78 Psychological Distinctions 



and consequent habits of other animals, that, by judicious 

 management, he contrives to subdue their instincts (as in the 

 case of the elephant just mentioned), or to direct their force 

 towards effecting other purposes than those for which they 

 were more legitimately designed. But a more remarkable 

 sequence of human interference is, that, by removing animals 

 from their proper place in nature, and training them to novel 

 modes of life, wherein the field for the exercise of their ori- 

 ginal instincts becomes much limited, their faculties of ob- 

 servation and reflection are, in consequence, brought more 

 into play, in proportion as the former are rendered inefficient; 

 till, at length, experience not unfreqUently supersedes innate 

 impulse as the main spring of their actions ; more especially 

 where they have become attached to a human master, and 

 pass much of their time in his society. Yet even here the 

 difference between man and brute is still manifest, in the 

 transmission of acquired knowledge by generation, in the off- 

 spring inheriting as innate instincts the experience of their 

 parents * ; so that the tendency of brutes is ever to become 

 slaves to a certain amount of intuition, rather than beings 

 dependent on their own intelligence. 



And here we recognise a fundamental principle of do- 

 mestication, which is only gradually induced to any extent 

 through a series of generations. Thus the elephant, though 

 tamed, is not domesticated, for every individual is sepa- 

 rately captured in a wild state ; and we have seen that, 

 when one of these returns to its proper haunts, its natural 

 instincts having been only for a time subdued and rendered 

 subservient (not eradicated), these have again become the 

 incentives to its conduct, to the exclusion of those reasoning 

 faculties which had only been excited into action under cir- 

 cumstances adverse to the efficient operation of the former. 

 Far otherwise is what we observe in animals truly domes- 

 ticated : witness the opposite conduct of even the newly 

 hatched progeny of a wild and domestic duck, though 



* Propensities are similarly transmitted in the human race, but cer- 

 tainly not the knowledge of how these are to be gratified. It is true, 

 however, that our observation in these matters is too much confined to 

 cultivated, domesticated man, who is, consequently, farthest removed from 

 the brute Creation. The Australian savages are known to have a great 

 penchant for snails and caterpillars ; and I have somewhere read of one of 

 these who had been brought up in a town, and carefully kept away from 

 all communion with others of his race, who, nevertheless, exhibited the 

 same fondness for these dainties, despite the abhorrence with which all his 

 companions regarded them. His gout for them must thus unquestionably 

 have been hereditary; though it is probable he may have learned the fact 

 of their being eaten by his race, which, likely enough, induced him to taste 

 and try them. 



