JAMES DWIGHT DANA 265 



The consideration of the life and the scientific work of James 

 Dwight Dana has already made us acquainted with some of his 

 most marked traits of character. Yet it may be worth while to 

 conclude this sketch with an attempt at a picture of the man. 



The characteristic that most impressed all who came to know 

 him, whether through the reading of his works or through personal 

 intercourse, wasjhis profoun^ sens? pf ^th 



With absolute sincerity he sought to know the truth and to com- 

 municate to others the truth as it had revealed itself to him. No 



to 



pride in what is wrongly called cpn.sisten.cy wrought in him un- 

 willingness to accept new light. Even to extreme old age he 

 remained hospitablejto new truth ancTready to change opinions^ 

 it was said ot a very learned man that his fx>rte was science and 

 his foible was omniscience. Dana had no such foible. He seemed 

 to take pleasure in confessing ignorance or error. In the third 

 edition of his System of Mineralogy, when he cast aside the clas- 

 sification and the Latin binomial nomenclature of the former 

 editions, he wrote in the preface: "XJ^D-fc always warning 

 fickleness. But not to change with the advance of science is 

 worse; it is persistence in error.'' He said to me, in speaking 

 of the changes introduced in the third edition of the Manual oj 

 Geology, "When a man is too, plH *n l*-a.pTj hyj rraHy |p ffie- or 

 at least he is not n't to live." The frankness with which he changed 

 his opinions and his teachings on the subject of evolution, when 

 past threescore years of age, is a striking illustration of his loyalty 

 to truth, and of the perennial intellectual youth which is the re- 

 ward that truth gives to her loyal worshipers. The same exqui- 

 sitely delicate sense of truth which made him so ready to change 

 opinions, made it easy for him to hold opinion in abeyance. He 

 knew that he diclnot know some things ? and he would not assert 

 plllUSllile LUllJeilui'es as truths/ Professor Farrington has pre- 

 * Served some ofthe aphorisms which he uttered from time to time, 

 and which might well be adopted as maxims by all students of 

 science. 1 "I think it better to doubt until you know. Too many 

 people assert and then let others doubt." "I have found it best 

 i Journal of Geology, vol. 3, p. 335. 



