346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE SEEVICE OE ZOOLOGY TO INTELLECTUAL PKOGEESS 1 



By Professor WILLIAM A. LOCY 



NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 



~TT" NDOUBTEDLY the progress of zoology has played an important 

 U part in the intellectual development of civilized mankind, but 

 the way in which it has moulded thought is but vaguely appreciated by 

 most people. On that account it is my purpose to discuss the question 

 of the service of zoology to intellectual progress. 



We speak of the intellectual development of civilized mankind, 

 meaning thereby the general level of mental development that any 

 people has attained; and we observe that the circumstance that chiefly 

 sets one people on a pinnacle higher than another people is their degree 

 of intellectual development. 



There is nothing that affects us all more closely than that our young 

 people should learn to think straight, and that they should ally them- 

 selves with the thought of their time, and take part in it, because this 

 mental life of ours is remaking for us our ideas of the universe in which 

 we live. It is not peopling it with phantasies and dreams so much as 

 with realities. There was never a time before when realities were so 

 carefully sought after. 



If we look into history we shall see that there has been a ruling 

 power in the mental life of different peoples characteristic of every age, 

 such as the mental devotion of the Eomans to law and government, of 

 the Greeks to art and philosophical disquisitions, of the people of the 

 middle ages to mystical metaphysics and theological dogma, and so on. 



Let us now ask : " What is the dominant note in intellectual life to- 

 day?" Is it not a greater care to determine the truth? Is it not the 

 investigating spirit? Is it not that spirit which we may designate 

 generically as the scientific spirit? Perhaps great material prosperity 

 is the most evident aspect of life to-day, but in the mental sphere there 

 is certainly a disposition to analyze, to experiment and to arrive at con- 

 clusions by the method of observation and reasoning. 



This situation is very different from the one from which the civilized 

 world has recently emerged. A former state prevailed in which author- 

 ity was declared to be the source of knowledge. In the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, and earlier, men believed things not because they could be shown 

 to be true, but because some one had said they were true. In order to 

 crush out dissent the authority for a certain statement was quoted, and 

 the authority cited was usually one of the ancient writers. 



1 The annual address before the Iowa State Academy of Science, April 30, 

 1909. 



