Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/676

654 have imagination or the power to frame mental pictures of absent objects, the grief of the dog at the absence or loss of his master amply proves, as does also the capacity of animals to dream. If, as some assume, abstraction is a necessary part of reasoning, then it must of course be conceded that animals have the power of framing abstract conceptions. There is a certain amount of evidence that some animals can count within narrow limits. It is scarcely possible to account for the conduct of the horse, dog, elephant, and ape, under certain circumstances, without believing that they have the power to generalize upon details. Once concede the power to form abstract ideas, and there is then the basis for any other faculty man possesses that is considered usually as peculiarly his.

Have animals a moral nature, or are they capable of forming a conception of right and wrong? The answer to this introduces the question as to method of comparison. Should the highest of the inferior animals be compared with the most civilized races of men, or with man in his most degraded condition? That neither of these comparisons is just, can be shown. As capacity for education is one of the best evidences of mental ability in both man and inferior animals, and as man's civilization is the outcome of his own intellect, he must be credited with this as evidence of his superiority.

It is to be remembered, however, that each marked advance in progress has been made by the few great intellects that have appeared, and only accepted, not originated, by the many; that but for permanent records in language, much of man's civilization would have been lost as rapidly as acquired; that man's civilization is the growth of thousands of years, beginning with a condition of things scarcely if at all higher than that now known to some tribes of animals; that what any child becomes is really largely dependent upon the training it receives; the child of the savage, and that of the civilized man, can not be compared any more than the latter and the inferior animals. Now, the reverse of all this holds for the lower animals. So far as any systematic training from man is concerned, they are very much as they were thousands of years ago. Before it were possible absolutely to compare the highest man and the highest animal, it would be necessary that for ages the effect of culture should be tried on the lower animals. The astonishing results achieved in the lifetime of a single animal, and the results attained by the creation of hereditary specialists as among dogs, put the whole matter in a light that shows our usual comparisons to be somewhat unfair. If the highest among dogs, apes, and elephants be compared with the lowest among savage tribes, the balance, whether mental or moral, will not be very largely in man's favor—indeed, in many cases the reverse.

We are not contending for the equality of man and the rest of the animal kingdom; even assuming that the child and the dog have equal advantages, the child will still be in many respects superior to