Much as I had envied the strong, I had never
before suspected the delight of mere physical exertion. I now understood
the wild gambols of the dog, and the madness which makes the horse gallop
and strain onwards till he drops and dies. They fulfil their nature, as I
was doing, and in that is always happiness.
But I did more--whether from mere animal destructiveness, or from the
spark of humanity which was slowly rekindling in me, I began to delight in
tearing up trees for its own sake. I tried my strength daily on thicker and
thicker boles. I crawled up to the high palm-tops, and bowed them down by
my weight. My path through the forest was marked, like that of a tornado,
by snapped and prostrate stems and withering branches. Had I been a few
degrees more human, I might have expected a retribution for my sin. I had
fractured my own skull three or four times already. I used often to pass
the carcases of my race, killed, as geologists now find them, by the fall
of the trees they had overthrown; but still I went on, more and more
reckless, a slave, like many a so-called man, to the mere sense of power.
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