The region is rich in game, and so we go a-hunting it. That is to
say, Bashan goes hunting and I look on. In this wise we hunt:
rabbits, quail, field-mice, moles, ducks and gulls. But we do not
by any means fight shy of bigger game; we also track pheasants and
even deer—whenever such first-rate quarry—as sometimes happens—strays
into our hunting-grounds. This always furnishes an exciting
spectacle—when the long-legged, lightly-built animal, the furtive
deer, all yellow against the snow and with its white-tufted
hindquarters bobbing, goes flying before little old Bashan who is
straining every nerve. I follow the course of events with the
greatest interest and tension. It is not as if anything were ever
to result from this chase, for that has never happened and never
will happen. But the lack of tangible results does not in the least
diminish either Bashan’s joy or his passion for hunting, nor does
it in any way minimise my pleasure. We pursue the chase for its
own sake and not for the sake of prey or booty or any other
utilitarian purpose.
Bashan, as I have said, is the active member. He does not expect
any save a moral support from me, since no personal and immediate
experience has taught him a more pronounced and practical manner
of co-operation. I lay particular stress upon the words “personal”
and “immediate,” for it is more than probable that his ancestors,
in so far as they belonged to the tribe of setters, were familiar
with more actual methods of hunting. On occasion I have asked
myself whether some memory of this might not survive in him and
whether this could not be aroused by some accidental impulse. It
is certain that on Bashan’s plane of existence the life of the
individual is less differentiated from the species than in our
case. Birth and death signify a far less profound vacillation of
the balance of being; perhaps the inheritances of the blood are
more perfectly preserved, so that it would merely be an _apparent_
contradiction to speak of inborn experiences, unconscious memories
which, once aroused, would be able to confuse the creature in the
matter of its own personal experiences and cause it to be
dissatisfied with these. I once courted this thought, but then rid
myself of it, just as Bashan had obviously rid himself of the
thoughts of the brutal incident of which he had been a witness and
which gives me occasion for these deliberations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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