How a Hindoo Can Tell When the Animal Intends to Destroy Him.
Few more impressive confidences can be imparted than one in which a Hindoo describes how he knows his elephant intends to destroy him. It is all so seemingly trivial, and yet in reality of such deadly significance. His story is full of details that prove the man’s profound understanding of what he is talking about that one remains equally amazed at the brute’s power to dissimulate and its intended victim’s insight into this would-be murderer’s character. And yet. from the psychological standpoint, an elephant never gives any other such indication of mental power as is exhibited in its revenge. That patient, watchful, implacable hatred, often provoked simply because a man is in attendance upon another animal [for it is the rule with tuskers to detest their next neighbors] speaks more conclusively of a high intellectual guide than all stories, true or false, that have been told of their ability. Such concentration and fixedness of purpose, such careful, unrelaxed vigilance, such perfect and consistent pretense, and, when the time comes, such desperate, unhesitating energy as homicidal animals exhibit are impossible without a very considerable, although in this instance very irregular, development, says Outing.
No one can deny that if this creature is great at all its greatness shows itself in its crimes. These have caused it to be worshiped in the east, where men venerate nothing but merciless, irresponsible force, and where an exhibition of those qualities and traits described fully accounts for the formula: “My lord, the elephant.”
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