EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



this sort in their childhood. I recollect, when 

 quite a little boy, coming to blows with a school- 

 mate over the question whether Napoleon really 

 won the battle of Eylau. Now the spirit which 

 prompts a child to pound his companion who 

 resists him in argument is identical with the 

 spirit which prompts a man to calumniate, tor- 

 ture, burn, or otherwise put down and injure 

 his neighbour who refuses to reverence the 

 things which he himself deems sacred. The 

 more we reflect upon it the more we shall be 

 convinced that at bottom the feeling is the same 

 in the two cases, though in the latter it is ac- 

 companied and disguised by other feelings. 

 Now, what is this feeling but the disposition to 

 domineer, to assert one's own personality at the 

 expense of neighbouring personalities, a dis- 

 position eminently characteristic of the brute 

 and of the savage, but less and less characteris- 

 tic of man as he becomes more and more civi- 

 lized ? Bearing this in mind, and remembering 

 the fable of the wolf and the lamb remember- 

 ing that a strong passion is never at a loss for 

 reasons, and that no one is more thoroughly the 

 dupe of the false reasons than the man himself 

 who is under the control of the strong passion 

 remembering this, one has the key to a large 

 part of the history of persecution. The paradox, 

 as regards the " benevolent persecutors," is a 

 paradox no longer. It becomes explicable how 



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