316 M. Cuvier on the Domesticat'ion 



qualities which we seek for in our domestic animals. But as to 

 domestication itself, the submission under which we bring these 

 animals, it is to ourselves alone that we attribute it ; we are the 

 exclusive cause of it ; we have commanded their obedience, as 

 we have constrained them to live in captivity. The cause of our 

 error is, that judging from simple appearances, we have con- 

 founded two ideas essentially distinct, domestication and slave- 

 ry ; we have seen no difference between the submission of the 

 animal and that of man ; and from the sacrifice which the slave 

 of our own species is forced to make to us, we have thought 

 that the domesticated animal makes a similar sacrifice. Yet these 

 two situations have nothing in common ; the distance between 

 the domesticated animal and the enslaved man is infinite ; it is 

 the same as that which separates the simple will from liberty. 



The animal in domesticity, as well as the animal living in the 

 woods, makes use of its faculties within limits marked out by 

 its situation. As it is never solicited to act but by external 

 causes, and by its instincts, from the moment that its will con- 

 forms itself to the necessities which surround it, it sacrifices no- 

 thing of it ; for the will consists in the faculty of acting sponta- 

 neously according to all the wants which one feels and by 

 which he is naturally solicited, but which he does not know. 

 Such an animal, therefore, is not essentially in a different situa- 

 tion from that in which it would be if left to itself; it lives in 

 society without constraint on the part of man, because without 

 doubt it was a social animal, and it has a chief to whose will 

 it conforms itself within certain limits, because, probably, it 

 had a chief, and because this will is the strongest of the cir- 

 cumstances which act upon it. There is nothing in this that 

 is not conformable to its propensities ; it is satisfying its wants ; 

 we do not see that it experiences others ; and this is the very 

 state in which it would be, it in the most perfect liberty ; only 

 its chief is a master who has an immense power over it, and who 

 often abuses that power ; but frequently also this master em- 

 ploys his power to develope the natural qualities of the animal, 

 and in this respect the animal is truly improved ; it has acqui- 

 red a perfection which it could never have attained in another 

 state, under other influences. What a difference between this 

 animal and the enslaved man, who is not only a social being, 



