264 THE SO-CALLED "INCAPACITATING VICES." 



objects directly in front of its head, but glances backward, without 

 necessarily turning the face. Man can imagine events ere they are 

 embodied facts. An animal's ideas are strictly limited by its individual 

 experiences. By these, its mind is moulded and its conduct is shaped. 

 It has no power to forget. The past, with it, is the present. To suffer 

 once, is to endure a constant dread of suffering again. To be pained, 

 is always to fear a repetition of the agony. What has been, is, so long 

 as memory shall last ; for the quadruped can conceive no future on which 

 to fix its thoughts, or in the contemplation of which to escape from the 

 misery that begirts its existence. 



Would those persons who have no interest in any contrary opinion, 

 adopt the above view of the subject, how very much of danger and of 

 unpleasantness might the good people escape 1 It is not unusual to 

 behold an elderly gentleman, of the highest respectability, flog most 

 unmercifully, in the public street, some inoffensive steed, until a red- 

 dened face announces temper to be lost. Foot passengers look on the 

 spectacle ; but no one, even in thought, condemns the needless severity. 

 Hospital surgeons, however, can testify to something more permanent 

 than temper being occasionally sacrificed through these unseemly con- 

 tests. In such cases, man has provoked his fate. Reason, in vain, 

 shows a broad and pleasant path, where dwells security. Passion blinds 

 humanity, pride justifies passion, and the refuge is unheeded ! 



Will the reader kindly grant the author patience while the present 

 subject is pursued a little further ? To prove the horse cannot, in any 

 accepted meaning of the word, possibly be "vicious," it is only neces- 

 sary to comprehend that vice of every form, whether it be lewdness, 

 drunkenness, gluttony, or malice, always, in some gratification, seeks 

 for a personal reward. It is no more than the concentration of selfish- 

 ness. It always presupposes an intention. The difference between 

 crime and insanity lies only in the idea of some recompense to be secured 

 by the commission of a particular act and in sin without a motive. 

 When the horse was created without ability to comprehend a future, the 

 power to be "vicious" was, with the possibility of a contemplated 

 motive, withheld. The creature, being unable to anticipate conse- 

 quences, lacks incentive; therefore it can display no "vice," though it 

 may exhibit insanity. The animal, however, may not always please its 

 master; it is the "vice" of authority to call trivial offenses by harsher 

 names than the actions in fairness should receive ; but no man has, 

 hitherto, stigmatized the horse, which he deems "vicious," as insane. 



. Having premised thus much, the author will attempt to explain some 

 of the worst forms of equine "vice." 

 . "Rick of the back" and "chink- of the back" are terms which repre- 



