HORSE. 32^ 



struggle for a while. It is then subjected to various 

 manipulations, which, without necessarily causing pain, 

 make the animal feel its helplessness and the mastery of 

 the operator. The extraordinary fact is that, after having 

 once felt this, the spirit or emotional life of the animal 

 undergoes a complete and sudden change, so that from 

 having been ' wild ' it becomes ' tame.' In some cases 

 there are subsequent relapses, but these are easily 

 checked. Even the truly *wild' horse from the prairie 

 admits of being completely subdued in a marvellously 

 short time by the Grauchos, who employ an essentially 

 similar method, although the struggle is here much 

 more fierce and prolonged.^ The same may be said of 

 the taming of wild elephants, although in this case 

 the facts are not nearly so remarkable from a psycho- 

 logical point of view, seeing that the process of taming is 

 so much more slow. 



Another curious emotional feature in the horse is the 

 liability of all the other mental faculties of the animal 

 to become abandoned to that of terror. For I think I am 

 right in saying that the horse is the only animal which, 

 under the influence of fear, loses the possession of every 

 other sense in one mad and mastering desire to run. 

 With its entire mental life thus overwhelmed by the flood 

 of a single emotion, the horse not only loses, as other 

 animals lose, ' presence of mind,' or a due balance among 

 the distinctively intellectual faculties, but even the 

 avenues of special sense become stopped, so that the wholly 

 demented animal may run headlong and at terrific speed 

 against a stone wall. I have known a hare come to grief 

 in a somewhat similar fashion when hotly pursued by a 

 dog ; this, however, was clearly owing to the hare looking 

 behind instead of before, in a manner not, under the cir- 

 cmnstances, unwise ; but, as I have said, there is no animal 

 except the horse whose whole psychology is thus liable to 

 be completely dominated by a single emotion. 



As for its other emotions, the horse is certainly an 

 affectionate animal, pleased at being petted, jealous of 



» See Mr. Darw in's account in Naturalist's Voyage rmind the World, 

 pp. 151-2. 



