and fairly bathes himself in the feelings of companionship."

The fear of ghosts, goblins, and graves is a survival from the time when men supposed that about all the evils of life, even storms, earthquakes, and diseases, were caused by evil spirits. Primitive men believed that the spirit of the dead hung around the immediate vicinity of the body for some time after it left the body. We seem to retain some part of this belief in our half-assent to the theory of "haunted" houses and "haunted" cemeteries.

The instinct of fear is a useful instinct whereever life has dangers or enemies. And it is, of course, still useful in many ways to higher peoples. But there is much greater security among higher peoples than among lower peoples, and hence many occasions for fear have passed away.

We fear the things which our machinery (nàture) is adapted to fear. And our machinery is adapted to fear the things we needed to fear in the savage world gone by, namely, thunder and lightning and snakes and solitude and strangers and darkness. None of these things now has much danger to civilized peoples, but we continue to fear them because of the survival of the old fearproducing machinery. Microbes are probably a thousand times as dangerous to human life and happiness as snakes are, but our "natural" impulse is to fear snakes much more than microbes. We love fighting rather than figures, and explora

tion more than agriculture, and play and dissipation rather than useful occupations. Our machinery has never been made over to suit modern life and conditions.

8. The Fighting Instinct.

The fighting instinct is the instinct to contend and to overcome by force. It causes anyone who has it to act differently from what the fear instinct does. Fear urges one to retreat; the fighting instinct urges one to attack and injure and kill.

The fighting instinct is also an old instinct. It was not invented by man. It was presented to him by his pre-human ancestors, who fought and bled and died for millions of years before there were any human beings in the world. According to Romanes, the fighting instinct first shows itself in ants and spiders. It is, hence, not so old as the fear instinct, for the ants and spiders are somewhat higher than the worms and came into the world somewhat later.

As a general rule, it may be said that the fighting instinct is stronger in the higher and more powerful animals and the fear instinct in the lower and weaker species. Many species, like the deer, rabbit, mouse, and sheep, have adopted a different policy in the struggle for life from other species, such as the lion, wolf, and rhinoceros. The rabbit and the mouse run for their lives, as a general thing, because they are better at run

ning than at fighting. They have neither great strength nor very good fighting implements. The lion and rhinoceros, on the other hand, follow generally the fighting policy, because they are equipped for it. Some species, therefore, are prevailingly fleeing species, and are dominated by the fear instinct, while other species are fighting species, and are ruled commonly by the fighting urge. But even the fleeing species contend more or less among themselves for the possession of food and other necessities of life. And in many passive species the males wage fierce war for their mates.

The animal kingdom has been reared in a gory cradle. This is especially true of man, who has fought his way to a supremacy in the world more bloody and complete than that hitherto achieved by any other species. The natural condition of early man was that of war-war with other men and with other animals. Peace was the exception. Every being outside of the tribe of the savage was an enemy and a legitimate object of plunder. There were alliances and counter-alliances. Men sought ever to be on the winning side. Hence the feebleness of human ties today among the higher peoples of the earth, and the insecurity of peace among the peoples of the world. The ally of today becomes the enemy of tomorrow, and the friend of the past becomes the foe of the present. This great facility we have for reversing our natures is an inheritance.

The fighting instinct survives in all the higher peoples of the earth. It shows itself in the frequent brawls and fisticuffs of boys, and in the wars of men. Peace becomes tiresome if it is too prolonged, and we have to "pitch into" somebody to get relief.

See how a crowd swarms about a street brawl. Let two boys begin to fight, and see how the other boys gather around in anticipation of pounding somebody by proxy, by seeing somebody pound somebody else. Look at the enormous sale of knives, revolvers, and other instruments of death. Does this show our civilization or our savagery? Even if a person has no idea of killing anybody or anything, it rather tickles his savage nature to realize that he is equipped to do it. See the ignoble crew that escorts every pugilist-parasites who feel that some of the glory of his brutality may in some way get rubbed off on them, and whose darling hope is to arrange a set-to so that they may share the pleasure without enduring the pains. The first blows at a prize-fight are apt to make a refined and sensitive spectator sick. But if he sticks thru the first round his blood is likely to rise in favor of one party or the other, and then he can't see the other fellow pounded and mangled enough to suit him (James).

I can remember how strong the fighting instinct was among the men and boys in that part of Missouri in which I lived as a boy. A man or a boy with a strong instinct to fight and with a strong

body to back it up was generally regarded as the one that the other men and boys would rather be than anybody else. If a bruiser could step off to one side at a gathering and announce in a loud, boastful voice that he could "lick" any one present, and nobody dared to say a word or raise a finger against him, that was the person every boy down deep in his heart wanted to be like when he grew up.

This same primitive atmosphere may be found today in certain circles in even the greatest centers of enlightenment of the race-in circles such as are found at drinking and gambling places. Drink tends to cause an individual to return sharply to the savage type by dethroning the reason and thus placing one more completely at the mercy of the lower instincts. The practice men have, and boys even more than men, of using their fists in fighting is a survival of the old style of fighting which prevailed among men before the invention of weapons. In fighting, the wolf uses its teeth, the buffalo its horns, the horse its feet, and the lion its paw. Man is like the lion, he strikes with his paw.

The war instinct lies pretty close to the surface in the natures of even the highest peoples, for it is a very easy matter to stir it to action even in times of profound peace. Let the newspapers print a few big black headlines and let somebody begin to blow the bugle and beat the drum, and we are ready to leap at the throat of