The Dog’s Love of Man. 73 
the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.” Uninter- 
rupted association for many generations with human kind 
has impressed upon his nature a sentiment of trustful affec- 
tion, that shows itself as soon as the puppy opens its eyes 
on a world in which the first creature it beholds except its 
mother is a man. The young of our domestic dogs wag 
their little tails and lick our hands as soon as they are able 
to roll about on their short legs. These comical little fellows 
betray not the slightest fear of us. They seem to have 
known us ages ago in some far-off land, or in a previous 
existence, and to have come back to welcome us as old ac- 
quaintances and friends. Here is the subtle effect of inheri- 
tance, that potent influence to which so large a part of the 
mental and moral character is due. The mother through a 
long line of ancestors unconsciously gives her progeny this 
birthright—the love of man, and confidence in his friendship. 
Among the awakening perceptions of the puppy there is 
nothing incongruous. All that he sees and hears ought to 
be there, just as it is, for him, the heir of civilization, the 
co-partner with man in a common heritage. He trembles not 
when the children seize him, and, struggling for possession, 
bear him aloft in their arms, while the mother looks on 
with equanimity, confident in the security of her young. 
How different is the behaviour of the whelps of the wolf. 
Those I have taken from the nest when about three weeks 
old have snarled and snapped at my fingers with all their 
might, and striven their utmost to escape from my hands, in 
spite of every effort to soothe their angry feelings. To them 
I was a strange, wild, and fearful creature, to be treated 
as an enemy—the embodiment, perhaps, of all their inherited 
vague apprehensions of danger, for the first time presented to 
their perceptions in a concrete form. When those whelps 
grew to maturity they might remorselessly hunt me down and 
tear me to pieces without the slightest consciousness of that 
almost sacred tie which can subsist between their species 
and mine when domesticated. 
