184 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



unprepared. After being bitten he has had time 

 to reflect on the possible, even probable, con- 

 sequence, and to make due preparation for the 

 end ; and even at the last, although tortured to 

 frenzy at intervals by strange unhuman agonies, 

 however clouded with apprehensions his intellect 

 may be, it is not altogether darkened and un- 

 conscious of approaching dissolution. We know 

 that men in other times have had no such fear of 

 sudden death, that among the most advanced of 

 the ancients some even regarded death from 

 lightning-stroke as a signal mark of Heaven's 

 favour. We, on the contrary, greatly fear the 

 lightning, seldom as it hurts ; and the serpent 

 and the lightning are objects of terror to us in 

 about the same degree, and perhaps for the same 

 reason. 



Thus any view which we may take of this 

 widespread and irrational feeling is at once found 

 to be so complicated with other feelings and matters 

 affecting us that no convincing solution seems 

 possible. Perhaps it would be as well to regard 

 it as a compound of various elements : traditional 

 feeling having its origin in the Hebrew narrative 

 of man's fall from innocency and happiness ; our 

 ignorance concerning serpents and the amount of 

 injury they are able to do us ; and, lastly, our 

 superstitious dread of swift and unexpected death. 

 Sticklers for the simple — and to my mind erroneous 

 — theory that a primitive instinct is under it all, 

 may throw in something of that element if they 



