ZOOLOGY 461 



and in the laboratory in the endeavor to pierce still further with trained 

 insight into the mysteries of nature. And these are their results. 



No one realizes more than the zoologist that his knowledge is incom- 

 plete. No one can see more clearly than he that his intellect evolves, 

 like the great sweeping tide of things and events — the nature he studies 

 and of which he is but a conscious atom. The investigator soon learns 

 to withhold final judgment, agreeing with Clifford that the primary 

 conditions for intellectual development are the plasticity and openness 

 of mind that dogmatism and finality destroys. The end of zoology 

 can not be until the end of all knowledge. 



Conscious, then, of the impossibility of reaching absolutely final 

 knowledge, why does the investigator continue to search the world of 

 nature as he does? Because of that ingrained and insatiable human 

 curiosity to learn, because of the human discontent with the attained. 

 Antaeus-like, every fresh contact with the world of law and order 

 infuses new energy into his veins for further endeavor. " Und es treibt 

 und reisst ihn fort, rastlos fort . . ." not, it is true, in the wandering 

 blindness of Schiller's huntsman, for his human vision is aided by 

 the instrument of scientific method with which he can almost perceive 

 the infinitely great and the infinitely small. 



Glorying in the great achievements of his science, reveling like the 

 mathematician in the ordered assemblage of related and organized 

 knowledge, the student of zoology joins his fellows yet again for a 

 renewed attack upon the distant ramparts of the unknown, deriving 

 courage and inspiration from the motto : Ignoramus, in hoc signo 

 lab or emus. 









