demonstrates, of course, that fear has had the major part in it, and
that skill in cheating has gone so far as practically to nullify the
privations of the taboo.

But one must put by this hankering after nobility, and accept the
plain fact that fear is the dominant human motive. What the race would
do if fear were conquered, or at least faced sternly eye to eye, is
staggering to contemplate. Perhaps God looks upon that vision. It may
be that which gives Him patience. But man at best gives it one
terrified squint in a lifetime. All behavior must take fear into
account.

The man who lately brought back from the Amazon Basin news of a
fear-dispelling drug used there by a savage tribe, would have been
carried home from the steamer on the shoulders of his compatriots if
for one moment he had been believed. His drug may do all he claimed
for it, but a country which boasts a Volstead in full stride cannot
force itself to take him seriously. The only likely part of his story
was that the tribes who prepared the drug would put to instant death
any woman who happened either to learn how to prepare it or did
actually get some of it into her.

We recognize that part as familiar. We have made the same fight here
against the fearless woman as the savages made on the Amazon. The only
thing we were never smart enough to apply was the moral of the Kipling
story about the two greatest armies in the world: the men who believed
that they could not die till their time came, against those who wanted
to die as soon as possible. It was from one or the other of these two
kinds of fearlessness that women have trained themselves in wisdom.
This is the wisdom which moves them to secret laughter when they find