8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 8o 



suggestions as to the significance of the preceding record, or absence 

 of record, have not only given a clear understanding of what we see, 

 but have led us to appreciate as well the true significance of those 

 portions of the record for which we have as yet no complete 

 interpretation. 



Doctor Walcott recognized that, of all the ideas in the field of 

 knowledge, there is none more important than the suggestion that 

 the life world as we know it in paleontological history has tended 

 definitely to build itself forward from age to age. He realized that 

 this principle furnishes one of the essential elements for belief in 

 the possibility of continuing progress in the living world as a whole 

 including man — a belief or faith which is clearly an indispensable 

 ingredient of human happiness whether it be expressed in our 

 philosophy, in our religion, or in the affairs of everyday life. 



But Doctor Walcott did not assume that science can present a 

 complete explanation of everything that is, or was, or that will be. 

 He saw the long story spread before us, as we trace the intricate and 

 fragmentary records through the rocks. He understood its meaning 

 to us, as have few students whose privilege it has been to walk back 

 along the path of history. On the basis of his experience he visualized 

 more clearly than Darwin the two terminal fields of our historical 

 series — the future, of which we can judge mainly by the past, and 

 at the other end the seemingly abrupt initiation of the living world. 

 His effort was consciously directed toward attainment of an inter- 

 pretation of the beginning of our record as we find it, and on the 

 basis of facts and reason, rather than upon purely mystical construc- 

 tion of a sequence without data. 



His work, together with that of the many others who have helped 

 in the initial unravelling of the tangled threads, has shown in large 

 measure the correctness of Darwin's assumption that while the long 

 record from present back to Cambrian and earlier time serves to 

 define certain general principles of primary importance, we are not 

 yet permitted to see the whole of the panorama. But this situation 

 need not today serve as an argument against the idea of organic 

 development which Darwin discussed with such marvelous honesty 

 in presentation of argument. It means only that time is vastly longer 

 than Darwin saw it, and from the wreckage of the most ancient stages 

 of the world, the changing story may be hard to read or may perhaps 

 have been erased completely from the book. 



It is not an uncommon belief that the fortunes and achievement of 

 outstanding characters in history depend in large measure upon 

 chance. The incident which seems to turn the trend of life, as we 



