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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



tal. There is no doubt that for us mental phe- 

 nomena pertain to certain animals, not to the 

 totality of all organic beings, not even to all 

 animals generally, and I maintain this without 

 hesitation. We have no reason yet to say that 

 the lowest animals possess psychic attributes ; we 

 find them only in the higher animals, and with 

 perfect certainty only in the highest. 



Now I will admit with pleasure that certain 

 gradations, certain gradual transitions, certain 

 points can be found, where from mental phenom- 

 ena one gets to phenomena of simply material or 

 physical nature. I certainly do not declare that 

 it will never be possible to bring psychical phe- 

 nomena into immediate connection with physical 

 ones. All I say is, that at present we are not 

 justified in setting down this possible connection 

 as a scientific doctrine, and I must distinctly op- 

 pose the attempts to enlarge our doctrines pre- 

 maturely in this manner, and to bring again and 

 again into the foreground as a positive statement 

 what we so often proved a useless problem. We 

 must distinguish strictly between what we want 

 to teach and what we want to investigate. What 

 we investigate are problems. We need not keep 

 them to ourselves ; we may communicate them to 

 the whole world and say, " There is the problem, 

 this is what we are trying to find ;" like Columbus, 

 who, when he started to discover India, made no 

 absolute secret of it, but who eventually did not 

 find India, but America. And the same happens 

 to us not rarely. We start to prove certain 

 problems which we suppose to be perfectly cor- 

 rect, and in the end we find something quite dif- 

 ferent, which we never expected. The investiga- 

 tion of such problems, in which the whole nation 

 may be interested, must be open to everybody. 

 That is the liberty of research. But the problem 

 is not at once to be the object of instruction. 

 When we teach we must confine ourselves to 

 those smaller domains which are already so large, 

 and which we have actually mastered. 



Gentlemen. I am convinced that only with a 

 resignation of this kind, which we impose on 

 ourselves, which we exercise toward the rest of 

 the world, shall we be enabled to conduct the 

 fight against our enemies with a victorious result. 

 All attempts to transform our problems into doc- 

 trines, to introduce our theories as the basis of a 

 plan of education, particularly the attempt simply 

 to depose the Church, and to replace its dogma 

 by a religion of descent, these attempts, I say, 

 must fail, and their failure would at the same 

 •time very seriously compromise the position of 

 science generally. 



Therefore let us be moderate, let us exercise 

 resignation, so as to set forth even our favorite 

 problems, always as problems only, and let us 

 never tire of saying : " Do not take this for con- 

 firmed truth ; bear in mind that this may perhaps 

 be changed ; only for the moment we are of 

 opinion that it may be true." 



By way of illustration I will add another ex- 

 ample. At this moment there are probably few 

 naturalists who are not of opinion that man is 

 allied to the rest of the animal world, and that a 

 connection will possibly be found, if indeed not 

 with apes, then perhaps in some other direction, 

 as is now the opinion of Prof. Vogt. 



I acknowledge openly that this is a desidera- 

 tum of science. I am quite prepared for it, and 

 I should not for a moment wonder nor be alarmed 

 if the proof were found that the ancestors of man 

 belonged to some other order of vertebrates. 

 You know that just at present I work by prefer- 

 ence in the field of anthropology, but yet I must 

 declare that every step of positive progress which 

 we have made in the domain of prehistoric an- 

 thropology has really moved us further away 

 from the proof of this connection. At this mo- 

 ment anthropology studies the question of fossil 

 man. From man in the present " period of crea- 

 tion " we have descended to the Quaternai-y period, 

 to that period when, as Cuvier maintained with 

 the greatest confidence, man did not exist. Now - 

 adays Quaternary man is a generally accepted fact 

 Quaternary man is no longer a problem, but a real 

 doctrine. But Tertiary man, on the contrary, is 

 a problem, though a problem which is already 

 being discussed according to the evidence of facts. 

 There are objects already about which discus- 

 sions are going on as to whether they may be 

 admitted as proofs of the existence of man during 

 the Tertiary period. We do not merely speculate 

 on the subject, but we discuss certain objects, 

 whether they may be recognized as witnesses for 

 the existence of man during the Tertiary period. 

 The question raised is answered differently, ac- 

 cording to whether these objective material ele- 

 ments of proof are considered sufficient or not. 

 Even men who, like the Abbe Bourgeois, are de- 

 cided ecclesiastics, are convinced that man lived 

 during the Tertiary period ; for them Tertiary man 

 is already a doctrine. For us, who are of a more 

 critical nature, Tertiary man is still a problem, 

 but, as we must acknowledge, a problem worthy 

 of discussion. Let us, therefore, for the present 

 remain at Quaternary man, whom we really find. 

 If we study this Quaternary, fossil man, who ought 

 after all to stand nearer to our ancestors in the 



