120 THE LARGER ASPECTS OF FARM LIFE. 



and we must remember that nature is relentless and remorse- 

 less; the quality of mercy is unknown to her; she does not 

 consider abuses but conditions, and, whether weakness is 

 occasioned by misfortune or perverseness, the penalty is the 

 same, and is death. To fully understand this we must leave 

 farm life for a little and see what the evolutionists say. 

 Evolutionists are mostly professors, a breed which some of us 

 farmers do not esteem very highly, often referring to them as 

 "fellows with a lot of theories," using the term in the con- 

 temptuous sense of vague speculations with no basis save in 

 the mind of the speculator. This, again, is because we do not 

 know that the science of modern days is built upon facts 

 ascertained and verified with a patience and precision of 

 which we farmers have very little conception. The scientific 

 man does not, as we sometimes vainly imagine, spend his days 

 and nights in rapt but dreamy contemplation of the infinite, 

 but, on the contrary, is mostl}^ concerned with minute detail; 

 he dissects pollywogs, and extracts the bones from dead and 

 bad-smelling fish, which he patiently compares with the pet- 

 rified relics and imprints of those that died years ago. This 

 he does, not because he likes to clean fish or break rock, 

 but because he seeks to learn what has been the rule of life in 

 all ages, inferring therefrom what now the rule is and what 

 it shall be. The collection of actual facts — verified by men 

 trained to observe, upon which modern science now rests, is 

 amazing, and daily the store is increased. After some lives 

 have been spent in gathering and classifying facts in a certain 

 line, the mass begins to take shape, so that some law running 

 through it can apparently be discerned; and with that law 

 assumed to be true, more lives are spent in patiently collecting 

 other facts and comparing them with the assumed law; if all 

 facts as verified harmonize with the working hypothesis, the 

 law is strengthened and gradually tends to become part of 

 settled science; but if one undoubted essential fact be discov- 

 ered inconsistent with that law, the whole edifice of reasoning 

 is destroyed and tlio work of robuilding must be patiently 

 begun. Hence science must, above all things, be sure of its 

 facts, and so endeavors to be. 



The facts thus collected, verified, classified, and analyzed 



