374 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
night." Of course it is easy to say that he has killed the sheep 
because of an instinct which has come to him through a remote 
ancestry. But think of what he has done. He has not only killed 
some sheep, but he has ingeniously planned to deceive his master 
and everybody else as to any connection of his with the crime, 
and lie poses as an honest, well-behaved dog, deserving of con- 
fidence. His plans and his conduct show not only consciousness, 
but a sense of moral responsibility which he immorally violates. 
He reasons out the way of committing a crime, the possibility of 
detection, and the best plan of avoiding suspicion. In these and 
in other instances to which he referred, the President found evi- 
dence that reason existed in the animal world, and which justified 
the acceptance of the belief that the same principle of reason ran 
through all living things. He was inclined to this view. The 
difference was in degree. This led him to a statement of Haeckel’s 
theory of the universe which he explained at some length, and 
with many illustrations and quotations from that writer’s works, 
in support of his theory of the unity of nature and the law of 
substance. This theory eliminated entirely the idea of a Creator 
directing the affairs of the world, and referred all created things 
to a sensation, a force, a tendency, and out of this grew up not 
only ail organisms, but also all the consciousness which existed 
in the animal world, a process of evolution producing the highest 
forms of intelligence, as well as the bodies through which this 
intelligence, consciousness and intellectual force was expressed. 
One of the quotations was as follows : 
“ The remarkable expansion of our knowledge of nature, and 
the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, which it in- 
cludes, have awakened quite a new aesthetic sense in our genera- 
tion, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture. 
Numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration 
of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more 
especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed 
abundance of new organic forms. The number of new species 
of animals and plants soon became enormous, and among them 
(especially among the lower groups that had been neglected be- 
fore) there were thousands of forms of great beauty and interest, 
affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, sculpture, 
