TRAINING AND FARMING COMPARED. 103 



many, or treats injudiciously this or the other one of his hve 

 stock, is not to be unreservedly censured ; because to a 

 certain extent such cases are unavoidable. But he who from 

 inability or unpardonable neglect, such as want of cleanliness 

 or mismanagement, suffers his fields to become sterile and 

 his herds to be decimated by preventible disease, cannot offer 

 as an excuse that a field here or there is flourishing, or that 

 this or the other animal is in blooming health. 



And if in farming, concerning which hundreds of works 

 have been written by scientific men, and for the instruc- 

 tion of whose followers colleges have been built, so many 

 acknowledged difficulties present themselves ; what must 

 be the difficulties that beset the trainer ! In our profes- 

 sion we have no learned treatises ; no lectures on condi- 

 tion; no teachers of the subtle art. It is a sealed subject, 

 never discussed ; one on which nothing beyond a mere 

 passing word has been written. 



Under such circumstances, to lay down clear rules is a task 

 neither easy nor safe ; and infallibility cannot be looked for. 

 Amongst trainers, then, the one who makes the fewest 

 mistakes is most to be commended. No judge or general, no 

 layman or divine, is perfect in knowledge. Knowledge is in 

 fact progressive and progressing. The man who at a given 

 time knows more than at the same time in the previous year, 

 is in a fair way of attaining the knowledge he not only covets 

 but deserves, be his merit or his station ever so humble or 

 so exalted. " Reason," we read, " is progressive ; instinct is 

 complete. Swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs." 



