A Dissertation on Horses: Wherein It is Demonstrated, by Matters of Fact, as Well as from the Principles of Philosophy, That Innate Qualities Do Not Exist, and That the Excellence of This Animal is Altogether Mechanical and Not in the BloodOsmer, William
History
A Dissertation on Horses: Wherein It is Demonstrated, by Matters of Fact, as Well as from the Principles of Philosophy, That Innate Qualities Do Not Exist, and That the Excellence of This Animal is Altogether Mechanical and Not in the Blood
principles of mechanics, without appealing to his blood for any
part of his goodness. We are taught by this doctrine of mechanics,
that the power applied to any body, must be adequate to the weight
of that body, otherwise, such power will be deficient for the
action we require; and there is no man but knows a cable or chord
of three inches diameter is not equal in strength to a chord of
four inches diameter. So that if it should be asked why a handsome
coach Horse, with as much beauty, length, and proportion as a
foreign Horse, will not act with the same velocity and
perseverance, nothing will be more easily answered, without
appealing to blood; because we shall find the powers of acting in
a foreign Horse much more prevalent, and more equal to the weight
of his body, than the powers of acting in a coach Horse: for
whoever has been curious enough to examine the mechanism of
different Horses by dissection, will find the tendon of the leg in
a foreign Hose is much larger than in any other Horse, whose leg
is of the same dimensions; and as the external texture of a
foreign Horse is much finer than of any other, so the foreign
Horse must necessarily have the greatest strength and perseverance
in acting, because the muscular power of two Horses (whose
dimensions are the same) will be the greatest in that Horse, whose
texture is the finest.
Let us next inquire what information we can gather from the
science of Anatomy, concerning the laws of motion: it teaches us,
that the force and power of a muscle consists in the number of
fibres of which it is composed; and that the velocity and motion
of a muscle consists in the length and extent of its fibres. Let
us compare this doctrine with the language of the jockey: he tells
us, if a Horse has not length, he will be slow; and if made to
slender, he will not be able to bring his weight through. Does
not the observation of the jockey exactly correspond with this
doctrine? If we now inquire into the motion of Horses, we shall
find the bones are the levers of the body, and the tendons and
muscles (which are one and the same thing) are the powers of
acting applied to these levers. Now when we consider a half-bred
Horse running one mile or more, with the same velocity as a Horse
of foreign extraction, we do not impute that equality of velocity
to any innate quality in the half-bred Horse, because we can
account for it by external causes: that is by an equality of the
length, and extent of his levers and tendons. And when we consider
a half-bred Horse running one mile, or more, with the same
velocity as the other, and then giving it up, what shall we do?
shall we say the foreigner beats him by his blood, or by the force
and power of his tendons? or can we, without reproaching our own
reason and understanding, impute that to be the effect of occult
and hidden causes in the one of these instances and not in the
other? both of which are demonstrated with certainty, and reduced
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