t would tend to survive. But it does
not indicate any design on the part of the birds themselves, nor any
deliberate attempt to develop those characteristics; it is rather that
such characteristics, once started by natural variation, tend to
emphasize themselves in the lapse of time.

No doubt fear has played an enormous part in the progress of the human
race itself. The savage whose imagination was stronger than that of
other savages, and who could forecast the possibilities of disaster,
would wander through the forest with more precaution against wild
beasts, and would make his dwelling more secure against assault; so
that the more timid and imaginative type would tend to survive longest
and to multiply their stock. Man in his physical characteristics is a
very weak, frail, and helpless animal, exposed to all kinds of dangers;
his infancy is protracted and singularly defenceless; his pace is slow,
his strength is insignificant; it is his imagination that has put him
at the top of creation, and has enabled him both to evade dangers and
to use natural forces for his greater security. Though he is the
youngest of all created forms, and by no means the best equipped for
life, he has been able to go ahead in a way denied to all other
animals; his inventiveness has been largely developed by his terrors;
and the result has been that whereas all other animals still preserve,
as a condition of life, their ceaseless attitude of suspicion and fear,
man has been enabled by organisation to establish communities in which
fear of disaster plays but little part. If one watches a bird feeding
on a lawn, it is strange to observe its ceaseless vigilance. It takes a
hurried mouthful, and then looks round in an agitated manner to see
that it is in no danger of attack. Yet it is clear that the terror in
which all wild animals seem to live, and without which
self-preservation would be impossible, does not in the least militate
against their physical welfare. A man who had to live his life under
the same sort of risks that a bird in a garden has to endure from cats
and other foes, would lose his senses from the awful pressure of
terror; he would lie under the constant shadow of assassination.

But the singular thing in Nature is that she preserves characteristics
long after they have ceased to be needed; and so, though a man in a
civilised community has very little to dread, he is still haunted by an
irrational sense of insecurity and preca