STRONG WORK NECESSARY 87 



or suggest any expedient by which their powers may 

 be applied to advantage, and with safety, by those 

 who have purchased them so dearly, is as much 

 entitled to be heard, and does as much good in his way, 

 as the skilful and scientific artificer who invents the 

 most powerful and complicated machine. The one 

 by the help of his mental faculties produces mechanical 

 power far exceeding natural force ; so the other by 

 his humble means increases animal power in a ratio 

 comparatively great. 



A celebrated professor of physic in a neighbouring 

 nation, in the luxuriancy of his imagination, considered 

 man as a machine, and attempted to explain the 

 phenomena of animal economy by mechanical and 

 physical principles. The pride of man, however, 

 which will scarcely stoop to take a lesson from the 

 instinct of brutes, however home it may apply to him, 

 felt insulted by this comparison of intellect with force, 

 and the Doctor got scouted for his pains. Were I, 

 in the indulgence of my fancy, to compare a horse 

 to anything so much beneath him as that which 

 could be formed by man, I should say he resembled 

 an organ, on which, if the pipes and tubes are in order, 

 and the bellows good and strong, a merry tune 

 may be played with the help of a delicate finger. 

 How then this instrument (to our pleasures) is to 

 be kept in tune shall be the subject of my farther 

 observations. 



Next to the article of food in the condition of a race- 

 horse or a hunter, is to be considered the work he has to 

 do ; for without the one it is no matter how well he 



