424 SAVAGE SUDAN 



upon its own alert and ceaseless vigilance, and by the special- 

 ised gifts (as above) that serve to render that vigilance effective. 

 None of wild breed risk ridiculous chances on "colour." 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WILDERNESS 

 " Audi Alteram Partem" 



Were it conceivable perhaps in a day-dream that 

 somewhere in outmost recess of the veld, there might be 

 encountered a brindled gnu in responsive mood, his senti- 

 ments would probably take these lines : " You poor humans 

 will never understand us wild beasts until you come effectively 

 to recognise the full cleavage between "instinct" and "intellect" 

 that is the gulf that lies between us. The latter endowment 

 you coolly assume constitutes you the superior race no greater 

 illusion on the veld ! True, it enables you to devise weapons, 

 implements, and schemes that partially compensate for your 

 physical inferiority without those extraneous appliances, 

 you would put up a very poor show. For you have neither 

 strength, speed, nor endurance; your eyesight is negligible 

 save for your glass-eyes [? binoculars] your hearing simply 

 contemptible ; while as for scent, you know not what it is. We 

 observe that you have noses, but believe they are intended as 

 ornaments. At any rate, their functions are obsolete from 

 disuse. Thus it comes that your intellect is your handicap. 

 It leads you to waste nine-tenths of your waking life upon 

 profitless and irrelevant trivialities such, for example, as 

 reading silly newspapers or writing yet sillier books; discus- 

 sing politics ... or polemics ... or Pussy-foot pranks . . . 

 trinomialism, priority in nomenclature, colour-protection, and 

 a thousand similar banalities. You are so clever that you 

 imagine whole categories of things that in the wild-world of 

 the veld don't exist, and don't count. Thus do you degenerate. 

 Now compare our case. Our instinct recognises but a single 

 interest, one Law of our Being that of self-preservation 

 (unaided). With singleness of purpose, we gnus and equally 

 all our neighbours concentrate every ounce of our energies, 

 every hour of our lives by day and night (thereby incidentally 

 perfecting our physical equipment) to that one paramount 

 object. You are constrained to employ dogs and sentries 



