Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/176

164 and the chasing instincts must have become ingrained. Certain perceptions must immediately, and without the intervention of inferences and ideas, have prompted emotions and motor discharges; and both of the latter must, from the nature of the case, have been very violent, and therefore, when unchecked, of an intensely pleasurable kind. It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun. It is not surprising, in view of the facts of animal history and evolution, that the very special object blood should have become the stimulus for a very special interest and excitement. That the sight of it should make people faint is strange. Less so that a child who sees his blood flow should forthwith become much more frightened than by the mere feeling of the cut. Horned cattle often, though not always, become furiously excited at the smell of blood. In some abnormal human beings the sight or thought of it exerts a baleful fascination. "B and his father were at a neighbor's one evening, and, while paring apples, the old man accidentally cut his hand so severely as to cause the blood to flow profusely. B was observed to become restless, nervous, pale, and to have undergone a peculiar change in demeanor. Taking advantage of the distraction produced by the accident, B escaped from the house and proceeded to a neighboring farm-yard, where he cut the throat of a horse, killing it." Dr. D. H. Tuke, commenting on this man's case ("Journal of Mental Science," October, 1885), speaks of the influence of blood upon him—his whole life had been one chain of cowardly atrocities—and continues: "There can be no doubt that with some individuals it constitutes a fascination. . . . We might speak of a mania sanguinis. Dr. Savage admitted a man from France into Bethlehem Hospital some time ago, one of whose earliest symptoms of insanity was the thirst for blood, which he endeavored to satisfy by going to an abattoir in Paris. The man whose case I have brought forward had the same passion for gloating over blood, but had no attack of acute mania. The sight of blood was distinctly a delight to him, and at any time blood aroused in him the worst elements of his nature. Instances will easily be recalled in which murderers, undoubtedly insane, have described the intense pleasure they experienced in the warm blood of children."

As Rochefoucauld says, there is something in the misfortunes of our very friends that does not altogether displease us; and an apostle of peace will feel a certain vicious thrill run through him, and enjoy a vicarious brutality, as he turns to the column in his newspaper at the top of which "shocking atrocity" stands printed in large capitals. See how the crowd flocks round a street-brawl! Consider the enormous annual sale of revolvers to persons, not one in a thousand of whom has any serious intention of using them, but of whom each one has his carnivorous self-consciousness agreeably tickled by the notion, as he clutches the handle of his weapon, that he will be rather a dangerous customer to meet. See the ignoble crew that escorts every great pugilist parasites who feel as if the glory of his brutality rubbed off upon them, and whose darling hope, from day to day, is to arrange some set-to of which they may share the rapture without enduring the pains! The first blows at a prize-fight are apt to make a refined spectator sick; but his blood is soon up in favor of one party, and it will then seem as if the other fellow could not be banged and pounded and mangled enough the refined spectator would like to