Edouard, the young male chimpanzee which I used in my experiments on syphilis, struggled so much at the least touch that it took four men to master him. I had to give up allowing him to leave his cage because there was no way of getting him back to it. Even quite young chimpanzees, females not yet two years old, cannot be handled easily. Although they are very friendly, my specimens used to resist with all their strength when it was necessary to put them back in their cages for the night. Two men had much ado to shut them up. Notwithstanding this great muscular force, the anthropoid apes are cowardly. They have no idea of their strength, but fly from the approach of the slightest imagined danger. My young chimpanzees, although their teeth and muscles were already formidable weapons, showed the greatest fear when I put with them animals even so weak and harmless as guinea-pigs, pigeons and rabbits. Mice frightened them very much at first, and it took them a considerable time before they got over their fear of so insignificant an enemy. When living in a state of nature the anthropoid apes scarcely ever assume the offensive. “Though possessed of immense strength,” wrote Huxley,[153] “it is rare for the Orang to attempt to defend itself, especially when attacked with fire-arms. On such occasions he endeavours to hide himself, or to escape along the topmost branches of the trees, breaking off and throwing down the boughs as he goes.” Savage[154] wrote of chimpanzees that “they do not appear ever to act on the offensive, and seldom, if ever really, on the defensive.” When a female was surprised on a tree with her young ones “her first impulse was to descend with great rapidity and make off into the thicket.”[155] The gorilla, the strongest and most ferocious of the apes, has sometimes been observed to take the offensive. Savage, quoted by Huxley, said that “they are exceedingly ferocious, and always offensive in their habits, never running from man, as does the chimpanzee. The females and young, at the first cry, quickly disappear. He (the male) then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession.”[156] Only males take the offensive, nor can this be of frequent occurrence, as one of the most recent observers, Koppenfels,[157] states that “the gorilla never attacks man spontaneously; he tries to avoid him, and, as a rule, takes to flight as soon as he sees a man, uttering peculiar guttural cries.” Which of these characters are preserved in the human race? Man is naturally feebler and less of a gymnast than the great apes, but his disposition is cowardly. One of the earliest signs of mental activity in an infant is the fear of surrounding circumstances. The smallest change in its balance or its being put in a bath cause it to show signs of real terror. Later on, it is alarmed when it sees any kind of animal, exactly in the fashion of a young chimpanzee. The most harmless spider is enough to frighten it.