168 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



wooers are strong and others less strong, I shall 

 continue to hope, in the interests alike of animal 

 welfare and of the truest ethics, that mortal combats 

 shall continue, and that the strongest shall win. 

 Would my critic desire to see the weakest win and 

 multiply its feeble race and spread it wide upon the 

 surface of the earth ? Is she quite sure that these 

 mortal combats are distasteful to the animals which 

 indulge in them ? Has she not rather jumped to a 

 conclusion and measured their psychology in the 

 bushel of some fearsome and timid person ? I have 

 my doubts ; from what I have seen and read I should 

 imagine they rush to combat as a hungry man does 

 to a meal. Miss Wodehouse cannot prove that the 

 motor stimulus and the motor gratification of the 

 combat are not enjoyable things and are of the nature 

 of a normal physiological activity in the absence of 

 which normal life would be impossible. She 

 will surely recall those savage races of men 

 who seek a gratification of their heightened motor 

 impulses by laceration of their bodies. To such 

 men this is pleasure, and not pain. It is one of the 

 most fatal mistakes to imagine that because to fight 

 and be lacerated would be to some people a painful 

 and fearful thing, that therefore it is so throughout 

 the whole animal kingdom. It is not, I believe, 

 even true for man. On the steppes of Tartary the 

 women are not happy unless their husbands beat 

 them periodically ; they imagine they are not loved 

 if they do not receive this attention. There can be 

 but little doubt that prize-fighters and others are 



