Part 18

Those who try to divest themselves of human nature rarely succeed, and the reason nearest to the surface why, over all the world, the lonely recluse made friends with animals was doubtless his loneliness. On their side, animals have only to be persuaded that men are harmless for them to meet their advances half-way. If this is not always true of wild beasts, it is because (as St. Francis apprehended) unfortunately they are sometimes hungry; but man is not the favourite prey of any wild beast who is in his right mind. Prisoners who tamed mice or sparrows followed the same impulse as saints who tamed lions or buffaloes. How many a prisoner who returned to the fellowship of men must have regretted his mouse or his sparrow! Animals can be such good company. Still, it follows that if their society was sought as a substitute, they were, in a certain sense, vicarious objects of affection. We forget that even in inter-human affections much is vicarious. The sister of charity gives mankind the love which she would have given to her children. The ascetic who will never hear the pattering feet of his boy upon the stairs loves the gazelle, the bird fallen from its nest, the lion cub whose mother has been slain by the hunter. And love, far more than charity (in the modern sense), blesses him that gives as well as him that takes.

But human phenomena are complex, and this explanation of the sympathy between saint and beast does not cover the whole ground. Who can doubt that these men, whose faculties were concentrated on drawing nearer to the Eternal, vaguely surmised that wild living creatures had unperceived channels of communication with spirit, hidden _rapports_ with the Fountain of Life which man has lost or has never possessed? Who can doubt that in the vast cathedral of Nature they were awed by “the mystery which is in the face of brutes”?

Beside the need to love and the need to wonder, some of them knew the need to pity. Here the ground widens, for the heart that feels the pang of the meanest thing that lives does not beat only in the hermit’s cell or under the sackcloth of a saint.

XIII

VERSIPELLES

THE snake and the tiger are grim realities of Indian life. They mean a great deal—they mean India with its horror and its splendour; above all, with its primary attention given to things which for most Europeans are _nil_ or are kept for Sunday. And Sunday, the day most calm, most bright, has only a little portion of them, only the light not the darkness of the Unknown.

To the despair of the English official, the Hindu, like his forefathers in remotest antiquity, respects the life of tiger and snake. In doing so he is not governed simply by the feeling that makes him look on serenely whilst all sorts of winged and fleet-footed creatures eat up his growing crops—another tolerance which exasperates the Western beholder: in that instance it is, in the main, the rule of live and let live which dictates his forbearance, the persuasion that it is wrong to monopolise the increase of the earth to the uttermost farthing’s-worth. His sentiment towards tiger and snake is of a more profound nature.

The Hindu will not kill a cobra if he can help it, and if one is killed he tries to expiate the offence by honouring it with proper funeral rites. The tiger, like the snake, gives birth to those ancient twins, fear and admiration. The perception of the beautiful is one of the oldest as it is one of the most mysterious of psychological phenomena in man and beast. Why should the sheen of the peacock’s tail attract the peahen? Why should the bower-bird and the lyre-bird construct a lovely pleasance where they may dance? Man perceived the beautiful in fire and wind, in the swift air, the circle of stars, the violent water, the lights of heaven: “being delighted with the beauty of these things, he took them to be gods”—as was said by the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon about two hundred years before Christ. He also perceived the beautiful in the lithe movements of the snake and in the tiger’s symmetry.

As to the sense of fear, how is it that this fear is unaccompanied by repulsion? To this question the more general answer would seem to be that Nature, if regarded as divine, cannot repel. But the snake and tiger are in some special way divine, so that they become still further removed from the range of human criticism. They are manifestations of divinity—a safer description of even the lowest forms of zoolatry than the commoner one which asserts that they are “gods.” Deity, if omnipresent, “must be able to occupy the same space as another body at the same time,” which was said in a different connexion, but it is the true base of all beliefs involving the union of spirit and matter from the lowest to the highest.

The animal which is a divine agent, ought to behave like one. If it causes destruction, such destruction should have the fortuitous appearance of havoc wrought by natural causes. The snake or tiger should not wound with malice prepense, but only in a fine, casual way. This is just what, as a rule, they are observed to do. I have seen many snakes, but I never saw one run after a man, though I have seen men run after snakes. Now and then the Italian peasant is bitten by vipers because he walks in the long grass with naked feet. He treads on the snake or pushes against it, and it bites him. So it is with the Indian peasant. It is much the same in the case of the normal tiger; unless he is disturbed or wounded, he most rarely attacks. But there are abnormal tigers, abnormal beasts of every sort—there is the criminal class of beast. What of him? It might be supposed that primitive man would take such a beast to be an angry or vindictive spirit. By no means. He detects in him a fellow-human. The Indian forestalled Lombroso; the man-eating tiger is a degenerate, really not responsible for his actions, and still less is the god behind him responsible for them.

