Page:Equitation.djvu/153

 schools of equitation. But equitation, with the progress made since de la Guérinière's time, has passed from the instinctive to the reasoned basis, and now to the scientific. It is no longer a question of practicing what our ancestors have done, but of following a progressive education, a sequence of reason, cause, and the effect of the means used by the man on the horse.

Now the first principle of the scientific equitation is the force of effect; it denies forever the effect of force. This being admitted, it is no longer by the severity of the bit nor by the severity of the spurs that we train the horse. I say train, as we still do, mistakenly: I mean educate. Following a progressive education, the horse is first taught by a trainer on foot, by the use of the whip on its flanks, to move forward against the bit. This practice with the whip prepares the animal for the effects of the legs upon the same part of the body, when the rider is mounted and the legs give the impulse to the entire machinery. This impulse of the legs is received by the bit, making contact with the bars, so that there is a continual fluctuation of the equilibrium as the center of gravity shifts backward and forward at each step.

To make this matter clear, suppose a horse to be mounted and standing, its training by the flexions of mouth and neck being so far advanced that it is well "in hand." In order to maintain the animal in this position, the center of gravity at the center of