The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-11-16
PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE
 BEASTS.


 If, as seems probable, the animal fear of men was acquired, and is not natu- ral to their minds, it is not very clear how the larger carnivorous animals were far more numerous than now, es- capped destruction and survived long enough to impress on the animal world the sense of fear by which man now dominates it. Regarded merely as a cC-lflict between one class of animals and another, the result should not have been doubtful. Man ought to have dis appeared from the face of the earth, or, in any case, to have retreatad to re- mote strongholds in regions not ire quented by the beasts. That he did not do so, but turned the tables on the bet ter equipped offensive creature, is fair presumptive evidence that original man never was on a level with the animals in intelligence, but was equipped with the re-dominant brain power Wh ch has put him ahead in the race ever since Primitive man. literally speak ing, 'lived by his wits,' for he could have owed his survival to little else. He was not. for example, nearly so well equipped as the monkeys for physical defence or flight, though their survival is not altogether easy to explain on purely physical grounds. Their power of using their arms and hands as a means of swinging rapidly from branch to branch gives them an advantage over all the tree climbing cats. Their habit of throwing missiles is also very disconcerting to other animals, though this art is only practised by certain monkeys.
 But their rapid and intelligent combi- nation for defence, menace and look out duty has contributed quite as much to their survival as their speed and ac- | tivity In tropical America even the monkeys are hard put to it to escape the attacks of such active and formida- be foes as the harpy eagle and the oce- 1 lot. But it cannot be proved that even the most debased or physically weakest of mankind has ever been the natural | prey" of that natural enemy which according to Sir Samuel Baker, is the nightmare of nearly every species of non -carnivorous animal The causes which make exceptions to this rule are l temporary and narrowly local. Ever | the Greenlander and the EsquimauS are the masters of the poplar bear, and probably always have been, though lit' tie better armed than primitive man and tte pigmies of the central African forests are mighty hunters. It may even be that the neighborhocd of fierce animals aided the early development o1 man; for the least developed races arc largely found in such places as Tierra del Fuego, where, in the absence oi savage beasts, savage man had no in ducement to arm and equip himself.
 But man has had an even more DO tent ally than his own ingenuity which from remote antiquity has invested hin in the mind of the animal world witt something of the supernatural. He is ever accompanied by the one element which the animal mind cannot create cannot understand, stands in constant awe of and dreads by night. when it: courage is greatest and that of ma1 least steady. Fire that pillar of clout and flame which precedes not the az gregate human host, but the smalles
 fragment of the invading army, th constant and dreaded harbinger of hu man presence, springing up, as thu beasts must think, automatically iron the earth wherever man rests his body
 guarding him in sleeping and waking always associated with his abode, ha for ages terrified the beasts.-LondoI Spectator.