system of the bee is adapted to its congenital instinct of honeycomb
building, just so truly is the brain of the dog adapted to its now
congenital instinct of following and obeying a master. The habit of
attaching itself to a particular human being is nowadays engrained in
the nerves of the modern dog just as really, though not quite so
deeply, as the habit of running or biting is engrained in its bones and
muscles. Every dog is born into the world with a certain inherited
structure of limbs, sense-organs, and brain: and this inherited
structure governs all its future actions, both bodily and mental. It
seeks a master because it is endowed with master-seeking brain organs;
it is dissatisfied until it finds one, because its native functions can
have free play in no other way. Among a few dogs, like those of
Constantinople, the instinct may have died out by disuse, as the eyes
of cave animals have atrophied for want of light; but when a dog has
once been brought up from puppyhood under a master, the instinct is
fully and freely developed, and the masterless condition is thenceforth
for him a thwarting and disappointing of all his natural feelings and
affections.
Not only have dogs as a class acquired a special instinct with regard
to humanity generally, but particular breeds of dogs have acquired
particular instincts with regard to certain individual acts. Nobody
doubts that the muscles of a greyhound are specially correlated to the
acts of running and leaping; or that the muscles of a bull-dog are
specially correlated to the act of fighting. The whole external form of
these creatures has been modified by man's selective action for a
deliberate purpose: we breed, as we say, from the dog with the best
points. But besides being able to modify the visible and outer
structure of the animal, we are also able to modify, by indirect
indications, the hidden and inner structure of the brain. We choose the
best ratter among our terriers, the best pointer, retriever, or setter
among other breeds, to become the parents of our future stock. We thus
half unconsciously select particular types of nervous system in
preference to others. Once upon a time we used even to rear a race of
dogs with a strange instinct for turning the spit in our kitchens; and
to this day the Cubans rear blood-hounds with a natural taste for
hunting down the trail of runaway negroes. Now, everybody knows that
you cannot teach one sort of dog the kind of tricks which come by
instinct to a different sort. No amount of instruction will induce a
well-bred terrier to retrieve your handkerchief: he insists upon
worrying it instead. So no amount of instruction will induce a
well-bred retriever to worry a rat: he brings it gingerly to your feet,
as if it was a dead partridge. The reason is obvious, because no one
would breed from a retriever which worried or from a terrier which
treated its natural prey as if it were a stick. Thus the brain of each
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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