THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTICATION 263 



relation to the problems of the origin and destiny of our own 

 and other life, to the future exercise of the domesticating art 

 and to the most refined gratifications. 



It may be noted that, beginning with the apparently 

 simple and eminently popular questions as to the origin and 

 economic history of the animals which have been subjugated 

 by man, we have been naturally led to the consideration of 

 much larger problems, those relating to the place of man in 

 the order of nature, and his duty by the life of which he is an 

 integral part. There can be no question that the sense of 

 this duty which mastery of the earth gives or should afford 

 is to be one of the moral gifts of modern learning. So long 

 as men considered themselves to be accidents on the earth, - 

 imposed upon it by the will of a Supreme Being, bufcdB^iewise 

 related in origin and history to the creatures amid which they 

 dwelt, it was natural that they should exercise a careless and 

 despotic power over their subjects. Now that it has been 

 made perfectly clear that we have come forth from the maze 

 of the lower life, that all these tenants of the wilderness are 

 sharers in the order which has brought us to our estate, and 

 that each one of them, plant and animal alike, is the record of 

 the impulses which lead beings upward, we can no longer 

 keep the old careless attitude. We are compelled to deal with 

 the organic hosts as we deal with the creatures of our folds 

 and fields. We have to look upon them all as a member of 

 the great household of man, made such by the intellectual 

 conquest of the world to which he has attained. We may 

 trust the sense of this large duty to extend abroad under the 

 influences which have developed it in the minds of a few men, 

 or .we may hasten its development by a propaganda such as is 

 carried on by the societies for the prevention of cruelty to 



