162 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



is delightful to find great thinkers like Haeckel, 

 great biologists and philosophers, holding the 

 same conviction. Haeckel is the giant of the 

 Germans, and in his brilliant book 'The Riddle 

 of the Universe ' appears this rather poetical para- 

 graph : ' I once knew an old head-forester, who, 

 being left a widower and without children at an 

 early age, had lived alone for more than thirty 

 f years in a noble forest of East Prussia. His only 

 I companions were one or two servants, with whom 

 ! he exchanged merely a few necessary words, and a 

 1 great pack of different kinds of dogs, with whom 

 i he lived in perfect psychic communion. Through 

 \ many years of training this keen observer and 

 friend of nature had penetrated deep into the indi- 

 1 vidual souls of his dogs, and he was as convinced 

 f of their personal immortality as he was of his own. 

 Some of his most intelligent dogs were, in his 

 impartial estimation, at a higher stage of psychic 

 development than his old stupid maid and his 

 rough and wrinkled man-servant. Any unpre- 

 judiced observer who will study the psychic 

 phenomena of a fine dog for a year, and follow 

 attentively the processes of its thought, judgment, 

 I and reason, will have to admit that it has just as 

 '^ valid a claim to immortality as man himself.' 

 f Fido was a shaggy terrier who lived years ago 

 j in the old home on the farm by the beautiful brook. 

 He was one of the very first acquaintances the 

 writer of these lines made on coming into exist- 

 ence. In his earlier years, before age had dimmed 

 his mind and rheumatism had fastened upon him, 



