286 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 843 



law which alike makes the flower bloom 

 and the philosopher think, the one law 

 which governs all the world save only 

 human society, are reasonably content in 

 our security that we have chosen the good 

 part and we decline to subject our stand- 

 ard^ to those of the eminently companion- 

 able and high-minded citizenry of the com- 

 munities in which it has pleased God to 

 place us. 



Paleontology is, in my oft-asserted con- 

 viction, the most far-reaching of all the 

 sciences. In it lies the root of all truth, 

 out of it must come the solution of the com- 

 plex enigmas of human society. Whatever 

 it may be in the first instance, it is in the 

 event that greatest study of mankind — 

 man. It is the panoramic display of the 

 life of the ages, the expression of the or- 

 ganic law of a hundred successive worlds. 

 To quote the expression of Deperet: it has 

 won its independence and is now marching 

 hand in hand with biology toward the dis- 

 covery of the history of the development 

 of living being's and the laws which con- 

 trol their transformations. We unbar its 

 doors and unlock its secrets only with the 

 key of the present. To me it seems idle to 

 fatuity to magnify the supposed imperfec- 

 tions in the record of life on the earths 

 that have passed. Such efforts are con- 

 stantly recurring, and when taken out of 

 their proper setting are the last resort of 

 the theorist and the special pleader. The 

 known fauna and flora of the living earth 

 is a percentage of the actual fauna and 

 flora, and only in less degree is the known 

 life of the past since Azoic time to the ac- 

 tual life of that past. The argument here 

 has never been adequately presented, the 

 facts never fairly marshalled, and we all 

 too easily in our self confidence are wont 

 to forget that after only a few brief years 

 of study of the earth we still are standing 

 at the threshold of the earth's history and 



with a few facts in our possession grow 

 impatient to habilitate the earth, while its 

 deeper chambers still conceal records re- 

 served for our successors to uncover. In 

 the long ages which lie before the human 

 race must come through greater wealth of 

 knowledge a clearer view and more fruit- 

 ful application of the truth we seek. To- 

 day we begin to see the broad generaliza- 

 tions of the biologic law as based on 

 paleontology which twenty years ago we 

 believed so secure and illuminating, slowly 

 yielding under the weight of accumulating 

 evidence, and we should realize more 

 deeply than ever and should, I believe, en- 

 deavor to leave the impress on our suc- 

 cessors that it is still more knowledge that 

 we require — it is still the facts we want, 

 rather than the apparent inferences from 

 those we have. Were demonstration of the 

 propriety of this attitude required, let me 

 venture to cite, as an interested onlooker, 

 the enormous volume of unpublished data 

 bearing on the life of Cambrian time which 

 has been brought together by the secretary 

 of the Smithsonian, facts which when 

 known and assimilated must modify nearly 

 every published conception of the develop- 

 ment of life on the early earth. A few 

 years ago at the opening of this century I 

 ventured to address a personal letter to 

 some ten men recognized as European 

 leaders in geological work and thought, 

 asking an expression as to what, in their 

 judgment, would be the problems before 

 the geologists of the coming generation. 

 The replies were all alike in essence and 

 reducible to this: The acquisition of more 

 facts. To-day we see only through a glass 

 darkly into our cathedral where the truth 

 lies enshrined. 



We know well enough, indeed it is a 

 healthy sign that we are growing painfully 

 conscious, that the standards of our best 

 civilization are not those which have been 



