I am not one of those who regard the evidence for the post-mortem existence of the human soul as being either abundant or conclusive. But of one thing I am positive, and that is, that there are the same grounds precisely for believing in the immortality of the bird and the quadruped as there are for the belief in human immortality. And it is delightful to find great thinkers like Haeckel, great biologists and philosophers, holding the same conviction. Haeckel is the giant of the Germans, and in his brilliant book ‘The Riddle of the Universe’ appears this rather poetical paragraph: ‘I once knew an old head-forester, who, being left a widower and without children at an early age, had lived alone for more than thirty years in a noble forest of East Prussia. His only companions were one or two servants, with whom he exchanged merely a few necessary words, and a great pack of different kinds of dogs, with whom he lived in perfect psychic communion. Through many years of training this keen observer and friend of nature had penetrated deep into the individual souls of his dogs, and he was as convinced of their personal immortality as he was of his own. Some of his most intelligent dogs were, in his impartial estimation, at a higher stage of psychic development than his old stupid maid and his rough and wrinkled man-servant. Any unprejudiced observer who will study the psychic phenomena of a fine dog for a year, and follow attentively the processes of its thought, judgment, and reason, will have to admit that it has just as valid a claim to immortality as man himself.’