The Plains of Patagonia. a17 
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 io 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 refined 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. The 
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 toa 
preternatural keenness.'| When the constitutionally 
' In an article on ‘‘ Courage,” by Lord Wolseley, in the Fort- 
