1881.] Editor’: Table. 791 
EDITORS’ TABLE. 
EDITORS: A. S. PACKARD, JR., AND E. D. COPE. 
We publish to-day a short critique, by Mr. Harley Barnes, 
on Mr. James’ article on animal reason, which appeared in the 
August Naturaist. This gentleman maintains the characters 
of reason as distinct from the understanding. He defines the 
former as the power of invention as distinguished from discovery. 
The understanding “can utilize and explain, but not originate. 
It can have none of those thoughts commonly ascribed to moral- 
ity, no appreciation of the beautiful, no knowledge of truth, no 
conception of the infinite and the absolute.” All these qualities 
are ascribed to reason. We think that if this be the definition of 
reason, that we can show that the latter has no existence what- 
ever. Thus we deny that man has any conception of “absolute” 
and “‘ infinite.’ They are words which do not represent ideas, 
just as the statement “ twice two equals six,” relates to nothing 
either objective or subjective. They belong to Spencer's class of 
“ pseudideas.” As to the “knowledge of truth,” anything cor- 
tectly known by animal or man is truth, and animals know a 
good deal of it. The “appreciation of the beautiful” is well 
developed in many animals, more, it seems to us, than in some 
men, “Thoughts commonly ascribed to morality” apparently 
€xist in some animals, especially the dog; while they are feebly 
developed in some races of savage men. The superiority of men 
is to be conceded here, but if morality be an attribute of reason, 
then traces of this reason are discoverable among some lower 
animals. The powers of origination and invention here ascribed 
to man and to reason, as distinguished from the “ understanding” 
of the lower animals, even when most orignal, are of doubtful 
€xistence. They consist generally of combinations of a few first 
principles already learned through experience or confirmed by 
€xperience. Musical composition is probably derived from rhyth- 
mical movements of certain brain elements, which are favored by 
feeble vitality of the parts, and which are combined by the subject 
in selected ways.—C. 
—— North America, from the Sierra Nevada to the Rocky 
Mountains, inclusive, will doubtless lead the world in the produc- 
tion of silver and gold for a considerable time. Although the 
aggregate of the precious metals, hitherto abstracted, reaches an 
