The Lion 133 



group, the difference between them, apart from that which 

 depends upon unequal endowment, results from the degree 

 to which the exigencies of life force individuals to use that 

 amount of intelligence which they possess. Existence to 

 a lion is a very different thing in one place and another ; 

 it is difficult or easy, varied or monotonous, dangerous or 

 safe, solitary or the reverse. In other words, those adjust- 

 ments of internal to external coexistences and sequences 

 which constitute what is essential in life, may be many and 

 great, or few and small. In either case adaptations must 

 be made, but unequal enlargements of faculty are the 

 necessary results. Take, for example, the average lion and 

 place him, as he is placed in fact, under the opposite con- 

 ditions of having been born and reared in a desert, or 

 brought forth amid a cluster of villages and trained to prey 

 upon human beings. That such specimens cannot be the 

 same needs no saying, and if not these, then not any who 

 are differently placed ; so that to go into some large prov- 

 ince and write about this beast as if the few individuals 

 met with summarized all the possibilities of its race, is 

 manifestly absurd. Actually, and as far as he goes, a lion 

 is as much an individual as a man ; like men also, the more 

 general resemblances and differences among them which 

 are not due to organization, depend upon their position. 



Diminish the quantity of game in the area where a lion 

 lives, and its character is altered. Take away certain objects 

 of prey, and replace them with others, and the brute will 

 be more or less cunning, fierce, bold, enterprising, and 

 active. He cannot live at all, without adapting himself to 

 the character of those beings among whom his lot is cast, 



