This total dependence12 of dogs upon a master is a very interesting example of the growth of inherited instincts. The original dog, who was a wolf or something very like it, could not have had any such artificial feeling. He was an independent, self-reliant animal, quite well able to look after himself on the boundless13 plains of Central Europe or High Asia. But at least as early as the days of the Danish shell-mounds, perhaps thousands of years earlier, man had learned to tame the dog and to employ him as a friend or servant for his own purposes. Those dogs which best served the ends of man were preserved and increased; those which followed too much their own original instincts were destroyed or at least discouraged. The savage14 hunter would be very apt to fling his stone axe15 at the skull16 of a hound which tried to eat the game he had brought down with his flint-tipped arrow, instead of retrieving17 it: he would be most likely to keep carefully and feed well on the refuse of his own meals the hound which aided him most in surprising, killing19, and securing his quarry20. Thus there sprang up between man and the dog a mutual21 and ever increasing sympathy which on the part of the dependent creature has at last become organised into an inherited instinct. If we could only thread the labyrinth22 of a dog's brain, we should find somewhere in it a group of correlated nerve-connections answering to this universal habit of his race; and the group in question would be quite without any analogous23 mechanism24 in the brain of the ancestral wolf. As truly as the wing of the bird is adapted to its congenital instinct of flying, as truly as the nervous 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 atrophied25 for want of light; but when a dog has once been brought up from puppyhood under a master, the instinct is fully18 and freely developed, and the masterless condition is thenceforth for him a thwarting26 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 specially27 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 runaway29 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 retrieve28 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 prey30 as if it were a stick. Thus the brain of each kind is hereditarily31 supplied with certain nervous connections wanting in the brain of other kinds. We need no more doubt the reality of the material distinction in the brain than we need doubt it in the limbs and jaws32 of the greyhound and the bull-dog. Those who have watched closely the different races of men can hardly hesitate to believe that something analogous exists in our own case. While the highest types are, as Mr. Herbert Spencer well puts it, to some extent 'organically moral' and structurally33 intelligent, the lowest types are congenitally deficient34. A European child learns to read almost by nature (for Dogberry was essentially35 right after all), while a Negro child learns to read by painful personal experience. And savages36 brought to Europe and 'civilised' for years often return at last with joy to their native home, cast off their clothes and their outer veneering, and take once more to the only life for which their nervous organisation37 naturally fits them. 'What is bred in the bone,' says the wise old proverb, 'will out in the blood.'
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1 abject | |
adj.极可怜的,卑屈的 | |
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2 cringing | |
adj.谄媚,奉承 | |
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3 accost | |
v.向人搭话,打招呼 | |
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4 humiliation | |
n.羞辱 | |
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5 specimen | |
n.样本,标本 | |
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6 refreshing | |
adj.使精神振作的,使人清爽的,使人喜欢的 | |
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7 vagrant | |
n.流浪者,游民;adj.流浪的,漂泊不定的 | |
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8 complacently | |
adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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9 trots | |
小跑,急走( trot的名词复数 ); 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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10 tempting | |
a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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11 burrows | |
n.地洞( burrow的名词复数 )v.挖掘(洞穴),挖洞( burrow的第三人称单数 );翻寻 | |
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12 dependence | |
n.依靠,依赖;信任,信赖;隶属 | |
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13 boundless | |
adj.无限的;无边无际的;巨大的 | |
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14 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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15 axe | |
n.斧子;v.用斧头砍,削减 | |
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16 skull | |
n.头骨;颅骨 | |
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17 retrieving | |
n.检索(过程),取还v.取回( retrieve的现在分词 );恢复;寻回;检索(储存的信息) | |
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18 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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19 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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20 quarry | |
n.采石场;v.采石;费力地找 | |
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21 mutual | |
adj.相互的,彼此的;共同的,共有的 | |
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22 labyrinth | |
n.迷宫;难解的事物;迷路 | |
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23 analogous | |
adj.相似的;类似的 | |
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24 mechanism | |
n.机械装置;机构,结构 | |
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25 atrophied | |
adj.萎缩的,衰退的v.(使)萎缩,(使)虚脱,(使)衰退( atrophy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26 thwarting | |
阻挠( thwart的现在分词 ); 使受挫折; 挫败; 横过 | |
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27 specially | |
adv.特定地;特殊地;明确地 | |
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28 retrieve | |
vt.重新得到,收回;挽回,补救;检索 | |
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29 runaway | |
n.逃走的人,逃亡,亡命者;adj.逃亡的,逃走的 | |
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30 prey | |
n.被掠食者,牺牲者,掠食;v.捕食,掠夺,折磨 | |
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31 hereditarily | |
世袭地,遗传地 | |
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32 jaws | |
n.口部;嘴 | |
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33 structurally | |
在结构上 | |
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34 deficient | |
adj.不足的,不充份的,有缺陷的 | |
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35 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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36 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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37 organisation | |
n.组织,安排,团体,有机休 | |
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