FORCES OF THE IIOKSE. 27 



principles, but even for any data in connection with the 

 forces of the horse. All speak very prettily about 

 resistances, oppositions, lightness and equilibrium ; but 

 none of them have known how to tell us what causes 

 these resistances, how we can combat them, destroy 

 them, and obtain this lightness and equilibrium they so 

 earnestly recommend. It is this gap that has caused the 

 great doubts and obscurity about the principles of horse- 

 manship ; it is this that has made the art stationary so 

 long a time ; it is this gap that, I think, I am able to 

 fillup. 



And first, I lay down the principle that all the resist- 

 ances of young horses spring, in the first place, from a 

 physical cause, and that this cause only becomes a moral 

 one by the awkwardness, ignorance and brutality of the 

 rider. In fact, besides the natural stiffness peculiar to 

 all these animals, each of them has a peculiar conforma- 

 tion, the more or less of perfection in which constitutes 

 the degree of harmony that exists between the forces 

 and the weight. The want of this harmony occasions 

 the ungracefulness of their paces, the difficulty of their 

 movements ; in a word, all the obstacles to a good educa- 

 tion. In a state of freedom, whatever may be the bad 

 structure of the horse, instinct is sufficient to enable him 

 to make such a use of his forces as to maintain his equi- 

 librium ; but there are movements it is impossible for 

 him to make until a preparatory exercise shall have put 

 him in the way of supplying the defects of his organiza- 

 tion by a better combined use of his motive power. A 

 horse puts himself in motion only in consequence of a 

 given position ; if his forces are such as to oppose them- 

 selves to this position, they must first be annulled, in 

 order to replace them by the only ones which can lead 

 to it. 



