2 Field Museum of Natural History 



Field Museum by this extraordinary man (Chicago 

 Record-Herald, 4th of February, 1912). At that time 

 the site for the new building was not yet decided upon, 

 and his utterances are almost prophetic: — 



"Among the first four of the larger and richer 

 assemblages of those objects which make for the edu- 

 cation of the world-man along scientific lines, the 

 Museum itself imposes upon the city, the state, and the 

 nation a demand for such a location as will insure for 

 it the leadership of the educative forces in these 

 directions, not only for Chicago, but for the whole 

 country. 



"It is not as if a tremendous library were to miss 

 its end and aim in popularizing intelligence — for books 

 can be loaned and circulated, and books can be printed 

 and reprinted by the thousands; — it is not as if some 

 superior collection of jewels, either in painting, sculp- 

 ture, architecture, or some temple of music or elo- 

 quence shall be placed, where the common people may 

 not partake of its beneficent culture! Perhaps the 

 coming man may be able to do his work as a thinker 

 and as a creator of new and valuable things, without 

 so much of these. 



"But the scientific method is the method of the 

 future. The art and power of thinking along the lines 

 of nature and history are of the highest in value. The 

 secret and mastery of classification, such as the merest 

 child may comprehend in visiting this Museum — these 

 are of critical importance to the mind of the future. 

 Man's past in nature and in the history of his efforts 

 at creating society — these are the tremendous and un- 

 failing background which must be taken into the mind 

 of the coming man, or he will have no foreground! 

 Retrospective and prospective in human thinking and 

 doing are vitally correlative. The Field Museum is 

 indeed our crown, and we must all agree that the center 



[2] 



