 The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten
by his own kind. And out of this classification arose the law. The aim of life
was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and
the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear,
set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived
the law without thinking about it at all.
    He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten the
ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk would also
have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat the
hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she
not herself been killed and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived about
him by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law. He was a
killer. His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or
flew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and
fought with him, or turned the tables and ran after him.
    Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomized life as a
voracious appetite, and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of
appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and
being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos
of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.
    But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at things with
wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought or desire
at a time. Besides the law of meat, there was a myriad other and lesser laws for
him to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise. The stir of the life
that was in him, the play of his muscles, was an unending happiness. To run down
meat was to experience thrills and elations. His rages and battles were
pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, lent to his living.
    And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to doze
lazily in the sunshine - such things were remuneration in full for his ardors
and toils, while his ardors and toils were in themselves self-remunerative. They
were expressions of
