128 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



you will be suflSciently indulgent to permit me this expression: That, to the larger 

 number of our students, these applications of the science are of far higher moment 

 than the mere increase of their store of information. 



Without loss of proper dignity or curtailment of accuracy and surely with 

 no surrender of respect for the theme, nor with imputation of preaching, the 

 higher and fuller meanings of the science can be kept in sight and its influence 

 be elevated in the thought of men. 



Commenting on this an accomplished paleontologist has said that 

 he feared such applications of doctrine except by men of protracted 

 and intensive training and of judgment refined by clear perceptions. 

 I hold with him; but I believe too that no teaching of our science 

 reasonably derived, even if presented in a half light, will not lead 

 upward rather than down. 



These are but a few thoughts out of many. I am compelled to 

 make them few. But the theme is all-embracing. The recognition 

 of its philosophy, coextensive with the phenomena of life, is of 

 momentous importance to the new order. It is the lamp unto our 

 feet and the light unto our path. The majesty of its promise, a 

 philosophy reaching from the heights to the depths, a field of labor 

 fascinating in its details and uplifting in its reactions, ought to 

 draw to itself a body of serious-minded men and women who would 

 not sow their seed among thorns where the cares of this world and 

 the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things enter in to 

 make their labors unsatisfying. 



