Once & Future King 05 - The Book of Merlyn by T. H. White

Tell me what conclusions the committee has come to, for I am sure you have been discussing it, about the human animal?"
    "We have found ourselves in difficulty about the name."
    "What name?"
    "Homo sapiens," explained the grass-snake. "It became obvious that sapiens was hopeless as an adjective, but the trouble was to find another."
    Archimedes said: "Do you remember that Merlyn once told you why the chaffinch was called coelebsl A good adjective for a species has to be appropriate to some peculiarity of it, like that."
    "The first suggestion," said Merlyn, "was naturally ferox, since man is the most ferocious of the animals."
    "It is strange that you should mention ferox. I was thinking that very word an hour ago. But you are exaggerating, of course, when you say that he is more ferocious than a tiger."
    "Am I?"
    "I have always found that men were decent on the whole,.."
    Merlyn took off his spectacles, sighed deeply, polished them, put them on again, and examined his disciple with curiosity: as if he might at any moment begin to grow some long, soft, furry ears.
    "Try to remember the last time you went for a walk," he suggested mildly.
    "A walk?"
    "Yes, a walk in the English country lanes. Here comes Homo sapiens, taking his pleasure in the cool of the evening. Picture the scene. Here is a blackbird singing in the bush. Does it fall silent and fly away with a curse? Not a bit of it. It sings all the louder and perches on his shoulder. Here is a rabbit nibbling the short grass. Does rt rush in terror towards its burrow? Not at all. It hops towards him. Here are field mouse, grass-snake, fox, hedgehog, badger. Do they conceal themselves, or accept his presence?"
    "Why," cried the old fellow suddenly, flaming out with a peculiar, ancient indignation, "there is not a humble animal in England that does not flee from the shadow of man, as a burnt soul from purgatory. Not a mammal, not a fish, not a bird. Extend your walk so that it passes by a river bank, and the very fish will dart away. It takes something, believe me, to be dreaded in all the elements there are."
    "And do not," he added quickly, laying his hand on Arthur's knee, "do not imagine that they fly from the presence of one another. If a fox walked down the lane, perhaps the rabbit would scuttle: but the bird in the tree and the rest of them would agree to his being. If a hawk swung by, perhaps the blackbird would cower but the fox and the others would allow its arrival. Only man, only the earnest member of the Society for the Invention of Cruelty to Animals, only he is dreaded by every living thing."
    "But these animals are not what you could call really wild. A tiger, for instance..."
    Merlyn stopped him with his hand again.
    "Let the walk be in the Darkest Indies," he said, "if you like. There is not a tiger, not a cobra, not an elephant in the Afric jungle, but what he flies from man. A few tigers who have gone mad from tooth-ache will attack him, and the cobra, if hard pressed, will fight in self-defence. But if a sane man meets a sane tiger on a jungle path, it is the tiger who will turn aside. The only animals which do not run from man are those which have never seen him, the seals, penguins, dodos or whales of the Arctic seas, and these, in consequence, are immediately reduced to the verge of extinction. Even the few creatures which prey on man, the mosquito and the parasitic flea: even these are terrified of their host, and keep a sharp lookout to be beyond his fingers."
    "Homoferox," continued Merlyn, shaking his head, "that rarity in nature, an animal which will kill for pleasure! There is not a beast in this room who would not scorn to kill, except for a meal. Man affects to feel indignation at the shrike, who keeps a small larder of snails etc. speared on thorns: yet his own well-stocked larder is surrounded by herds of charming creatures like the mooning bullock, and the sheep with its intelligent and sensitive face, who are kept solely in order to be