INTRODUCTION 5 



the consequent education of the sympathy were increased. 

 Men had now to care for half a dozen or more kinds of 

 animals ; they had to learn their ways, in a manner to put 

 themselves in their places and conceive their needs. Thus 

 the life of a farmer is a continual lesson in the art of sym- 

 pathy ; with the result, certainly in part due to this cause, 

 that there is no class of people from whom the brutal in- 

 stincts of the ancient savage life which we all inherit have 

 been so completely eradicated. 



It is perhaps too much to attribute the advance of the 

 agricultural classes of our civilized peoples, in all that serves 

 to remove them from the brutality of their savage ancestors, 

 altogether to the nature of their work — to the very laroe 

 element of kindly care for which it calls, and which is the 

 price of success in the occupation. Yet when we note the 

 immediate way in which the people bred in cities, under 

 circumstances of excitement are wont to behave like savages 

 of the lower kind, showing in their conduct a lack of all 

 sympathetic education, and contrast their behavior with that 

 of their kinsmen from the fields — we see essential differences 

 in character which cannot well be explained save by the 

 diverse natures of the training which the men have received. 

 Thus in the French Revolution, the baser, more inhuman 

 deeds were not committed by the peasants, who had been 

 the principal sufferers under the regime which was over- 

 thrown, but by the people of the great towns who had been 

 less oppressed by the iniquities of the old system of gov- 

 ernment. 



If it be true — as my personal experiences and observations 

 lead me firmly to believe is the case — that man's contact with 

 the domesticated animals has been and is ever to be one of 



