LEAF AND TENDRIL 



their race would perish. A certain agonized call 

 from a member of a herd of cattle will at once 

 bring the other members to the spot, with uplifted 

 heads and threatening horns. This, again, is the 

 instinct of self-preservation. This, I say, animals 

 must have, but they do not have to have sympathy 

 any more than they have to have veneration, or 

 humility, or the aesthetic sense. But fear — think 

 how important this is to them — blind, unreasoning 

 fear, but always alert and suspicious. 



Fear in the human species is undoubtedly of 

 animal origin. How acute it often is in young chil- 

 dren — the fear of the dark, of the big, of the 

 strange, and of the unusual ! The first fear I myself 

 remember was that of an open door at night leading 

 into a dark room. What a horror I felt at that mys- 

 terious cavernous darkness ! — and this without any 

 idea of the danger that might lurk there. The next 

 fear I recall was a kind of panic, when I was prob- 

 ably three or four years of age, at the sight of a hen- 

 hawk sailing against the sky above me. I hurriedly 

 climbed over the wall and hid behind it. Later, 

 when I was ten or twelve years of age, my fear took 

 a less animal form — a fear of spooks and hob- 

 goblins, induced, no doubt, by the fearsorpe super- 

 stitions of my elders. Now I am not conscious of 

 any physical or superstitious fears, but there is 

 plenty of moral cowardice left. My little grand- 

 daughter, when two and a half years old, was 

 140 



