IN HIGHER PEOPLES 133 



unto others as he believes they would do to him if 

 they got a chance. ' ' The life of the savage, ' ' says 

 Lubbock, "is one long anxiety, one long scene of 

 selfishness and fear." 



Today we sit down to our meals or lie down to 

 sleep at night without a thought that we will be 

 attacked before we get thru eating or sleeping. 

 Thousands and millions pass their entire lives 

 without much real occasion for fear — except from 

 microbes, which are generally invited by slip-shod 

 ways of living. 



7. Survivals of Fear. 



Loud and sudden noises startle us, merely be- 

 cause we have the nervous machinery which was 

 manufactured to fit a world where loud and sud- 

 den noises meant real dangers. When we hide 

 somewhere and jump out suddenly and seize some 

 one, especially if our appearance is accompanied 

 by a loud noise, our victim is certain to go thru 

 the emotional performance of one who has been 

 really ambushed. And the fact that we enjoy 

 going thru the motion of ambushing some one that 

 way is in itself a survival from the days when the 

 ambush was the most common form of attack on 

 others. Such make-believe attacks are successful 

 because men still have to a certain extent the in- 

 stincts of the ambush ages. 



Strangers, whether men or not men, are espe- 

 cially likely to cause the feeling of fear. We shy 

 at strangers and always have a certain uneasi- 



