244 USELESS PUNISHMENT. 



the fire, it would probably safe his life to allow him 

 to put his finger on a hot coal, because we cannot 

 make him understand or fear the consequences of 

 such habits but through his sense of feeling. Thus 

 it is by irrational animals : one lesson that come 

 home to their sense of feeling does more towards 

 preventing their doing wrong again than all the 

 punishment we can inflict. The punishing a horse 

 after committing an offence I suspect has much 

 more to do with making him tremble the next time 

 he has committed it, after it is committed, than it 

 has with preventing the committing it. A careless, 

 lazy, or awkward horse blunders over a fence with us 

 with the evident chance of breaking our necks : not 

 being hurt by it himself, and blundering over being 

 less exertion to him than clearing it handsomely, he 

 naturally does the same thing again. What is usually 

 done to punish, and, as it is supposed, to prevent him 

 doing this again ? The whip is laid about his ears, and 

 the spurs crammed into his sides, so soon as being firm 

 in his seat enables the rider to do it. Now what can 

 the horse infer from this if he has any powers of 

 inference ? (If he has not, punishment is useless.) He 

 must suppose he was punished for not coming on his 

 nose, or for going off in his gallop so soon as over 

 the fence, or, in fact, anything but what the rider 

 meant he should feel he was punished for: and the 

 only consequence is, that at the next fence, as soon 

 as he is over, he naturally expects to be punished for 

 he knows not what, but that he recollects he was 

 whipped and spurred as soon as he was over the last, 

 and supposes or expects to be treated the same at 

 every jump, or rather after it. This is as bad and 

 truly absurd as flogging a horse after he has stumbled. 



