412 PSYCHOLOGY. 



stinct combine in many manifestations. They both support 

 the emotion of anger ; they combine in the fascination which 

 stories of atrocity have for most minds ; and the utterly 

 blind excitement of giving the rein to our fury when our blood 

 is up (an excitement whose intensity is greater than that 

 of any other human passion save one) is only explicable as an 

 impulse aboriginal in character, and having more to do with 

 immediate and overwhelming tendencies to muscular dis- 

 charge than to any possible reminiscences of effects of ex- 

 perience, or association of ideas. I say this here, because 

 the pleasure of disinterested cruelty has been thought a 

 paradox, and writers have sought to show that it is no 

 primitive attribute of our nature, but rather a resultant 

 of the subtile combination of other less malignant ele- 

 ments of mind. This is a hopeless task. If evolution and 

 the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction 

 of prey and of human rivals must have been among the 

 most important of man's primitive functions, the fighting 

 and the chasing instincts miist have become ingrained. 

 Certain perceptions must immediately, and without the in- 

 tervention of inferences and ideas, have prompted emotions 

 and motor discharges ; and both the latter must, from 

 the nature of the case, have been very violent, and therefore, 

 when unchecked, of an intensely pleasurable kind. It is just 

 because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of 

 us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a fight 

 or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.* 



the boy take the eggs from the nest and destroy thero when he never thinks 

 of eating them ? These are effects of an hereditary instinct, so strong that 

 warnings and punishments are unable to counteract it " (Schneider : Der 

 Menschliche Wille, p. 224. See also Der Thierische W'lle, pp. 180-2.) 



* It is not surprising, in view of the facts of animal history and evolu- 

 tion, that the very special object blood should have become the stimulus 

 for a very special interest and excitement. That the sight of it should 

 make people faint is strange. Less so that a child vrho sees his blood flow 

 should forthwith become much more frightened than by the mere feeling 

 of the cut. Horued cattle often, though not always, becoiPe furiously 

 excited at the smell of blood. In some abnormal human being* the sight 

 or thought of it exerts a baleful fascination. " B and his father ■swere at a 

 neighbor's one evening, and, while paring apples, the old man accidentally 

 cut his hand so severely as to cause the blood to flow profusely. B was 

 observed to become restless, nervous, pale, and to have undergone a peculiar 



