tions of the lives of these animals have made a want
of self-reliance a necessity to them, and that by the law of natural
selection the gregarious instincts and their accompanying slavish
aptitudes have gradually become evolved. Then I shall argue that our
remote ancestors have lived under parallel conditions, and that
other causes peculiar to human society have acted up to the present
day in the same direction, and that we have inherited the gregarious
instincts and slavish aptitudes which have been needed under past
circumstances, although in our advancing civilisation they are
becoming of more harm than good to our race.

It was my fortune, in earlier life, to gain an intimate knowledge of
certain classes of gregarious animals. The urgent need of the camel
for the close companionship of his fellows was a never-exhausted
topic of curious admiration to me during tedious days of travel
across many North African deserts. I also happened to hear and read
a great deal about the still more marked gregarious instincts of the
llama; but the social animal into whose psychology I am conscious of
having penetrated most thoroughly is the ox of the wild parts of
western South Africa. It is necessary to insist upon the epithet
"wild," because an ox of tamed parentage has different natural
instincts; for instance, an English ox is far less gregarious than
those I am about to describe, and affords a proportionately less
valuable illustration to my argument. The oxen of which I speak
belonged to the Damaras, and none of the ancestry of these cattle
had ever been broken to harness. They were watched from a distance
during the day, as they roamed about the open country, and at night
they were driven with cries to enclosures, into which they rushed
much like a body of terrified wild animals driven by huntsmen into a
trap. Their scared temper was such as to make it impossible to lay
hold of them by other means than by driving the whole herd into a
clump, and lassoing the leg of the animal it was desired to seize,
and throwing him to the ground with dexterous force. With oxen and
cows of this description, whose nature is no doubt shared by the
bulls, I spent more than a year in the closest companionship.

I had nearly a hundred of the beasts broken in for the waggon, for
packs, and for the saddle. I travelled an entire journey of
exploration on the back of one of them, with others by my side,
either labouring at their tasks or walking at