ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 103 



In conclusion the speaker remarked that there were some to 

 whom an apology might be due for so protracted an enumeration 

 of the pro's and con's of optimism — a philosophy which may be 

 supposed to have long been obsolete. To such, however, he could 

 only express his regret that the mass of mankind have by no means 

 reached their advanced position. While optimism, as a philosophic 

 tenet, defined by the scholars of a century ago, has, it must be 

 admitted, ceased to engross the attention of thinking minds, the 

 qualified form of it which constitutes the anthropocentric theory, 

 and toward which the foregoing considerations have been principally 

 directed, still forms the very warp of the current philosophy outside 

 of the domain of science, and to a great extent within that domain. 

 It is the essence of all teleological conceptions, and so generally 

 pervades the prevalent views of life and action, as to distort com- 

 pletely the popular conception of the relations between man and 

 the universe. The great mass of men still believe in a conscious 

 intelligence, either without or within the universe, which is perpetu- 

 ally adjusting means to ends in nature. The majority regard that 

 intelligence as in a manner benign and sympathetic, and while 

 shutting their eyes to such facts as have been here set forth, are 

 ever on the alert to gather evidence, however slender, in support 

 of providential interference and intelligent design. 



Mr. S. D. Hinman then read a paper entitled The Rabbit and 

 the Spring. — A Dakotan Tale. 



Upon this paper Prof. Mason remarked that nearly the same 

 story occurs in " Uncle Remus." He said it was possible that the 

 negroes of the South might have learned it from the Southern In- 

 dians. He had formerly reasoned that the selection by the negroes 

 of the rabbit as the hero of so many of their stories was because 

 they thought that timid animal best typified their own helpless con- 

 dition, from which a belief widely prevailed that they were yet to 

 emerge victorious over all the influences that tended to hold them 

 down. 



