THE FEAR OF MAN 205 



brain-power which has put him ahead in the race 

 ever since. 



Primitive man, literally speaking, " lived by his 

 wits," for he could have owed his survival to 

 little else. He was not, for example, nearly so 

 well equipped as the monkeys for physical defence 

 or flight, though their survival is not altogether 

 easy to explain on purely physical grounds. Their 

 power of using their arms and hands as a means 

 of swinging rapidly from branch to branch gives 

 them an advantage over all the tree-climbing cats. 

 Their habit of throwing missiles is also very dis- 

 concerting to other animals ; though this art is only 

 practised by certain monkeys, and may even have been 

 acquired in imitation of man. But their rapid and 

 intelligent combination for defence, menace, and look- 

 out duty has contributed quite as much to their 

 survival as their speed and activity. In tropical 

 America even the monkeys are hard put to it to 

 escape the attacks of such active and formidable foes 

 as the harpy eagle and the ocelot. But it cannot be 

 proved that even the most debased or physically 

 weakest of mankind has ever been the " natural prey " 

 of that " natural enemy " which, according to Sir 

 Samuel Baker, is the nightmare of nearly every species 

 of non-carnivorous animal. 



The causes which make exceptions to this rule are 

 temporary and narrowly local. Even the Greenlander 

 and the Esquimau are the masters of the polar bear, and 

 probably always have been, though little better armed 

 than primitive man ; and the pigmies of the Central 



