488 The American Naturalist. [June, 



harmless, for " after three or four barks he ran back to me 

 " with the same apologetic manner he has when he has barked 

 " at a well-known friend by mistake." 1 



If we arbitrarily confine the definition of " reason " to the 

 power of putting our ideas into words, then of course animals 

 must be denied the faculty of reason as they do not possess 

 that of articulate speech. But if to " reason " be to form ideas 

 in the mind; to class them together; to be influenced by 

 them ; to act upon them, then animals possess reason. And 

 the extent of reasoning faculty depends upon the development 

 of the brain ; on its comparative richness in convolutions, and 

 on its cultivation by education in animals as well as in men. 

 The difference in degree is enormous, but differences in degree 

 do not destroy homologies in zoological classification. An 

 elephant's nose is still a nose though it is prodigiously 

 elongated, and serves as a tactile and prehensile organ. It is 

 not that man has one particular organ highly specialized; 

 immense numbers of animals have organs highly specialized ; 

 the foot of the horse ; the fore limbs of the bat ; the whole 

 skeleton of the whale are conspicuous instances. In man 

 the specialization has been in the brain, and this has made 

 him the master of creation, but the difference between the 

 brain of man and of apes is not so great as the difference 

 between the foot of the horse and that of the elephant. Yet 

 the difference being not between foot and foot, but in the very 

 organ of thought itself, the effect is incalculable in producing 

 superiority of the one animal over the other. 



It has been asserted that we can form no general ideas 

 without words. It is true that we so commonly put our ideas 

 into words, that we may be tempted to identify the one with 

 the other. But deaf mutes who have been educated have 

 related their mental experiences when untrained, and they 

 describe themselves as " thinking in pictures." I have had 

 a similar experience in meeting with two plants in the forest 

 of British Columbia ; one attaining almost to the dimensions 

 of a forest tree ; the other no larger than our wood anemone, 

 yet agreeing exactly in the botanical peculiarity of their 



