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Inquiries into Human Faculty
which animals appear first to have been domesticated. It clearly shows the
small power of nurture against adverse natural tendencies.
The few animals that we now possess in a state of domestication were
first reclaimed from wildness in prehistoric times. Our remote barbarian
ancestors must be credited with having accomplished a very remarkable
feat, which no subsequent generation has rivalled. The utmost that we of
modern times have succeeded in doing, is to improve the races of those
animals that we received from, our forefathers in an already domesticated
condition.
There are only two reasonable solutions of this exceedingly curious
fact. The one is, that men of highly original ideas, like the mythical
Prometheus, arose from time to time in the dawn of human progress, and
left their respective marks on the world by being the first to subjugate the
camel, the llama, the reindeer, the horse, the ox, the sheep, the hog, the
dog, or some other animal to the service of man. The other hypothesis is
that only a few species of animals are fitted by their nature to become
domestic, and that these were discovered long ago through the exercise of
no higher intelligence than is to be found among barbarous tribes of the
present day. The failure of civilised man to add to the number of
domesticated species would on this supposition be due to the fact that all
the suitable material whence domestic animals could be derived has been
long since worked out.
I submit that the latter hypothesis is the true one for the reasons about
to be given; and if so, the finality of the process of domestication must be
accepted as one of the most striking instances of the inflexibility of
natural disposition, and of the limitations thereby imposed upon the
Society, 1865, with an alteration in the opening and concluding paragraphs, and with a few
verbal emendations. If I had discussed the subject now for the first time I should have
given extracts from the works of the travellers of the day, but it seemed needless to reopen
the inquiry merely to give it a more modern air. I have also preferred to let the chapter
stand as it was written, because considerable portions of it have been quoted by various
authors (e.g. Bagehot, Economic Studies, pp. 161 to 166: Longman, 1880), and the original
memoir is not easily accessible.
