174 OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



food, freed man from the alternation of famine and 

 abundance, and gave him leisure to devise means for 

 the improvement of his condition. Then the ox was 

 tamed, the horse mastered, the sheep domesticated, 

 and finally came agriculture, preeminent source of 

 our well-being. That is how the tattooed hunters 

 of our country lost the barbarism of their habits and 

 advanced from one stage of progress to another, un- 

 til they became the cultivated race from which we 

 are descended. First in Asia, then throughout all 

 Europe, a similar development took place: every- 

 where the dog was the first and most valuable of 

 man's conquests, and everywhere the dog has repre- 

 sented the first element of progress. Without the 

 dog, no such thing as human society, says an old book 

 of the East, whence this most serviceable animal 

 came. And the old book is a thousand times right, 

 for without the dog the chase in old times would 

 have been too little productive to satisfy the devour- 

 ing hunger of a very thinly scattered population; 

 without the dog, no herds or flocks, no assured food, 

 and consequently no leisure, for the inexorable ne- 

 cessity of providing food would have occupied the 

 whole time. Without leisure, no attempt at culture, 

 no observations leading to the birth of science, no 

 reflections bearing fruit in manufactures and com- 

 merce. The primitive mode of life was a hand-to- 

 mouth existence, with a slice of broiled urus or elk 

 to stay the cravings of hunger. A surfeit one day 

 was followed by fasting the next ; it all depended on 

 the chances of the hunt. Hatchets continued to be 



