Fact Versus Theory 11 



more exactly to the demands of our intelligence theory. 

 The law of his survival calls, in the first place, for his 

 extermination of tigers, cobras, and all the other 

 enemies of life (when he can get at them), that militate 

 against his continued existence. Accordingly, what 

 do we find man doing at the earliest dawn of recorded 

 history? Is he engaged in this unrelenting warfare 

 against these pernicious forms of lower life? Perni- 

 cious fiddlesticks. The absurd creature is actually 

 engaged in worshiping them as sacred, higher forms 

 of life. Instead of a ruthless warfare against them, as 

 his reason ought to dictate, the silly creature is so irra- 

 tional as to be protecting these dangerous forms of life, 

 so that if any one kills these animals wilfully he is 

 immediately put to death himself.^ Was there ever 

 such an outrageously exasperating creature as man 

 devised or invented; so deliciously whimsical, so abso- 

 lutely contrary, so upsetting to all beautiful, mathe- 

 matically exact theories concerning his struggle with 

 the enemies of life ? Even to this day the tiger is wor- 

 shiped in parts of India.^ The inhabitants of Sumatra 

 are unwilling to destroy the same animals for super- 

 stitious reasons, although they commit frightful rav- 

 ages.^ The Kamtschatkans still pay a religious regard 



1 Herodotus, Book II, 65. 



2 Pritchard's Physical Hist. vol. IV. p. 501. Compare Transac- 

 tions of Asiatic Society, vol. III. p. 66; Coleman's Mythology of the 

 Hindus, p. 321. 



3 Marsden's History of Sumatra, pp. 149, 254. Buckle's Hist, of 

 Civ. vol. I. p. 90. 



