NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

of command uniformly accompany the discipline, and it requires no intelligent apprehension of language to lead the horse to stop at the word whoa, when it has been repeatedly accompanied with a severe jerk of the bit.

A change of masters always interferes with the training of animals, as for instance of a yoke of oxen, because there is a breaking up of associations, a diversity, and hence a confusion of methods. Passion and hasty punishment likewise retard the education of an animal. The reason is obvious under the principle of association. If the brute were in a measure rational, he might interpret aright the flogging, and profit by it; but, acting under association, his consciousness is simply flooded with suffering and fears, and henceforth, on the like provocation, he becomes restive and excited in anticipation of a similar, painful experience. Punishment that is not proportionate to the wrong, or does not immediately follow it, and spring as it were out of it, is of no avail. The association is lost, and no reasoning process is present to take its place. All the facts of skillful and successful discipline in animals come in to corroborate the assertion, that action, with them, follows the appropriate perception under fixed associations.

But it may be asked, why is not the opposite supposition of reasoning faculties an admissible one? We answer it involves at once the entire circle of regulative ideas, postulates more powers than are needed to explain the phenomena, and it is not consistent with the fact that brutes exhibit no such growth as should, in some instances at least, follow the rudimentary possession of such high endowments. If the animal reflects, there is no reason why he should not occasionally express by language, at least by signs, the result of that reflection. One rational thought is not possible without the possibility of two, of three, of many thoughts. One syllogism carries with it the entire