THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. 



307 



series of descent, or rather of ascent, we find a 

 man just the same as we are ourselves. 



Only ten years ago, when a skull was found, 

 perhaps in peat or in lake-dwellings, or in some 

 old cave, men always fancied that they detected 

 in it evidences of a savage and quite undeveloped 

 state ; in short, they were ready to find the mon- 

 key type. There is now much less of this sort of 

 thing. The old troglodytes, lake-inhabitants, and 

 peat-people, turn out to have been quite a respect- 

 able society. They have heads of such a size that 

 many a person now living would feel happy to 

 possess one like them. Our French neighbors 

 have certainly warned us not to infer too much 

 from the great size of these heads ; it may be 

 possible that they were not filled only with nerve- 

 substance, but that the old brains had more in- 

 termediary tissue than is the case nowadays, 

 and that their nerve-substance, in spite of the 

 size of the brain, remained at a low state of de- 

 velopment. However, this is only a friendly con- 

 versation which, to some extent, is held as a sup- 

 port of weak minds. On the whole, we must 

 really acknowledge that no fossil type of a lower 

 human development exists. Indeed, if we take 

 all the fossil human remains that have been found 

 hitherto and compare them with what the pres- 

 ent offers, we can maintain with certainty that 

 among the present generation there is a much 

 larger number of relatively low-type individuals 

 than among the fossils hitherto known. That 

 only the highest geniuses of the Quaternary 

 period enjoyed the good-fortune of being pre- 

 served for us I dare not suppose. Commonly 

 conclusions are drawn from the condition of a 

 single fossil object with respect to the majority 

 of others which have not been found. But I will 

 not do this. I will not maintain that the whole 

 race was as good as the few skulls which have 

 been found. But I must say that one fossil 

 monkey-skull or man-ape skull which really be- 

 longed to a human proprietor has never been 

 found. Every addition which we have obtained 

 in the material inventory of objects for discussion 

 has moved us farther away from the problem to 

 be solved. Now, of course, we cannot avoid the 

 consideration that perhaps it was on some quite 

 special spot of the earth that Tertiary man lived. 



This is quite possible, since during the last few 

 years the remarkable discovery has been made in 

 North America that the fossil ancestors of our 

 horses occur in countries from which the horse 

 had entirely disappeared for a long time. When 

 America was discovered there were no horses 

 there at all ; in the very place where the ances- 

 tors of our horses had lived no living horse had 

 remained. Thus it may also be that Tertiary man 

 has existed in Greenland or Lemuria, and will 

 again be brought to light from under the ground 

 somewhere or other. But, as a fact, we must 

 positively acknowledge that there is always a 

 sharp limit between man and the ape. We can- 

 not teach, we cannot designate as a revelation of 

 science the doctrine that man descends from the ape 

 or from any other animal. We can but desig- 

 nate this as a problem, however probable it may 

 appear. 



The experience of the past should have been 

 for us sufficient warning not needlessly to give 

 way to the temptation of drawing premature con- 

 clusions. Here, gentlemen, is the difficulty that 

 faces every scientific man who addresses the pub- 

 lic. He who writes or speaks to the public should 

 exercise double care now in finding out how much 

 of what he knows and says is objectively true. 

 He must as much as possible have all his induc- 

 tive amplifications, all his analogous reasonings 

 printed in small type underneath the text, and 

 only what is objectively true embodied in the 

 text. In that way, gentlemen, we may perhaps 

 succeed in winning an ever-increasing circle of 

 followers and fellow-workers, and in effectively 

 interesting the educated public. Unless we do 

 so, gentlemen, I fear we overrate our power. 

 Old Bacon, it is true, said with justice, Scientia 

 est potentia — knowledge is power. But he also 

 defined knowledge ; and knowledge, as he under- 

 stood it, was not speculative knowledge — knowl- 

 edge of problems — but objective knowledge of 

 facts. Gentlemen, in my opinion, we shall abuse 

 our power, endanger our influence, if we do not 

 fall back on this perfectly solid, this perfectly 

 safe and impregnable ground. Thence we can, 

 as investigators, invade the domain of problems, 

 and I am convinced that every attempt of this 

 kind will then find the necessary safety and support. 



