A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



of music is the war-cry and its accompaniment; while the most 

 primitive personal adornments were not intended to adorn — that 

 is, to attract admirers — but to intimidate the enemy. With this end 

 men let their hair and beards grow, wore the heads of animals above 

 their own, and painted themselves in imitation of the wounds they 

 had inflicted on their enemies. ^ 



Of course, the animal does not purposely intend to intimidate his 

 rivals by his behaviour. For the bird, singing is a necessity : at mating- 

 time the blood runs more swiftly in the veins, and the overflowing 

 energy of the body finds a vent through the larynx. Singing is the 

 overflowing of intensified life, just as love is a doubled sense of life : 

 both being an expression of that energy by means of which the living 

 creature lives beyond itself and multiplies. But the effect of such 

 behaviour is intimidation : that is, the thrusting aside of the weaker 

 by the stronger, the mediocre by the gifted ; and this entails a selection 

 and the upward evolution of life. 



But how could so uncreative and apparently negative an instinct 

 as the instinct of intimidation give rise to such a wealth of tones, 

 rhythms and colours? How comes it that we are attracted by what 

 is really intended to terrify? Well, elsewhere we find Nature con- 

 cerned with the formation of an invisible substance, and her efforts 

 result in the supremest beauty. Think of the flowers, of whose 

 splendour I spoke in my last chapter ! What are they but the sexual 

 organs of the plants ? Can we imagine that the corresponding organs 

 of the animals could ever have been transmuted into such miraculous 

 forms ? 



Both facts teach us that however deeply we study the nature and 

 the means of the evolution of our planet, we are studying only 

 examples of behaviour ; but we cannot comprehend the meaning of 

 these examples, the ultimate Power that lies behind them, because 

 we ourselves are the object of its activity. And we shall regard this 

 Power with all the more reverence when we perceive how it con- 

 trives to unfold its eternal beauty even when working with the most 

 unpromising material. After all, what is matter, what are stones, 

 water, the earth? How swiftly beauty departs from the body doomed 

 to decay ! Matter and spirit are eternal opposites : for which reason 

 all the religions and philosophies have sought in the liberation from 

 matter the liberation from suffering, inextricably wedded to matter. 

 The flowers may exist for the propagation of the plants, the song 



I For further details as to the doctrine of intimidation, see my book, Das Tierleben 

 unserer Heimat, Freiburg i. Br., F. E. Felisenfeld, 1922-23. 



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