Love and Hate

Professor Eibl-Eibesfeldt is a pupil of Konrad Lorenz, the father of ethology, and is director of the section concerned with human ethology at the Max Planck Institute for comparative physiology. This book is a translation from German and it follows an established tradition of Lorenz, Desmond Morris and others who are relating the human to animal behaviour as studied in various species of fishes, birds and mammals. Clearly behind such conceptualisation lies the issue of human evolution and here the jump from animal to human behaviour is one laden with dangerous traps on which only the experts are fit to comment. The author, of course, takes much for granted in bridging this human/ animal gap and pursues a popular and important theme?the roots of aggression in the higher species and its implications for man. He starts by attacking the environmental theory that all aggression is definitely not innate but the product of the environmental forcesisuch as frustration. The dream of all opti-