222 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



consists in the great amount of care-taking which it imposes 

 upon its followers. 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. To it perhaps 

 more than to any other cause we must attribute the civil- 

 izable and the civilized state of mind. 



Although no discreet person will venture to determine the 

 relative weight which should be given to the influences which 

 have made for civilization, there can be no doubt that the 

 care of domesticated animals has been one of the most potent 

 of these agents. Not only has this employment served to 

 develop the motives of care-taking that result in the post- 

 ponement of the momentary satisfaction of indolence or of 

 hunger for the prospect of security or wealth to come, but it 

 has served to arouse and broaden the sympathies given men, 

 that humane spirit without which the best of our higher 

 culture cannot be attained. If this view be correct, we may 

 find in it a good reason for regretting the increasing devel- 

 opment of cities, a reason which is more definite than the 

 most of those which have been urged against the growth 

 of great towns. Statistics seem to indicate that people are 

 as healthy, as long lived, and on the whole no more given to 

 vice and crime in a well-ordered urban life than they are on 

 the farms, It is certainly easier to give them the formal 



