    32

    Behind this enthusiasm lies an ancient batch of neural weapons

    which the meme has found lingering in the musty basement of the

    brain.  To see how these bits of pre-human instinct come in handy, let's

    pay a visit to a man of principle, a champion of ideals, a hero of piety

    and faith--in short, a total puppet of the meme.  His name: Oliver

    Cromwell.  But to understand Oliver, let's make a brief return  to the

    sub-cerebral layers Paul D. MacLean called the reptilian and

    mammalian brain.

    In the late 1940's, the German researcher F. Steiniger put fifteen

    brown rats who had never met each other into a cage.  At first the

    creatures cowered in the corners, frightened and apprehensive.  If they

    accidentally bumped into each other, they bared their teeth and

    snapped.  Gradually,  however, it  dawned on some of the males  that

    among this batch of strangers were attractive young females.  The

    gentleman rodents became budding Don Juans and went a-courting.

    The first male and female to win each others' hearts now had

    something all the others lacked--an ally.  The pair took full advantage

    of the situation: they terrorized their cagemates.  At first, the lovers

    simply chased their fellow rodents away from food, sending them

    scurrying to the safety of the far end of the enclosure.  Later, the

    romantic duo hunted down their neighbors one by one.  The female

    was a particularly quick killer.  She would sneak up on a victim as it

    was quietly chewing a bit of chow, spring with a sudden speed, and

    bite the unfortunate in the side of the neck, often opening a wound in

    the carotid artery.  Some of the attacked died of infection.  Others,

    mauled and worn down by frantic efforts to escape, succumbed to

    exhaustion.  When the happy couple had finished, they were the only

    survivors.

    The rats had cleared the new territory of competitors,

    transforming the cage into a spacious land of milk and honey for

    themselves.  A new promised land.  Now, they could found a tribe that

    might--if left to its own devices--thrive for generations to come.50    A

    tribe that would carry the parental line of genes.

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