Among animals, the dog, and especially th« bulUdo?, present to us the 

 most unequivocal marks of courage. The barn-door cock, the pheasant, the 

 sparrow, and numerous others, are well known to us. Perhaps the butcher- 

 bird affords the best example of the innate propensity to combat ; its life seems 

 chiefly employed in fightitig, yet it is perhaps more attached, and for a longer 

 period, to its young than any other bird. Many animals are supposed 

 destitute of this feeling, such as the hare, rabbit, fox, pigeon, yet among them- 

 selves they manifest much courage. The stag and horse have been known to 

 yanquish the lion when confined to combat, and the bull the tiger, yet 

 could these animals have escaped by speed they had certainly fallen victims. 

 Perhaps the fear, the distraction of senses, and the loss of blood, makes the 

 capture of the victims of the carnivorous animals less painful in reality than 

 man would, with his additionally benevolent mind, be conscious of at first 

 glance — the anticipation of pain adds severity to its pangs. Education 

 cannot produce this faculty, for the kitten spits and erects its back as soon as 

 its eyes can distinguish objects. The profoundest metaphysicians admit this 

 faculty as innate, and the most esteemed authors describe its operations. 



** Those benevolent individuals who were inclined to doubt the innateness of 

 a propensity in man to defend self — a propensity to fight — will, 1 fear, be much 

 less disposed to admit an organ which leads to carnivorous enjoyment, to des- 

 tructivenessy and sometimes to cruelty. It is far more delightful to imagine 

 sian a placid, benign creature — innocent as the dove, — his food acorns, — his 

 beverage pure water from the fountain, and kindness overflowing his veins, 

 than to scrutinize him with a cold philosophic eye, and to discover him a des- 

 tructive animal who to minister to his own life robs the creatures around him 

 of theirs. When we are delighted with the smooth surface of the unrippled 

 ocean, we do not wish to descend to contemplate its rocks and whirlpools.—- 

 To indulge imagination, were it not fraught with deceitful results, would be at 

 nil times pleasing — and, to entirely forego this pleasure, would be to rob the 

 mind of half its sweets, but in the scrutiny of men's minds and manners we 

 must relinquish the poet's pen for the sage's microscope. But a little reflection 

 will suflSce to convince us of the necessity even of a propensity leading us to 

 destroy. If we regard man, not in the civic but in the savage state from 

 whence he arose, we shall find the thirst for destroying life necessary to his 

 existence. We have but to turn to rustic life to see his want of a carnivorous 

 organ to give the chace its zest, and fishing its amusement. We have but to 

 read history to be convinced beyond all reasoning that the propensity to kill 

 has existed from the earliest records of human actions. From the wars of the 

 Philistines, Greeks, and Romans, to the late continental war, which absorbed 

 millions of lives, we see its influence. The Goths we are told were prone to 

 blood, and on their first access to the Roman territories they massacred man, 

 woman, and child. Nevertheless they aie caUed an ho?iest people. The Scythians 

 clothed themselves in the skins of men, and drank wine from the sculls of their 

 victims ; yet we read of their virtues. The Gauls carried home the heads of 

 their slain enemies and deposited them in chests as trophies. The North 

 American savages scalped their victims and turned them adrift, yet these 

 savages were not more cruel than the Greeks and Romans, who neither paid 

 respect to age nor sex ; and we are astonished that the Greeks honoured 

 humanity as a cardinal virtue. The Jews were no less cruel, as ample records 

 shew. Ferocity and cruelty were indulged in the Roman character, as in the 

 Spanish and French at present, by gladiators and combats of animals ; Scaurus 

 sent to Rome at one time 150 panthers, Pompey 410, and Augustus 420, for 

 public spectacles. 



*' The ferocity of European nations was unbounded during the anarchy 

 of the feudal system ; and it is a melancholy reflection that the christians 

 have not been wanting in cruelty more than the pagans in centuries past. This 

 is but a very hurried sketch of human cruelty, and we are happy that we may 

 now in English society contemplate these things without exciting the impulse 

 which actually forms part of our oeconomy. 



**The name of this propensity ' destructiveness' has succeeded to another 

 more offensive name which was given to it by Dr. Gall because he discovered it 

 in two individuals executed for murder— he at first called it the organ of 



