Page:Equitation.djvu/281

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memory stamps the lesson on its temper. It becomes restive, vicious, dangerous.

My long observation and study convince me, moreover, that not only does the physical strength of the horse affect its temper; the very temper itself is created by the treatment which the animal receives. This treatment, more or less practical, more or less reasoned, is the horse's education. The memory of wrong treatment is what fixes the instinctive reactions which we term defense, restiveness, and vice. Is it not, after all, precisely on this basis that we direct the child's development to manhood?

Or to take yet another example illustrative of my principles, every horse, like every man, though on the whole well conformed, is virtually never exactly the same on the two sides of the body. We ourselves are either right- or left-handed, and usually right- or left-legged. We seldom have quite the same power or freedom in one set of members as in the other.

This asymmetry of the two halves of the body is, in the horse, known as "side." All methodists, from Xenophon to the present day, have recognized the defect. I shall not dwell on the various causes which various writers have assigned for the trouble. It is sufficient to point out that it exists, undeniably; and that it appears at birth. The young creature, therefore, its "side" being uncorrected, forms the habit of moving unsymmetrically. Certain of its members, thereupon, being slightly less energet-