THE SNAKE. 



IN treating of the snake it should at once be premised 

 that all accounts of it must be received with a certain 

 amount of suspicion, as representing the views of man 

 as to the snake, rather than the real state of things. It is 

 notorious that no historian, however much he may strive to 

 write without bias, can be thoroughly trusted in his account 

 of matters in which he is a partisan of one side or another. 

 Upon no subject is man more strongly prejudiced than upon 

 that of the snake ; and although he may endeavour to do it 

 justice, it is impossible that he should succeed, writing as he 

 does under the influence of a hereditary enmity against it. 

 The transaction in the Garden of Eden is doubtless respon- 

 sible for much of this feeling among Western peoples ; but 

 this would have no influence with Orientals and others who 

 are still in ignorance of the legend, and the feeling must 

 therefore be considered as a natural and instinctive anti- 

 pathy throughout the whole human race. Whether such a 

 feeling would ever have existed had not a considerable 

 proportion of snakes been provided with poison fangs, is 

 a point that can never be determined with precision; but 

 the probabilities are certainly strongly in favour of the theory 

 that it is entirely to its lethal powers that the snake owes 

 the distrust and hostility of man. In itself there is nothing 



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