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.