the presence of an enemy depends on circumstances depends on our judgment as to which activity would be the most profitable in the end. When we come into the presence of an enemy we are either impelled toward the enemy by the fighting feeling or driven away from the enemy by the feeling of fear. But the two feelings are entirely different from each other, even tho they may be aroused by the same object. The world of early man was full of dangers and enemies. These enemies were not only far more numerous than now but relatively much stronger. For man originally was entirely unarmed; and for many thousands of years after he began to invent weapons he was much more poorly equipped than now. The progress from savagery to civilization is characterized by nothing more marked than by the decrease in occasions for fear. Have you ever noticed a bird eating, or drinking, or taking its bath? It takes a bite, and then looks around. Then it will take another bite, and look again. It is always on the look-out for enemies. It almost sleeps with one eye open. It is pursued always by a pitiless state of fear. All wild animals have enemies, and they are able to maintain themselves in the world only by constant vigilance. Mr. Galton says that "every antelope in South Africa has literally to run for its life every day or two on an average, and that it starts or gallops under the influence of alarm many times in a day." Many animals that live in flocks or herds have developed the practice of having certain individuals in the group act as sentinels while the rest are eating or sleeping. Men originally lived in this state of constant 4773 "EVERY SIMMONS fear. They were always in danger of running into enemies of some kind—not only during their wanderings by day but especially at night when they slept. The savage is always suspicious, always in danger, and always on the watch. He can depend on no one, and no one can depend on him. He expects nothing from his neighbor, and does unto others as he believes they would do to him if they got a chance. "The life of the savage," says Lubbock, "is one long anxiety, one long scene of selfishness and fear." Today we sit down to our meals or lie down to sleep at night without a thought that we will be attacked before we get thru eating or sleeping. Thousands and millions pass their entire lives without much real occasion for fear-except from microbes, which are generally invited by slip-shod ways of living. 7. Survivals of Fear. Loud and sudden noises startle us, merely because we have the nervous machinery which was manufactured to fit a world where loud and sudden noises meant real dangers. When we hide somewhere and jump out suddenly and seize some one, especially if our appearance is accompanied by a loud noise, our victim is certain to go thru the emotional performance of one who has been really ambushed. And the fact that we enjoy going thru the motion of ambushing some one that way is in itself a survival from the days when the ambush was the most common form of attack on others. Such make-believe attacks are successful because men still have to a certain extent the instincts of the ambush ages. Strangers, whether men or not men, are especially likely to cause the feeling of fear. We shy at strangers and always have a certain uneasi ness in their presence which has no justification in the circumstances. It must be a survival from the time when strangers were never friends, but always enemies. We are especially afraid of important personages-of those who have figuratively the greatest power of good or evil over us. This suspicion is not useful today. It is in our way. It is a survival from the ages of justified fear. The great fear which we have of snakes, spi ders, etc., is probably vestigial. It certainly exists today in unnecessary strength. The fear of snakes is probably an inheritance from the monkey. The monkey is mortally afraid of snakes. Put a snake into a monkey cage and the monkeys are terror stricken. Monkeys have been known to drop unconscious in the presence of snakes thru great fear. And no wonder. The snake is one of the monkey's worst enemies. The monkey can't kill a snake. The great tree-snakes of the tropics are deadly enemies of the monkeys. And before the invention of the club the snake was about as formidable an enemy to man as it was to the mon key. But as soon as man got the club or the spear in his hand, the snake was nothing. Man, unarmed, is a very feeble animal, and his supremacy in the world is due solely to the fact that he had the intelligence to arm himself. Black things, and especially dark places such as caves, and even darkness in general tend to cause in us the feeling of fear. We are afraid of these things even when we know they contain no element of danger. But to the savage the cave was a lair, and darkness was a great big abyss filled with all sorts of things with teeth. When the sun goes down with us, we turn on the lights and prolong the day, indoors and outdoors; but when the sun went down on the savage, his eyes went out. The fear which comes upon us in being "lost" is largely vestigial. A lost savage was in real danger. He was the legitimate prey of anybody or anything that came upon him. But being "lost" in a city or in a wood is much less serious than our feelings indicate. We feel much as we used to feel when being "lost" was dangerous. In all animals that live in groups (gregarious animals) there is an aversion to being alone. A writer says of the half-wild cattle of South Africa: "Altho the ox has apparently little affection for or interest in his fellows, he cannot endure separation from his herd. If he is separated from it by force, he shows every sign of mental agony. He strives with all his might to get back. And when he succeeds, he plunges into the middle of the herd |