Little need be said of the natural history of the man-eating tiger; yet a few words may not be out of place. To his abnormality every one who has studied wild beasts bears witness. All agree that the loss of life from tigers is almost exclusively traceable to individuals of tiger-kind which prey chiefly or only on man. The seven or eight hundred persons killed annually by tigers in British India are victims of comparatively few animals. Not many years ago a single man-eating tigress was certified to have killed forty-eight persons. While the ordinary tiger has to be sought out with difficulty for the sport of those who wish to hunt him, the man-eater night after night waylays the rural postman or comes boldly into the villages in search of his unnatural food. During great scarcity caused by the destruction or disappearance of small game in the forests, the carnivora are forced out of their habits as the wolves in the Vosges are induced to come down to the plains in periods of intense cold. Such special causes do not affect the question of the man-eater, which eats man’s flesh from choice, not from necessity. Why he does so Europeans have tried to explain in various ways. One is, that the unfamiliar taste of human flesh creates an irresistible craving. In South America they say that a jaguar after tasting man’s flesh once becomes an incorrigible man-eater for ever after. Others think man-eating is a form of madness, a disease, and they point to the fact that the man-eater is always in bad condition; his skin is useless. But it is not sure if this be cause or effect, since man’s flesh is said to be unwholesome. A third and plausible theory would attribute man-eating to the easy capture of the prey: a tiger that has caught one man will hunt no other fleeter game. Especially in old age, a creature that has neither horns nor tusks nor yet swift feet must appear an attractive prey. This coincides with an observation made by Apollonius of Tyana: he says that lions caught and ate monkeys for medicine when they were sick, but that when they were old and unable to hunt the stag and the wild boar, they caught them for food. Aristotle said that lions were more disposed to enter towns and attack man when they grew old, as old age made their teeth defective, which was a hindrance to them in hunting.

Another possible clue may be deduced from a belief which exists in Abyssinia about the man-eating lion. In that country the people dislike to have Europeans hunt the lion, not only because they revere him as the king of beasts (though this is one reason, and it shows how natural to man is the friendly feeling towards beasts, and how it flourishes along with any sort of religion, provided the religion has been left Oriental and not Westernised), but also because they are convinced that a lion whose mate has been killed becomes ferocious and thirsts for human blood. This belief is founded on accurate observation of the capacity of wild beasts for affection. The love of the lion for his mate is no popular error. That noble hunter, Major Leveson, told a pathetic story of how he witnessed in South Africa a fight between two lions, while the lioness, palm and prize, stood looking on. A bullet laid her low, but the combatants were so hotly engaged that neither of them perceived what had happened. Then another bullet killed one of them: the survivor, after the first moment of surprise as to why his foe surrendered, turned round and for the first time saw the hunters who were quite near. He seemed about to spring on them, when he caught sight of the dead lioness: “With a peculiar whine of recognition, utterly regardless of our presence, he strode towards her, licked her face and neck with his great rough tongue and patted her gently with his huge paw, as if to awaken her. Finding that she did not respond to his caresses, he sat upon his haunches like a dog and howled most piteously....” Finally the mourning lion fled at the cries of the Kaffirs and the yelping of the dogs close at hand. He had understood the great, intolerable fact of death. Would any one blame him if he became an avenger of blood?

Supposing that this line of defence could be transferred to the tiger, instead of being branded as lazy, decrepit, mad, or bad, he might hope to appear before the public with a largely rehabilitated character.

The natives of the jungle resort to none of these hypotheses to account for the man-eater: a different bank of ideas can be drawn on by them to help them out of puzzling problems. The free force of imagination is far preferable, if admitted, as a solver of difficulties, to all our patient and plodding researches. The jungle natives tell many stories of the man-eater, of which the following is a typical example. It was told to a British officer, from whom I had it.

Once upon a time there was a man who had the power of changing himself into a tiger whenever he liked. But for him to change back into the shape of a man it was necessary that some human being should pronounce a certain formula. He had a friend who knew the formula, and to him he went when he wished to resume human shape. But the friend died.

The man was obliged, therefore, to find some one else to pronounce the formula. At last he decided to confide the secret to his wife; so, one day, he said to her that he should be absent for a short time and that when he came back it would be in the form of a tiger; he charged her to pronounce the proper formula when she should see him appear in tiger-shape, and he assured her that he would then, forthwith, become a man again.

