INSTINCT. 413 



As B/Ocliefoucauld says, there is something in the misfor- 

 tunes of our very friends that does not altogether displease 

 us ; and an apostle of peace will feel a certain vicious thrill 

 run through him, and enjoy a vicarious brutality, as he turns 

 to the column in his newspaper at the top of which ' Shock- 

 ing Atrocity ' stands printed in large capitals. See how the 

 crowd flocks round a street-brawl ! Consider the enormous 

 annual sale of revolvers to persons, not one in a thousand 

 of whom has any serious intention of using them, but of 

 whom each one has his carnivorous self-consciousness 

 agreeably tickled by the notion, as he clutches the handle 

 of his weapon, that he will be rather a dangerous customer 

 to meet. See the ignoble crew that escorts every great 

 pugilist — parasites w^io feel as if the glory of his brutality 

 rubbed off upon them, and whose darling hope, from day to 

 day, is to arrange some set-to of which they may share the 

 rapture without enduring the pains ! The first blows at a 

 prize-fight are apt to make a refined spectator sick ; but his 

 blood is soon up in favor of one party, and it will then seem 

 as if the other fellow could not be banged and pounded and 

 mangled enough — the refined spectator would like to rein- 

 force the blows himself. Over the sinister orgies of blood 

 of certain depraved and insane persons let a curtain be 

 drawn, as well as over the ferocity with which otherwise 

 fairly decent men may be animated, when (at the sacking of 

 a town, for instance), the excitement of victory long de- 

 change in demeanor. Taking advantage of the distnictlon produced by 

 the accident, B escaped from the house and proceeded to a neighboring 

 farm-yard, where he cut the throat of a horse, liilling it." Dr. D. H. Tuke, 

 commenting on this man's case (Journal of Mental Science, October, 

 1885), speaks of the influence of blood upon him— his whole life had been 

 one chain of cowardly atrocities — and continues ; " There can be no doubt 

 that with some individuals it constitutes a fascination. . . . We might 

 speak of a mania sanguinis. Dr. Savage admitted a man from France into 

 Bethlehem Hospital some time ago, one of whose earliest symptoms of in- 

 sanity was tlie thirst for blood, which he endeavored to satisfy by going to 

 an abattoir in Paris. The man whose case 1 have brought forward had the 

 same passion for gloating over blood, but had no attack of acute mania. 

 The sight of blood was distinctly a delight to him, and at any time blood 

 aroused in him the worst elements of his nature. Instances will easily be 

 recalled in which murderers, undoubtedly insane, have described the in 

 tense pleasure they experienced in the warm blood of children. " 



