ence of the horse; but through the constant abuse of it,
the animal becomes habituated to the sound, which falls upon blunted
feelings and produces no effect at all. The horse does not go any
faster for it. You have a remarkable example of this in the ceaseless
cracking of his whip on the part of a cab-driver, while he is
proceeding at a slow pace on the lookout for a fare. If he were to
give his horse the slightest touch with the whip, it would have much
more effect. Supposing, however, that it were absolutely necessary to
crack the whip in order to keep the horse constantly in mind of its
presence, it would be enough to make the hundredth part of the noise.
For it is a well-known fact that, in regard to sight and hearing,
animals are sensitive to even the faintest indications; they are alive
to things that we can scarcely perceive. The most surprising instances
of this are furnished by trained dogs and canary birds.

It is obvious, therefore, that here we have to do with an act of pure
wantonness; nay, with an impudent defiance offered to those members of
the community who work with their heads by those who work with their
hands. That such infamy should be tolerated in a town is a piece of
barbarity and iniquity, all the more as it could easily be remedied by
a police-notice to the effect that every lash shall have a knot at the
end of it. There can be no harm in drawing the attention of the mob to
the fact that the classes above them work with their heads, for any
kind of headwork is mortal anguish to the man in the street. A fellow
who rides through the narrow alleys of a populous town with unemployed
post-horses or cart-horses, and keeps on cracking a whip several yards
long with all his might, deserves there and then to stand down and
receive five really good blows with a stick.

All the philanthropists in the world, and all the legislators, meeting
to advocate and decree the total abolition of corporal punishment,
will never persuade me to the contrary! There is something even more
disgraceful than what I have just mentioned. Often enough you may see
a carter walking along the street, quite alone, without any horses,
and still cracking away incessantly; so accustomed has the wretch
become to it in consequence of the unwarrantable toleration of this
practice. A man's body and the needs of his body are now everywhere
treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be
the only thing that is never to