Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

“ It is an interesting fact that the first creature which man won to domesticity was made captive and friend for the sake of companionship rather than for any grosser profit. The dog was, the world over, the first living possession of man beyond the limits of his own kindred. He has been so long separated from the primitive species whence he sprang that we cannot trace with any certainty his kinship with the creatures of the wilderness. ”

“ In the presence of this host, we have to recognize that each of the innumerable individuals in its lifetime is a record of toil and pain the history of which extends backward to the beginnings of life. In this wonderful living world man has trodden ruthlessly, for the reason that he has no sense as to the dignity of the field. In the manner of a vandal, he has slain for profit or sport. He has been so effectual a destroyer that species, genera, and even families of animals have been ruthlessly swept away. ”

“ Although the naturalist of to-day perceives the impossibility of there ever having been on this earth a form uniting the trunk and fore-limbs of a quadruped to the upper part of a man's body, such scientific conceptions are a part of our modern, recently acquired store of knowledge. To the Greeks of the myth-making age the creature, half man, half horse, added but one more wonder to the vast store the world already contained. The currency of this fable shows us very clearly how great was the impression which the horse made upon primitive peoples. ”

“ As the creature gradually awakens, his cry becomes more resonant until it has the true morning ring. Brave as is this note of the full day, it is not to be compared with the crowing of a game-cock, the most splendid braggart sound of all the animal world. ”

“ We can hardly believe that he had any share of that marvellous sympathy with man and understanding of his motives which characterize the high-bred varieties of his species. All this vast transformation, which from a psychological point of view has carried the dog relatively as far up above his origin as civilization has lifted man above his lowest estate, has been due to human intercourse and the long and effective concomitant selection of good from bad. It is hardly too much to say that a large part of our human nature has been transferred into the descendants of this ancient wild beast. ”

“ The elephant of Africa is still a tolerably abundant animal. Its numbers, though doubtless diminished by more than one-half within this century, are probably to be counted by the hundred thousand. Nevertheless, in less than a hundred years the field which they occupied has been greatly reduced; and between the ivory hunter and the sportsman of our brutal race armed with guns of ever-increasing deadliness, it will certainly not require another century of free shooting to annihilate the African species. ”

“ If the effort to bring the elephants into a more permanent relation with man is not made and the race is allowed to perish, we may be sure that in the time to come people will gravely censure us for any such neglect of the opportunities which this world affords as would be involved in the loss of this noble brute. It is clearly our duty to see that all such resources are preserved for the inquirers of the future. ”

“ In considering the general influence of the horse and its kindred forms on human culture, we clearly perceive that we are now attaining a time when the machinery of civilization is to depend in a much less degree than of old on the help which these creatures give to man. Even fifty years ago the horse was far more necessary to the work of our kind than it is at present. Going back a hundred years, we perceive that the population of the civilized world could not possibly have been maintained, if by some disease all the horses had been swept away. ”

“ In the case of no other animal do we find anything like such an immediate adhesion to the ways of civilization. We have to account for this eminent peculiarity of the elephant on the supposition, which appears to be thoroughly justified, that the creature has, even in its wild state, a type of intelligence and instincts more nearly like those of men than is the case with any other wild mammal, an affinity with human quality which is, perhaps, only approached by certain species of birds. ”

“ It is hardly too much to say that all our highly elaborated military system has depended for its development, as it does for its maintenance, on the transportation value of horses. Much has been said of late as to the use of bicycles as adjuncts to armies, and in a certain limited way they will doubtless prove serviceable in future campaigns; but no one who has had any experience of military duty, with its work across tilled fields and through forests, can imagine a man on a wheel rendering any very effective service except under peculiar conditions. ”

“ It is the worst feature of the destruction which man is bringing upon the organic species that the assault is most effective on those varieties which are most interesting both from an intellectual and an economic point of view. To take only the case of the great birds which have recently been swept from the earth, we see clearly that we have with them lost precious opportunities for enlarging our understanding of nature and have at the same time been deprived of the chance to domesticate creatures which would most likely have proved of much economic value. ”

“ Now that it has been made perfectly clear that we have come forth from the maze of the lower life, that all these tenants of the wilderness are sharers in the order which has brought us to our estate, and that each one of them, plant and animal alike, is the record of the impulses which lead beings upward, we can no longer keep the old careless attitude. We are compelled to deal with the organic hosts as we deal with the creatures of our folds and fields. ”

“ The ordinary farmer has to enter into more or less sympathetic relations with half a score of animal species and many kinds of plants. His life, indeed, is devoted to ceaseless friendly relations with these creatures which live or die at his will. In this task his ancient savage impulses are slowly worn away, and in their place comes the enduring kindliness of cultivated men. When we compare the state of mind of the hunter with that of the care-taking soil-tiller, we see the vast scope and influence which this work of domestication has effected in our kind. ”

“ In a large way the work of domestication represents one of the modes of action of that sympathetic motive which more than any other has been the basis of the highest development of mankind. Ordinary men of the low grade are content to slay, or otherwise rudely gain what value they find in the wild creatures. Only the higher grades of men perceive much of the charm in the inhabitants of the wilderness, or desire to win them to their homes. If our conquests from the wilds were limited to the grossly profitable life alone, we might say that interest only had determined the work of subjugation ”

“ With this extension of his affection must have begun the growth of that large motive, which is the most distinguishing feature of our modern life, which leads us to go forth in a loving manner to the living beings about us, not only to our flocks and herds but to the life of the unsubjugated realm as well. Thus, in a way, we may look upon the dog as affording the first steps on the path of culture which was to lift man from his primitive selfishness to the altruistic state to which he has attained. ”

