God alone knows the past, the present, and the future; eternal is his existence, and infinite is his knowledge. Man, whose duration is but for a few moments, perceives but those moments: by a living and immortal Power are those moments compared, distinguished, and arrayed; and That Power it is which enables man to know the present, judge of the past, and foresee the future. Deprive him of this divine light and you deface and obscure his being, you render him merely an animal, ignorant of the past, without conception of the future, and barely affectable by the present.
[CHAPTER II.]
OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS.
Man changes the natural state of animals by forcing them to obey, and render him service: a domestic animal is a slave to our amusements or operations. The frequent abuses he suffers, and the forcing him from his natural mode of living, make great alterations in his manners and temper, while the wild animal, subject to nature alone, knows no other laws than those of appetite and liberty. The history of a wild animal is confined to a few facts drawn from simple nature; but the history of a domestic animal is complicated with all the artful means used to tame and subdue his native wildness: and not knowing how far example, constraint, or custom, may influence animals, and change their motions, determinations, and inclinations, the design of the naturalist ought to be to distinguish those facts which depend on instinct, from those which are owing to their mode of education; to ascertain what appertains to them from what they have acquired; to separate what is natural for them from what they are made to do; and never to confound the animal with the slave, the beast of burden with the creature of God.
The empire which man has over animals is an empire which revolution cannot overthrow; it is the empire of the spirit over matter; a right of nature, a power founded on unalterable laws, a gift of God, by which man may at all times discern the excellence of his being, for he does not rule them, because he is the most perfect, strongest, or the most dexterous of animals. If he was only the first rank of the same order, the others would unite to dispute the empire with him, but it is from the superiority of his nature that man reigns and commands: he thinks, and for this reason is master over beings that are incapable of thinking. He reigns over material bodies because they can only oppose to his will a sullen resistance, or an inflexible stupidity, which he can always overcome, by making them act against each other. He is master of the vegetable creation, which by his industry he can augment, diminish, renew, multiply, or destroy. He maintains a superiority over brutes, because like them he not only has motion and sensation, but possesses also the light of reason; governs his actions, concerts his operations, and overcomes force by cunning, and swiftness by perseverance. Nevertheless, among animals some appear familiar, others savage and ferocious. If we compare the docility and submission of the dog with the cruelty and ferocity of the tiger, the one will appear to be the friend of man, the other his enemy: his empire, then, over animals is not absolute. Many species can escape his power by the rapidity of their flight, by the obscurity of their retreats, and by the elements they inhabit. Others escape him from their minuteness, while others, who, far from respecting their sovereign, openly attack him. Besides these, he is insulted by the stings of insects, poisonous bites of serpents, and teased with many other unclean, troublesome, and useless creatures, that seem only to exist to form a shade between good and evil, and to make man comprehend how little respectable his fall has made him.
But we must distinguish the empire of God from the domain of man: God, the Creator of all beings, is the sole master of nature. Man has no influence on the universe, the motions of the heavenly bodies, nor the revolutions of the globe which he inhabits; over animals, vegetables, or minerals, he has no general dominion; he can do nothing with species, his power only extends to individuals; for species in general, and matter in the gross, belong to, or rather constitute nature. All things pass away, follow, succeed, decay, or are renewed, by an irresistible power. Man, dragged on by the torrent of time, cannot prolong his existence; his body being linked to matter, he is forced to submit to the universal law; he obeys the same power, and, like the rest, comes into the world, grows to maturity, and dies.
But the divine ray with which man is animated ennobles and raises him above all other material beings. This spiritual substance, far from being subject to matter, has the power of making it obey; and though it cannot command all Nature, it presides over particular beings; God, the sole source of all light and understanding, rules the universe and the species with infinite power; man, who possesses only a ray of this spiritual substance, has a power limited to small portions of matter and individuals.
It is by the talent of the mind, then, and not by force, and the other qualities of matter, that man has been enabled to subdue animals. In the first ages they were all equally independent; man, after he became guilty and ferocious, was very unfit to deprive them of liberty. Before he could approach, know, make choice of, and tame them, it was necessary that he should be civilized himself, to know how to instruct and command; and the empire over animals, like every other empire, was not founded till after society was instituted.