MAN'S DEVOTION 113 



peccary has vicious teeth in its protruding jaws. 

 With these it can bite and tear and do this in places 

 about the feet and legs, which a taller antagonist 

 finds it hard to protect. The backs and heads of 

 these little creatures, which are the only parts of 

 their bodies exposed to an antagonist, are protected 

 by the skull, vertebrae, and ribs, and by stiff, prickly 

 bristles. What a contrast from the man-brutes' 

 tall, bare-skinned body, fully exposing his vitals to 

 his enemy. 



The only possible use that such creatures could 

 get out of gregariousness lay in this, that one might 

 watch while the others rested or sought food. But, 

 compared with the added risk of wholesale slaughter 

 this was small gain to a creature unable to feed on 

 grass or herbage. The greater safety was in remain- 

 ing scattered, for the enemies of man reproduced far 

 more rapidly than he. 



The fact furthermore that the anthropoids are not 

 gregarious is in itself a strong point against the 

 purely arbitrary assumption of gregariousness among 

 the early upright progenitors of man. Is not 

 this argument weakened, however, by the fact that 

 even the hungry lion or bengal tiger has been known 

 but very rarely to dare attack a party or company 

 of people ? Does not this indicate that gregarious- 

 ness would have been an advantage to the primitive 

 brute ancestors of man ? 



By no means ! For the above statement is strictly 

 true only with reference to parties of civilized 



