William Golding’s rendering of the Neanderthals in The Inheritors (1955) is but another example of the inescapable envy of animals. It is as though he forgot, or struggled to forget, that he was dealing with another species of Homo rather than an ape. But even monkeys are far from innocent, let alone apes. If one follows Golding’s path, wickedness already lurks in rodents, fishes, ferns. The seed of evil, in this jaundiced rendering of the world, springs from the Big Bang. Either everything or nothing is poisoned. Tertium non datur.