When the individuals of a herd
or family are excited to a sudden deadly rage by the distressed cries of
one of their fellows, or by the sight of its bleeding wounds and the
smell of its blood, or when they see it frantically struggling on the
ground, or in the cleft of a tree or rock, as if in the clutches of a
powerful enemy, they do not turn on it to kill but to rescue it.
In whatever way the rescuing instinct may have risen, whether simply
through natural selection or, as is more probable, through an
intelligent habit becoming fixed and hereditary, its effectiveness
depends altogether on the emotion of overmastering rage excited in the
animal--rage against a tangible visible enemy, or invisible, and excited
by the cries or struggles of a suffering companion; clearly, then, it
could not provide against the occasional rare accidents that animals
meet with, which causes them to act precisely in the way they do when
seized or struck down by an enemy. An illusion is the result of the
emotion similar to the illusion produced by vivid expectation in
ourselves, which has caused many a man to see in a friend and companion
the adversary he looked to see, and to slay him in his false-seeing
anger.
An illusion just as great, leading to action equally violent, but
ludicrous rather than painful to witness, may be seen in dogs, when
encouraged by a man to the attack, and made by his cries and gestures to
expect that some animal they are accustomed to hunt is about to be
unearthed or overtaken; and if, when they are in this disposition, he
cunningly exhibits and sets them on a dummy, made perhaps of old rags
and leather and stuffed with straw, they will seize, worry, and tear it
to pieces with the greatest fury, and without the faintest suspicion of
its true character.
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