COUKTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. 473 



by motives that are intelligible and rational. Thus there are 

 many animals that, having tested for themselves the relative 

 advantages and disadvantages of freedom and captivity, 

 deliberately submit themselves to the latter. No doubt they 

 usually do so in the pleasant form of mere domesticity, which 

 allows frequently considerable freedom of action. Wild 

 animals that have been made captive and subsequently 

 released have voluntarily returned to what were virtually 

 their former prisons and prison-life, having probably learned 

 by ample experience how hard was the struggle for life in 

 freedom, the natural state, with its worries, exposure, and 

 want, and how pleasant the protected artificial life, with its 

 abundant feeding, secure protection from dreaded enemies, 

 and absence of all care. 



The choice of a minor rather than of a major evil is also 

 quite intelligible and rational. There are many birds and 

 other animals that regard man as an enemy, and under 

 ordinary circumstances avoid him as such ; who nevertheless 

 fearlessly seek his protection when a more relentless enemy 

 appears a more immediate or certain danger threatens. 

 Thus various small birds pursued by hawks fly precipitately 

 into man's or woman's very bosom. Belt mentions a cock- 

 roach which, fleeing from him, encountered a spider, when 

 * back it would double, facing all the danger from me rather 

 than advance nearer to its natural enemy.' There can be no 

 difiiculty in understanding, moreover, the occasional decided 

 preference shown for man's society over that of their own 

 species by dogs and various birds. Man can, and does, give 

 them what their own species cannot, while, generally speak- 

 ing, access to their own species, when desired, is at the same 

 time not prevented. He furnishes at once shelter, protec- 

 tion, food, and companionship, perhaps he reciprocates their 

 affection, gives them that for which they long sympathy 

 and love. 



On the other hand, preferences that are utterly unac- 

 countable on any rational ground, and that yet can scarcely 

 be denominated capricious, are illustrated by the common 

 cases of dogs attaching themselves to masters who are cruel 

 to them, and maintaining their allegiance after a long course 



