THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



DECEMBER, 1872. 



B 



THE EAKLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 1 



Bt WALTER BAGEHOT, Esq. 



Y far the greatest advantage is that on which I observed before 

 that to which I drew all the attention I was able by making 

 the first of these essays an essay on the Preliminary Age. The first 

 thing to acquire is, if I may so express it, the legal fibre ; a polity 

 first what sort of polity is immaterial ; a law first what kind of law 

 is secondary ; a person or set of persons to pay deference to though 

 who he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies. 



" There is," it has been said, " hardly any exaggerating the differ- 

 ence between civilized and uncivilized men ; it is greater than the dif- 

 ference between a tame and a wild animal," because man can improve 

 more. But the difference at first was gained in much the same way. 

 The taming of animals, as it now goes on among savage nations, and 

 as travellers who have seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. The 

 most wild are killed when food is wanted, and the most tame and easy 

 to manage kept, because they are more agreeable to human indolence, 

 and so the keeper likes them best. Captain Galton, who has often 

 seen strange scenes of savage and of animal life, had better describe 

 the process : " The irreclaimably wild members of every flock would 

 escape and be utterly lost ; the wilder of those that remained would 

 assuredly be selected for slaughter whenever it was necessary that one 

 of the flock should be killed. The tamest cattle those which seldom 

 ran away, that kept the flocks together, and those which led them 

 homeward would be preserved alive longer than any of the others. 

 It is, therefore, these that chiefly become the parents of stock and be- 

 queath their domestic aptitudes to the future herd. I have constantly 



1 From advance-sheets of " Physics and Politics," forming vol. ii. of " The Interna- 

 tional Scientific Series." The present article is a portion of Mr. Bagehot's chapter on 

 "The Use of Conflict." 



VOL. II. 9 