In a few days, after he had amused himself by catching a few antelopes, he trotted up to his wife, hoping all would be well. But the woman, in spite of all that he had told her, was so dreadfully frightened when she saw a large tiger running towards her, that she began to scream. The tiger jumped about and tried to make her understand by dumb-show what she was to do, but the more he jumped the more she screamed, and at last he thought in his mind, “This is the most stupid woman I ever knew,” and he was so angry that he killed her. Directly afterwards he recollected that no other human being knew the right formula—hence he must remain for ever a tiger. This so affected his spirits that he acquired a hatred for the whole human race, and killed men whenever he saw them.

This diverting folk-tale shows a root-belief in the stage of becoming a branch-belief. In the present case the root is the ease with which men are thought to be able to transform themselves (or be transformed by others) into animals. The branch is the presumption that a very wicked animal must be human. The corresponding inference that a very virtuous animal must be human, throws its reflection upon innumerable fairy-tales. I think it was the more primitive of the two. Even the tiger is not everywhere supposed to be the worse for human influence. In the Sangor and Nerbrudda territories people say that if a tiger has killed one man he will never kill another, because the dead man’s spirit rides on his head and guides him to more lawful prey. Entirely primitive people do not take an evil view of human nature—which is proved by their confidence in strangers: the first white man who arrives among them is well received. Misanthropy is soon learnt, but it is not the earliest sentiment. The bad view of the man-tiger prevails in the Niger delta, where the negroes think that “some souls which turn into wild beasts give people a great deal of trouble.” Other African tribes hold that tailless tigers are men—tigers which have lost their tails in fighting or by disease or accident. I do not know if these are credited with good or bad qualities.

By the rigid Totemist all this is ascribed to Totemism. Men called other tribesmen by the names of their totems; then the totem was forgotten and they mistook the tiger-totem-man for a man-tiger _et sic de ceteris_. My Syrian guide on Mount Carmel told me that the ravens which fed Elijah were a tribe of Bedouins called “the Ravens,” which still existed. If this essay in the Higher Criticism was original it said much for his intelligence. But because such confusions may happen, and no doubt do happen, are they to be taken as the final explanation of the whole vast range of man and animal mutations? What have they to do with such a belief as that vouched for by St. Augustine—to wit, that certain witch innkeepers gave their guests drugs in cheese which turned them into animals? These witches had a sharp eye to business, for they utilised the oxen, asses, and horses thus procured, for draught or burden, or let them out to their customers, nor were they quite without a conscience, as when they had done using them they turned them back into men. Magic, the old rival of religion, lies at the bottom of all this order of ideas. Magic may be defined as the natural supernatural, since by it man _unaided_ commands the occult forces of nature. The theory of demoniacal assistance is of later growth.

A story rather different from the rest is told by Pausanias, who records that, at the sacrifice of Zeus on Mount Lycæus, a man was always turned into a wolf, but if for nine years in wolf-shape he abstained from eating human flesh, he would regain his human form. This suggests a Buddhist source. The infiltration of Buddhist folk-lore into Europe is a subject on which we should like to know more. Buddhism was the only missionary religion before Christianity, and there is every probability that it sent missionaries West as well as East.

The early Irish took so favourable a view of wolves that they were accustomed to pray for their salvation, and chose them as godfathers for their children. In Druidical times the wolf and other animals were divine manifestations, and the Celts were so attached to their beast-gods that they did not maledict what they had worshipped, but found it a refuge somewhere. In the earliest Gallic sculpture the dispossessed animals are introduced as companions of the new Saints.

It will be noticed that in the Indian folk-tale, though the identification of the man with the man-eater is clear, a very lenient view is taken of him: he was not always so; even his excursions in tiger-skin were, at first, purely innocent; he was a good husband and a respectable citizen till his wife’s nerves made him lose his temper.

In early Christian times, the man-wolf might be not only innocent but a victim. He might be a particularly good man turned by a sorcerer into a wolf, and in such cases he preserves his good tendencies. In the seventh century such a man-wolf defended the head of St. Edward the Martyr from other wild beasts.

On the other hand, there are stories of Christian saints who turned evil-disposed persons into beasts by means of the magical powers which, at first, _all_ baptized persons were thought to possess potentially if not actively. St. Thomas Aquinas believed in the possibility of doing this. In a Russian folk-tale the apostles Peter and Paul turned a bad husband and wife into bears.

In Europe by degrees the harmless were-wolf entirely disappeared but the evil one survived. The superstition of lycanthropy concentrated round one point (as superstitions often do): the self-transformation of a perverse man or sorcerer into an animal for nefarious purposes. The object of the transformation might be the opportunity for giving free range to sanguinary appetites; but there was another object lurking in the background, and this was the acquirement of second sight, which some animals (if not all) are supposed to be endowed with. Just as Varro and Virgil believed in lycanthropy, so the most highly educated Europeans in the time of Louis XIV. and after, believed in were-wolves. The choice of the animal was immaterial, but it fell naturally on the most prominent and feared wild animal which was locally extant. A fancy or exotic animal would not do, which illustrates the link there is between popular beliefs and _facts_; distorted facts, it may be, but real and not imaginary things. If a bear of bad morals appears in Norway, people declare that it can be “no Christian bear”—it must be a Lapp or a Finn, both these peoples, who are much addicted to magic, being supposed to have the power of changing into bears when they choose. Instead of seeking the wild beast in man, people sought the man in the wild beast.