“ The intellectual condition of our dogs shows us that the creatures may be progressively educated—in a word, that man may put into them something of his human quality. In the case of the dog, the longest possessed and most familiar to our households of all our captives, the mental change which has come, partly by selection, from association with man has gone so far that the species may be fairly said to have replaced its pristine motives with those which it has derived from ourselves. In many cases it has become, so far as its ways are concerned, even more man than dog. ”

“ The largest economic problem which primitive people on their way upward towards civilization had unconsciously to face was that of obtaining some kind of strength which could be added to the power of their own weak limbs. For all his eminent capacities of body, man is not a strong animal, nor is he so built that he can apply the measure of strength that is in him to good advantage. There are scores if not hundreds of species with which he came in contact in his effort to dominate nature that are stronger, swifter, and better provided with natural weapons. ”

“ With those dogs which are endowed with a large human quality, such as our various breeds of hounds, it is possible by laughing in their faces not only to quell their rage, but to drive them to a distance. They seem in a way to be put to shame and at the same time hopelessly puzzled as to the nature of their predicament. In this connection we may note the very human feature that after you have cowed a dog by insistent laughter you can never hope to make friends with him. ”

“ It seems inevitable that man should play the part of a destroyer. It is his place to break down the ancient order determined by what we call natural forces and in its stead to set a new accord in which the economy of the earth will be in a great measure controlled by his intelligence. Even those who most keenly sympathize with the wilderness life, are not likely to object to the changes which are necessary to open the way for this new dispensation. ”

“ Up to our present half-century the process of winning animals and plants to domestication, and of improving them after they had been thus won, has been in its nature a matter of haphazard. Here and there, as men have seen creatures which promised in captivity to afford either pleasure or profit, they have endeavored to convert them to use. In some cases the effort has been made with some patience and steadfastness of purpose. If the creature yielded quickly to the needs of a new life which it was sought to impose upon him, he became a member of man's family. ”

“ Not only do they no longer heed the cries of the wild birds of their kind as they fly away on their annual journeys, but they have, through the changes in form induced by their quiet life, lost the power to rise far above the earth. ”

“ Our domestic dog is derived from a species, one or more, akin to the wolf, the jackal, and the fox; to a group of animals not characterized by great native intelligence, but distinguished for their ferocity and their general untamableness. There is no reason to believe that the primitive dog had any more foundation for his great attainments than his obstinately savage kindred, except that he may have had a greater disposition to form an attachment to a master. ”

“ It should be made plain, not only that the success of our civilization depends now as in the past on the coöperation which mankind has had from the domesticated animals, but also that the development of this relation is one of the most interesting features in all history. On through the ages of the geologic past comes this great procession of life, in the endless succession of species whose numbers in the aggregate are to be reckoned by the scores, if not by the hundreds of millions. Until this modern age, the throng goes forward blindly, groping its way towards the higher planes of life. ”

“ The relations of man to the elephant are more peculiar than those which he has formed with any other domesticated animal. Although the creature will breed in captivity, its reproduction in that state is exceptional, and it is many years before the offspring are fit for any service. It is indeed about thirty years before the creature is sufficiently adult to attain a good measure of strength and endurance. It has therefore been the habit of the people who avail themselves of this admirable beast to use the captures which they make in the wilderness. ”

“ Naturalists may fairly ask men to remember that each of these species which we are forced to destroy represents the toil and pains of unimaginable ages, and that when these creatures are swept away they can never be recovered. Whatever new species may come, by processes of evolution from the life which remains after we have done our will with the wilderness, we shall never see again the forms which have passed away. ”

“ When we consider how common must be the chances of their going astray, and how easy it is in many parts of the country, as in our Southern States, for them to obtain in the wilderness food throughout the year, the fact that they never go wild is indeed remarkable. It can only be explained by the great development of the homing instinct which man has brought about in their sympathetic souls. ”

“ Men had now to care for half a dozen or more kinds of animals; they had to learn their ways, in a manner to put themselves in their places and conceive their needs. Thus the life of a farmer is a continual lesson in the art of sympathy; with the result, certainly in part due to this cause, that there is no class of people from whom the brutal instincts of the ancient savage life which we all inherit have been so completely eradicated. ”

“ Kept in its best state, the horse has to be sedulously groomed. To be maintained in its very best condition some hours of human labor must each day be given to keeping his skin in order. The effect arising from a friction on the horse's hide is not confined to the beauty that comes from cleanliness, but in a curious way reacts upon the general nervous tone of the animal. All those who are familiar with horses will, I think, agree with me that much grooming distinctly increases the endurance and elasticity of their bodies. ”

“ Thus it has come about that the codification of the ancient sympathies, won by experience in the pre-human time and in the early life of man, has led to the institution of a barrier which makes further advance a matter of difficulty—one which, in the case of most peoples, binds them firmly to the past, arresting their sympathetic development at a point which it had attained when their laws were framed. ”

“ No one who has seen a long-stabled horse made free of a field can have failed to note the intense pleasure which he takes in returning to something like his natural conditions. Many a cow stable with its foul conditions inflicts more and more enduring torments than all the vivisectionists that some misguided philanthropists are fighting; yet because of the novelty of the naturalist's work these attend to the new scene and neglect the ancient abuse. Among these evils which are to be corrected we may also account that which arises from the unguided development of what are called fancy breeds. ”

“ Whoever has watched the flight of wild geese must have remarked the beautiful way in which they arrange at once for close companionship and for safety in the violent movements which impel their heavy bodies at high speed through the air. ”

“ Now that we are beginning to know something of the laws of inheritance, it is high time for us deliberately to consider what our relations to the organic world are hereafter to be, and how we can guide ourselves in these relations by the light of modern learning. It is in the first place clear that the subjugation of the earth which necessarily accompanies the development of civilization, inevitably tends to sweep away a large part of the organic life which is not [228] adopted and protected by man. ”