The Plains of Patagonia. 217 



but which so long as they last seem to affect us 

 down to the very roots of our being, and come as a 

 great surprise— a revelation of an unfamiliar and 

 unsuspected nature hidden under the nature we are 

 conscious of — can only be attributed to an instan- 

 taneous reversion to the primitive and wholly 

 savage mental conditions. Probably not many 

 men exist who would be unable to recall similar 

 cases in their own experience ; but it frequently 

 happens that the revived instinct is so purely animal 

 in character and repugnant to our i-efined or 

 humanitarian feelings, that it is sedulously con- 

 cealed and its promptings resisted. In the military 

 and seafaring vocations, and in lives of travel and 

 adventure, these sudden and surprising reversions 

 are most frequently experienced. The excitement 

 affecting men going into battle, which even affects 

 those who are constitutionally timid and will cause 

 them to exhibit a reckless daring and contempt of 

 danger astonishing to themselves, is a familiar in- 

 stance. This instinctive courage has been compared 

 to intoxication, but it does not, like alcohol, obscure 

 a man's faculties : on the contrary, he is far more 

 keenly active to everything going on around him 

 than the person who keeps perfectly cool. Tlie 

 man who is coolly courageous in fight has his 

 faculties in their ordinary condition : the faculties 

 of the man who goes into battle inflamed with 

 instinctive, joyous excitement are sharpened to a 

 preternatural keenness.^ When the constitutionally 



' In an article on " Courage," by Lord Wolseley, in tlie Fort- 



