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Fear, Benham held, drives the man back to the crowd, the dog to its
master, the wolf to the pack, and when it is felt that the danger is
pooled, then fear leaves us. He was quite prepared to meet the
objection that animals of a solitary habit do nevertheless exhibit
fear. Some of this apparent fear, he argued, was merely discretion,
and what is not discretion is the survival of an infantile
characteristic. The fear felt by a tiger cub is certainly a social
emotion, that drives it back to the other cubs, to its mother and
the dark hiding of the lair. The fear of a fully grown tiger sends
it into the reeds and the shadows, to a refuge, that must be "still
reminiscent of the maternal lair." But fear has very little hold
upon the adult solitary animal, it changes with extreme readiness to
resentment and rage.
"Like most inexperienced people," ran his notes, "I was astonished
at the reported feats of men in war; I believed they were
exaggerated, and that there was a kind of unpremeditated conspiracy
of silence about their real behaviour.


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