As in Asia so in Europe, it was noticed and pondered that the normal wild beast is dangerous, perhaps, but not from a human point of view perverse. The normal wolf like the normal tiger does not attack or destroy for the love of destruction. Wolves attack in packs, but the instinct of the single individual is to keep out of man’s way. He does not kill even animals indiscriminately. In the last times when there were wolves in the Italian valleys of the Alps, the news spread that a wolf had killed a number of sheep. What had really happened was this, which an old hunter told at Edolo to a relative of mine. The wolf jumped down into a sheepfold sunk in the ground. He killed a sheep and ate some of it and then found, to his dismay, that he could not get up the wall of the sheepfold. Nothing daunted, however, he killed a sufficient number of sheep to form a mound, up which he climbed and so effected his escape. No one thought such a clever wolf as this a _lupo manaro_. But some wolves, like some dogs, are subject to fits of mental alienation, in which they slay without rhyme or reason. Sheep are found killed all over the countryside, and men or children may be among the victims. The question arises of who did it—a wolf, a man, or both in one? The material fact is there, and it is a fact calculated to excite terror, surprise, curiosity. That the fact may remain always a mystery recent experience shows. When the were-wolf mania was rampant in France, honestly conducted judicial inquiry succeeded in a few cases, in tracing the outrages to a real wolf or to a real man. At last, in 1603, a French court of law pronounced the belief in were-wolves to be an insane delusion, and from that date it slowly declined. Heretics were suspected of being were-wolves. As late as fifty years ago, a reminiscence of the _loup garou_ existed in most parts of France, in the shape of the _meneux des loups_, who were supposed to charm or tame whole packs of wolves which they led across the waste lands on nights when the moon shone fitfully through rifts in hurrying clouds. The village recluse, the poacher, the man who simply “knew more than he should,” fell under the suspicion of being a “wolf-leader,” and, of course, the usual “eye-witness” was forthcoming to declare that he had _seen_ the suspected individual out upon his midnight rambles with his wolves trotting after him. In some provinces all the fiddlers or bag-pipers were thought to be “wolf-leaders.”

If the wolf turnskin died out sooner in England than in France, it was because there were no wolves to fasten it upon. Throughout the horrible witch-mania British sorcerers were supposed to turn into cats, weasels, or innocent hares! Italian witches still turn into cats. I remember how graphically C. G. Leland described to me a visit he had paid to a Tuscan witch; her cottage contained three stools, on one of which sat the witch, on the second her familiar jet-black cat, and on the third my old friend, who, I feel sure, had come to believe a good deal in the “old religion,” and who, in his last years, might have sat for a perfect portrait of a magician! The connexion of the witch and the cat is a form of turnskin-belief in which the feature of the acquirement of second sight is prominent. No witch without a cat! The essential _fact_ in the superstition is the fondness of poor, old friendless women for cats—their last friends. A contributing fact lay in the mysterious disappearances and reappearances of cats and in their half-wild nature. The cat in Indian folk-lore is the tiger’s aunt.

The mode of effecting transformation into animals is various, but always connected with fixed magical procedure. A root or food, or still oftener an ointment, is resorted to: ointments played a great part in superstition; it was by ointments that the unlucky persons accused of being wizards were held to have spread the plague of Milan. But the surest method of transformation was a girdle made of the skin of the animal whose form it was desired to take. This is regarded as a makeshift for not being able to put on the whole skin. An old French record tells of a man who buried a black cat in a box where four roads met, with enough bread soaked in holy water and holy oil to keep it alive for three days. The man intended to dig the cat up and, after killing it, to make a girdle of its skin by which means he expected to obtain the gift of second sight; but the burial-place of the cat was discovered by some dogs that were scratching the earth, before the three days had elapsed. The man, put to the torture, confessed all. In this case, it will be noticed that the spiritual powers of the cat were to be obtained without assuming its outward form. The turnskin who wishes to go back into his human shape, has also to follow fixed rules: a formula must be pronounced by some one else, as in the jungle tiger story, or the man-beast must eat some stated food as in Lucian’s skit (if Lucian wrote it) of the man who, by using the wrong salve, turned himself into a donkey instead of into a bird as he had wished, and who could only resume his own form by eating roses, which he did not accomplish until he had undergone all sorts of adventures.