GG M. Cavier on the Domestication of 



would be quite otherwise were they in a state of liberty. Then 

 their nature would manifest itself, and the more so the less 

 constraint they experienced from the circumstances in which 

 they were placed ; for as the most complete slavery is the 

 situation the least favorable to the exercise of the faculties, the 

 most entire independence, or the state of nature, is the best 

 adapted for their exercise and devolopement. 



The origin of these ideas is easily discovered. They proceed 

 from the same source as most of the errors which have been 

 entertained with respect to the nature of animals ; the ideas to 

 which the study of man gave rise were applied to these beings. 

 But if slavery, if absoJute submission* to the will of another, is 

 the situation the most repugnant to the moral and intellectual 

 developement of the human species, one essential character of 

 which consists in liberty, what reason would there be for 

 animals, which are deprived of all liberty, properly so called, 

 experiencing the same effects from slavery as ourselves ? In 

 establishing, as a principle, that these animals unveil their nature 

 to us only in a state of absolute independence, and in yet 

 admitting that they may act in a state of domestication, and 

 even of slavery, was the same thing as saying that they have 

 the faculty of not acting according to their nature ; that they 

 are susceptible of obeying desires which have not been imparted 

 to them ; that they manifest other dispositions than those which 

 they have received; in a word, that they may be something 

 else, than what they ought to be in viituc of the laws of the 

 universe, and that man may have the power of changing their 

 nature, and of destroying the laws of creation. 



Were liberty necessary in order to animals manifesting them- 

 selves to us such as they originally came from the hands of 

 nature, it would be as impossible for the wild as for the domes- 

 ticated or captive animals to do so, for the former no more 

 enjoy that imaginary state of absolute independence which is 

 called the state of nature, than the latter. All of them lie 

 under tho unavoidable influence of the circumstances in the 

 midst of which they are placed. A wild animal, amidst the 

 forests of a desert region, will not have any very close resem- 

 blance to what it would be in the midst of a very populous 

 country. It will be still more widely different, if reduced to 

 captivity, or converted into a domestic animal, and will lose 

 altogether its original character. But whatever differences 

 these various states may present, this animal will always be the 

 same ; it is only in its own nature that the means will be met 

 with which are calculated to put it in harmony with this 

 diversity of situations, and the facts which it presents to us in 

 the one situation, if they are numerous and diversified, may 



