322 DARWINIAN] SM. 



astonished, and soon shuffled up to see what was the 

 matter ; and then stared me in the face, as much as to 

 say, What made you pull my tail?" Surprise here, 

 evidently, was as natural to the poor brute as the very 

 feet it dug with, why should it not express it, and at 

 once from its own self ? What should a reference to 

 any ancestor do for it ? Its " common progenitor," 

 doubtless, would have done no less ; but can it be for a 

 moment supposed that such progenitor actually bequeathed 

 such mode of testifying surprise ? The expression was 

 simply in natural and native rapport with the natural 

 and native feeling. With that rapport there really 

 seems no occasion whatever for referring to habit and 

 hereditariness. No doubt, the hair bristled up in our 

 common progenitor in terror, just as it does in ourselves. 

 This was to Mr. Darwin a voluntary act then " to make 

 the animal appear larger and more frightful." But 

 surely, in that case, a very different brute from our- 

 selves the common progenitor must have been ; for such 

 scalps as ours, or even such scalps as the monkey's, are 

 scarcely calculated to rise high enough to scare a dog or 

 a cat, much less a lion, a tiger, or an elephant. In 

 these stories of his, Mr. Darwin generally takes in 

 agreement with the cookery books as much as may be 

 required. It would take more hair than what either 

 possesses, to make man or monkey perceptibly bigger 

 by the bristling of it. The hair of my flesh stood up ; 

 fear came upon me, and trembling which made all my 

 bones to shake. If Eliphaz the Temanite with all that 

 did not look " frightful," he must certainly have looked 

 frightened. In short, it is simply the physiological 

 effect of fear to excite a feeling of shivering and cold, 

 and hence the creeping of the skin with the consequent 

 bristling of the hair. A voluntary act in any animal 

 ever at any time! What other imagination than that 



