BIETH, SLEEP, AND DEATH 95 



mentally cultivate and artificially prolong a pleasing sensa- 

 tion. Compare death-feigning, for instance, with that 

 allied and most beautiful instinct of a bird which pretends 

 to be wounded when the nest is threatened by dragging 

 its body along the ground and fluttering its wings. The 

 enemy's attention is diverted from the precious contents 

 of the nest to the ailing bird. Many and many a time 

 the bird must have paid with its life for its devotion, but 

 so common is the instinct that it must have been of 

 utility; the bird, that is to say, must have frequently 

 both saved its young and escaped itself by drawing the 

 enemy away and recovering from the fit or deliberately 

 escaping. A big fact in nature is that " those forms of 

 life tend to survive in which the individual is subordinated 

 to the welfare of the species," for animals " spend them- 

 selves for the race." Here again mind works upon 

 mechanism. There can be no doubt that the bird's in- 

 tense and agonized solicitude for its threatened young 

 does pull the trigger of a physical reaction and that the 

 animal in nine cases out of ten lost its life by it. But 

 if, as Mr. Hudson says, " this perilous instinct were 

 washed in blood and made bright," if the animal played 

 upon its condition and made it serve its ends, then the 

 percentage of deaths would be lowered. The difficulty is 

 in the use of the word " mind." Is this life-saving device 

 a pure instinct a germinal variation or is it acquired by 

 intelligent practice? If the latter, it is not transmitted, 

 but learned over again in each generation. The whole 

 question, indeed, is extremely complicated, but what we 

 can be certain of is that there is something more than a 

 physical explanation to both of these phenomena. 



The ' ' vapours ' ' of Victorian fiction and fact are a 

 useful parallel. These hot-house ladies used both to faint 

 to the letter and pretend to faint for their own ends. 

 They reacted constitutionally to emotional stimuli and 

 so usefully that artifice encroached upon predisposition, 

 building up a make-believe upon the reality. 



