DEVONIAN FISHES OF IOWA 43 



and refuse to be cast down amid the realm of vague and transi- 

 tory ideas. They possess real and immediate values, and pro- 

 foundly affect the attitude of modern science, as will be seen 

 from one or two typical illustrations. The first of these com- 

 prises a sense of the immeasurable, and indeed inconceivable 

 length of time that life-processes have been at work on our planet, 

 the chain of forms persisting in unbroken succession and ever- 

 varying transformation since its earliest manifestations down to 

 the exuberance and complexity of the world of today. And the 

 second bids us contemplate not only the vast antiquity of life, 

 but, which is still more impressive, the almost infinitely slow, 

 gradual, often imperceptible advance in the scale of development, 

 yet nevertheless indicating a constant tendency toward perfec- 

 tion. Here if anywhere stands revealed to us, not the operation 

 of blind forces amid the eternal flux of things, but a supreme 

 intelligence manifesting itself through forever unchancing uni- 

 versal laws. 



Many examples might be chosen to show how these thoughts 

 are reflected by scientific workers of our day : we will, however, 

 single out but the two following in closing. The first is from 

 Poincare, in his essay on The Value of Science; the second is 

 from Suess, founder of the "new geology," and is contained in 

 the final passage of The Face of the Earth. 



Says the former : "All that is not thought is pure nothingness ; 

 since we can think only thought and all the words we use to speak 

 of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something 

 other than thought, is therefore an affirmation which can have 

 no meaning. And yet — strange contradiction for those who be- 

 lieve in time — geologic history shows us that life is only a short 

 episode between two eternities of death, and that, even in this 

 episode, conscious thought has lasted and will last only a mo- 

 ment. Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. 

 But it is this gleam which is everything. ' ' * 



*The salient thought here recalls one of Pascal's Pensees, to which we have 

 already once referred: "All our dignity consists in thought. It is from thought 

 that we should take our point of departure, and not from space or duration, which 

 we cannot fill. Let us endeavour then to think well; this is the principle of 

 morality." The central idea contains also a perhaps unconscious reflection from 

 pagan sources. Compare, for instance, the following rendering from a fragment 

 of iEschylus: "Pauvre espece humaine, qu'ephemere est ta sagesse, rien de solide, 

 l'ombre d'une fumee." 



