In Eden, God flattered man by electing him to lordship over the other animals the truth is that our rational capacity has actually licensed us to behave like beasts. This is what happens when the pretences of civilisation and humanism fall away – for in Gray's view they were never more than a conceit given sanctimonious support by religion. Starving Neapolitans in 1944 hunt and consume alley cats, or feed on tropical fish scavenged from the city aquarium Soviet prisoners interned by the Nazis gobble the corpses of other inmates like ravening hounds. Gray later brings that primal scene up to date. Rather than promoting evolutionary progress, our uncouth ancestor represents "a barbaric relapse of history". So does John Gray, who introduces this anti-humanist tract with a quote in which Arthur Koestler imagines some undescended apes swinging playfully through the trees while a brutish prehistoric man plods along the ground below, clubbing innocent creatures and gorging on their raw flesh. "T he more I see of men," said Mme de Staël, "the more I like dogs." Always excepting the pit bulls and rottweilers that slather and snap at the heels of yobs, I agree with her.
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