ticate birds
which are valuable only for the pleasures which their presence lends
to human abodes. This action clearly shows that the element of
sympathy, that love for the other life which in any way fixes the
attention, has had much to do with this work of bringing other beings
into association with our own lives.

Not only is the motive which has led our race to such extensive
conquests over the wild nature in itself sympathetic, but the
process of winning these creatures from the wilderness has served
effectively to extend and amplify this same impulse. One of the best
features of agricultural life consists in the great amount of
care-taking which it imposes upon its followers. The ordinary farmer
has to enter into more or less sympathetic relations with half a
score of animal species and many kinds of plants. His life, indeed,
is devoted to ceaseless friendly relations with these creatures which
live or die at his will. In this task his ancient savage impulses are
slowly worn away, and in their place comes the enduring kindliness of
cultivated men. When we compare the state of mind of the hunter with
that of the care-taking soil-tiller, we see the vast scope and
influence which this work of domestication has effected in our kind.
To it perhaps more than to any other cause we must attribute the
civilizable and the civilized state of mind.

Although no discreet person will venture to determine the relative
weight which should be given to the influences which have made for
civilization, there can be no doubt that the care of domesticated
animals has been one of the most potent of these agents. Not only has
this employment served to develop the motives of care-taking that
result in the postponement of the momentary satisfaction of indolence
or of hunger for the prospect of security or wealth to come, but it
has served to arouse and broaden the sympathies given men, that
humane spirit without which the best of our higher culture cannot be
attained. If this view be correct, we may find in it a good reason
for regretting the increasing development of cities, a reason which
is more definite than the most of those which have been urged against
the growth of great towns. Statistics seem to indicate that people
are as healthy, as long lived, and on the whole no more given to vice
and crime in a well-ordered urban life than they are on the farms. It
is certainly easier to give them the formal education of the schools
in the