654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have imagination or the power to frame mental pictures of absent ob- 

 jects, the grief of the dog at the absence or loss of his master amply 

 proves, as does also the capacity of animals to dream. If, as some 

 assume, abstraction is a necessary part of reasoning, then it must of 

 course be conceded that animals have the power of framing abstract 

 conceptions. There is a certain amount of evidence that some animals 

 can count within narrow limits. It is scarcely possible to account for 

 tbe conduct of the horse, dog, elephant, and ape, under certain circum- 

 stances, without believing that they have the power to generalize upon 

 details. Once concede the power to form abstract ideas, and there is 

 then the basis for any other faculty man possesses that is considered 

 usually as peculiarly his. 



Have animals a moral nature, or are they capable of forming a con- 

 ception of right and wrong ? The answer to this introduces the ques- 

 tion as to method of comparison. Should the highest of the inferior 

 animals be compared with the most civilized races of men, or with 

 man in his most degraded condition ? That neither of these compari- 

 sons is just, can be shown. As capacity for education is one of the 

 best evidences of mental ability in both man and inferior animals, and 

 as man's civilization is the outcome of his own intellect, he must be 

 credited with this as evidence of his superiority. 



It is to be remembered, however, that each marked advance in 

 progress has been made by the few great intellects that have ap- 

 peared, and only accepted, not originated, by the many ; that but for 

 permanent records in language, much of man's civilization would have 

 been lost as rapidly as acquired ; that man's civilization is the growth 

 of thousands of years, beginning with a condition of things scarcely 

 if at all higher than that now known to some tribes of animals ; that 

 what any child becomes is really largely dependent upon the training 

 it receives ; the child of the savage, and that of the civilized man, can 

 not be compared any more than the latter and the inferior animals. 

 Now, the reverse of all this holds for the lower animals. So far as 

 any systematic training from man is concerned, they are very much as 

 they were thousands of years ago. Before it were possible absolutely 

 to compare the highest man and the highest animal, it Mould be 

 necessary that for ages the effect of culture should be tried on the 

 lower animals. The astonishing results achieved in the lifetime of a 

 single animal, and the results attained by the creation of hereditary 

 specialists as among dogs, put the whole matter in a light that shows 

 our usual comparisons to be somewhat unfair. If the highest among 

 dogs, apes, and elephants be compared with the lowest among savage 

 tribes, the balance, whether mental or moral, will not be very largely 

 in man's favor — indeed, in many cases the reverse. 



We are not contending for the equality of man and the rest of the 

 animal kingdom ; oven assuming that the child and the dog have 

 equal : t <lvantages, the child will still be in many respects superior to 



