(1) The master-interest of every member of the pack lies in the chase, because success in it is necessary to life. To show how this passion actuates ourselves, I quote Mr. F. C. Selous; who, during an expedition in Canada, roused a caribou stag within twenty yards, saw “the dreadful terror” in his eyes, and shot him. “Did I feel sorry for what I had done? it may be asked. Well! no, I did not. Ten thousand years of superficial and unsatisfying civilisation have not altered the fundamental nature of man, and the successful hunter of to-day becomes a primeval savage, remorseless, triumphant, full of a wild, exultant joy, which none but those who have lived in the wilderness, and depended on their success as hunters for their daily food, can ever know or comprehend.”[38] To the hunter my paradox must seem a truism. And that the hunter temporarily released from civilised restraints, who suffers such intoxication, merely renews old savage raptures is shown by the following curious parallel: a Bushman, returning from a successful hunt to the wagons of the traveller Baines—“Behold me!” he shouted, “the hunter! Yea, look on me, the killer of elephants and mighty bulls! Behold me, the big elephant, the lion! Look on me, ye Damaras and Makalaka; admire and confess that I am a great Bull-calf.”[39]
Again, since the interest of the chase culminates in the kill—for this is the condition of making a meal—to kill becomes, in some predatory animals, a passion that is often gratified without regard to their needs. Wolves often slay many more sheep than they devour: a sheep-dog that undergoes reversion kills by night the sheep on neighbouring farms without any call of hunger; and, says Mr. Thompson Seton (writing of the natives of North Canada), “the mania for killing that is seen in so many white men, is evidently a relic of savagery; for all these Indians and half-breeds are full of it.”[40] They fired at everything they saw. The manners of my own pack—now long dispersed—were very similar to the Indians’; and the sport of pigeon- or of pheasant-shooting has been reduced to its last element—skilful slaying.
The disposition to slay is reinforced, when prey makes serious resistance, by anger; and generally by a distinct tendency, sometimes called “destructiveness,” perhaps a latent character derived from the monkeys, and which I take to be partly a play-impulse and partly an expression of curiosity.