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SAVAGE SUDAN 
upon its own alert and ceaseless vigilance, and by the special¬ 
ised gifts (as above) that serve to render that vigilance effective. 
None of wild breed risk ridiculous chances on “colour.” 
The Psychology of the Wilderness 
“ Audi Alteram PartemA 
Were it conceivable — perhaps in a day-dream—that 
somewhere in outmost recess of the veld, there might be 
encountered a brindled gnu in responsive mood, his senti¬ 
ments would probably take these lines:—“You poor humans 
will never understand us wild beasts until you come effectively 
to recognise the full cleavage between “instinct” and “intellect” 
—that is the gulf that lies between us. The latter endowment 
you coolly assume constitutes you the superior race—no greater 
illusion on the veld! True, it enables you to devise weapons, 
implements, and schemes that partially compensate for your 
physical inferiority—without those extraneous appliances, 
you would put up a very poor show. For you have neither 
strength, speed, nor endurance; your eyesight is negligible— 
save for your glass-eyes [? binoculars]—your hearing simply 
contemptible; while as for scent , you know not what it is. We 
observe that you have noses, but believe they are intended as 
ornaments. At any rate, their functions are obsolete from 
disuse. Thus it comes that your intellect is your handicap. 
It leads you to waste nine-tenths of your waking life upon 
profitless and irrelevant trivialities — such, for example, as 
reading silly newspapers or writing yet sillier books; discus¬ 
sing politics ... or polemics ... or Pussy-foot pranks . . . 
trinomialism, priority in nomenclature, colour-protection, and 
a thousand similar banalities. You are so clever that you 
imagine whole categories of things that in the wild-world of 
the veld don’t exist, and don’t count. Thus do you degenerate. 
Now compare our case. Our instinct recognises but a single 
interest, one Law of our Being — that of self-preservation 
(unaided). With singleness of purpose, we gnus—and equally 
all our neighbours—concentrate every ounce of our energies, 
every hour of our lives by day and night (thereby incidentally 
perfecting our physical equipment) to that one paramount 
object. You are constrained to employ dogs and sentries 
