THE BRUISED SERPENT 185 
like—a small residuum existing in races that 
emerged in comparatively recent times from bar- 
barism, but which has been eliminated from a 
long-civilised people like the Hindoos. 
For my own part I am inclined to believe that 
we regard serpents with a destructive hatred 
purely and simply because we are so taught from 
childhood. A tradition may be handed down 
without writing, or even articulate speech. We 
have not altogether ceased to be “lower animals ” 
ourselves. Show a child by your gestures and 
actions that a thing is fearful to you; and he will 
fear it, that you hate it, and he will catch your 
hatred. So far back as memory carries me I find 
the snake, in its unwarrantable intrusion on the 
scene, ever associated with loud exclamations of 
astonishment and rage, with a hurried search for 
those primitive weapons always lying ready to 
hand, sticks and stones, then the onset and 
triumphant crushing of that wonderfully fashioned 
vertebra in its scaly vari-coloured mantle, coiling 
and writhing for a few moments under the cruel 
rain of blows, appealing not with voice but with 
agonised yet ever graceful action for mercy to the 
merciless; and finally, the paean of victory from 
the slayer, lifting his face still aglow with righteous 
wrath, a little St. George in his own estimation; 
for has he not rid the earth of another monster, one 
of that demoniac brood that was cursed of old, and 
this without injury to his sacred heel? 
