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Inquiries into Human Faculty
before he can either understand the feelings of those animals or make his
own intelligible to them. He has no natural power at all over many other
creatures. Who for instance, ever succeeded in frowning away a mosquito,
or in pacifying an angry wasp by a smile?
Desire of Comfort. —This is a motive which strongly attaches certain
animals to human habitations, even though they are unwelcome: it is a
motive which few persons who have not had an opportunity of studying
animals in savage lands are likely to estimate at its true value. The life of
all beasts in their wild state is an exceedingly anxious one. From my own
recollection, I believe that every antelope in South Africa has to run for its
life every one or two days upon an average, and that he starts or gallops
under the influence of a false alarm many times in a day. Those who have
crouched at night by the side of pools in the desert, in order to have a shot
at the beasts that frequent them, see strange scenes of animal life; how the
creatures gambol at one moment and fight at another; how a herd
suddenly halts in strained attention, and then breaks into a maddened rush,
as one of them becomes conscious of the stealthy movements or rank
scent of a beast of prey. Now this hourly life-and-death excitement is a
keen delight to most wild creatures, but must be peculiarly distracting to
the comfort-loving temperament of others. The latter are alone suited to
endure the crass habits and dull routine of domesticated life. Suppose that
an animal which has been captured and half-tamed, received ill-usage
from his captors, either as punishment or through mere brutality, and that
he rushed indignantly into the forest with his ribs aching from blows and
stones. If a comfort-loving animal, he will probably be no gainer by the
change, more serious alarms and no less ill-usage awaits him; he hears the
roar of the wild beasts and the headlong gallop of the frightened herds,
and he finds the buttings and the kicks of other animals harder to endure
than the blows from which he fled. He has the disadvantage of being a
stranger, for the herds of his own species which he seeks for
companionship constitute so many cliques, into which he can only find
admission by more fighting with their strongest members than he has
spirit to undergo. As a set-off against these miseries, the
