THE BRUISED SERPENT 185 



like a small residuum existing in races that 

 emerged in comparatively recent times from bar- 

 barism, but which has been eliminated from a 

 long-civilised people like the Hindoos. 



For my own part I am inclined to believe that 

 we regard serpents with a destructive hatred 

 purely and simply because we are so taught from 

 childhood. A tradition may be handed down 

 without writing, or even articulate speech. We 

 have not altogether ceased to be " lower animals " 

 ourselves. Show a child by your gestures and 

 actions that a thing is fearful to you, and he will 

 fear it, that you hate it, and he will catch your 

 hatred. So far back as memory carries me I find 

 the snake, in its unwarrantable intrusion on the 

 scene, ever associated with loud exclamations of 

 astonishment and rage, with a hurried search for 

 those primitive weapons always lying ready to 

 hand, sticks and stones, then the onset and 

 triumphant crushing of that wonderfully fashioned 

 vertebra in its scaly vari-coloured mantle, coiling 

 and writhing for a few moments under the cruel 

 rain of blows, appealing not with voice but with 

 agonised yet ever graceful action for mercy to the 

 merciless ; and finally, the paean of victory from 

 the slayer, lifting his face still aglow with righteous 

 wrath, a little St. George in his own estimation ; 

 for has he not rid the earth of another monster, one 

 of that demoniac brood that was cursed of old, and 

 this without injury to his sacred heel ? 



