REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I918 I27 



democracy that recognizes in ignorance its greatest menace, that 

 strictly safeguards the suffrage and honors the competent individual 

 and thus has been made safe for the world, will emerge triumphant 

 and the world will in truth be safe for it. 



The signers of our immortal Declaration of Independence are 

 freely accused of audacity and mendacity when they put their names 

 to the proposition that all men are created free and equal. No 

 other sentence in that charter of our liberties has evoked more 

 challenge. But that condition seems to be the heritage of Nature. 

 Are not the individuals of all the ages born free within the physical 

 limitations of the class to which they pertain or the stage of physical 

 evolution they have reached? And are they not, under normal con- 

 ditions, equal physically and before the world into which they have 

 come? Equally they are dependent on, armored and equipped by 

 their heritage, blue eyes and black eyes alike. With present valua- 

 tion of factors of heredity and variation there is but little reservation 

 in the reply we must make to these questions. Men are, by the 

 eternal and immutable laws of paleontology, free and equal. We 

 do not say that they have been born to an equality of opportunity 

 nor does our Declaration of Independence advance any such intima- 

 tion. That is a hypothetical condition which Nature does not under- 

 take to supply. Blue eyes and black eyes do not look out on the 

 same opportunity; if they did and if Nature's organic creations were 

 born to such equality of opportunity there could have resulted only 

 equality and uniformity of result. In other words, equality of oppor- 

 tunity in paleontology and in human history would mean a world 

 of life with the chief factors of evolution eliminated ; indeed another 

 world than this of ours in whose scheme there could be little place 

 for the higher expressions of life. If there had been eqtiality of 

 opportunity through the ages of paleontologic history there would 

 be no men in the world today. The state needs guidance in wisdom 

 when dealing with the effort to create equality of opportunity for 

 its citizens. Such a state presents no attractions to me and I know 

 I shall not be called upon to live in it. 



In a recent letter addressed to the members of the geology and 

 paleontology committee of the National Research Council I wrote 

 a paragraph which I trust you will allow me to repeat here : 



It will be time for us, as the clashing of arms dies away, to ask ourselves if 

 the teaching of geology by lecture or by pen has been sufficiently imbued with 

 cultural and spiritual influences which the science can so freely impart. He 

 is a teacher only after the German model who fails or does not seek to enforce 

 the broadest bearings of his teachings and I trust that, in our intimate relations. 



