132 Wild Beasts 



and are unprepared to meet his majesty, is a more con- 

 vincing proof with respect to his character than any other 

 that could be advanced. A very small portion of mankind 

 respect anything that they do not fear. Wherever lions 

 exist under the conditions mentioned, they are dreaded, 

 and with reason, and then, very often, their " daring and 

 audacity almost exceed belief," according to Andersson, 

 who after all expresses the sense of those writers in whose 

 self-contradictory evidence they are called cowards. It 

 was because men dreaded the lion that he became the 

 emblem of wisdom in Assyrian sculpture and the type of 

 courage in Hebrew poetry ; that his head crowns the body 

 of an Egyptian god, and that his form has been taken as a 

 royal cognizance in the East and West. For no other cause 

 is it that death is the penalty for any one but a ruler to 

 wear his claws in Zululand, or that among the Algerian 

 Arabs his whole body possesses magic virtues. 



Lion flesh is eaten in various parts of the earth, although 

 that counts for nothing with regard to its edibility, for 

 men in certain phases of development eat everything. 

 Andersson ate some ("The Okovango River") and found 

 it white, juicy, and "not unlike veal." Much the same 

 was said ages before his time in Philostratos' Life of 

 Apollonius of Tyana, and though this work is doubtless an 

 Alexandrian forgery, the evidence in this particular is just 

 as good as if it were authentic. 



In an account of this creature it remains to say a few 

 words more about its intellect, and the conditions under 

 which it is developed. Given the raw material of mind as 

 a variable quantity in all beings belonging to the same 



