246 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. IV., No. 84. 



any one region of the earth. The river-drift men 

 are found impartially scattered from tropical India 

 through Europe to North America. If their dis- 

 tribution was by the northern approaches of the con- 

 tinent, it must have been in pre-glacial times, because, 

 as Dawkins shows, an ice-barrier must have spanned 

 the great oceans in northern latitudes. 



It seems an almost fruitless speculation, to inquire 

 into the manner of their dispersion, yet one is tempted 

 to surmise that if they originated in the tropics, then 

 submerged continents must again be restored to offer 

 the necessary means for such a dispersal. If, on the 

 other hand, their home was in the north or south 

 temperate zone, and the distribution circumpolar 

 (and this seems more probable), then we have another 

 evidence of the wide separation which the race had 

 acquired, at that early day, from its tropical relatives 

 the apes. Whatever the facts may ultimately show, 

 this unparalleled distribution of a people in the 

 lowest stages of savagery proves beyond question that 

 man must have pre-existed for an immense period of 

 time; for, with the known fixity of low savage tribes, 

 the time required to disperse this people over the whole 

 earth can only be measured by geological centuries. 



The farther we penetrate into the past, and ascer- 

 tain some definite horizon of man's occurrence, other 

 observers in widely different regions of the earth 

 bring to light traces of man's existence in equally 

 low horizons. The evidence of the remoteness of 

 man's existence in time and space is so vast, that, to 

 borrow an astronomical term, no parallax has thus 

 far been established by which we can even faintly 

 approximate the distance of the horizon in which he 

 first appeared. From this fact we are justified in the 

 assumption that the progenitors of quaternary man, 

 under different genera possibly, must be sought for 

 in the tertiaries. 



Science will not gain by the erection of any theo- 

 retical barriers against tertiary man, until such defi- 

 nite forms are met with that shall reasonably settle 

 the beds in which he first occurred. We know in 

 what rocks it would be obviously absurd to look for 

 his remains or the remains of any mammal. So long, 

 however, as forms are found in the lowest beds of the 

 tertiaries, having the remotest affinity to his order, 

 we must not cease our scrutiny in scanning unbiased 

 even the rocks of this horizon, for traces of that 

 creature who, until within a few short years, was re- 

 garded as some six thousand years old, and who, in 

 despite of protest and prejudice, has asserted his 

 claim to an antiquity so great, and a dispersion so 

 profound, that thus far no tendency to a convergence 

 of his earliest traces has been demonstrated. 



SCIENTIFIC METHODS AND SCIENTIFIC 

 KNOWLEDGE IN COMMON AFFAIRS. 1 



Economic science and statistics can hardly do less 

 than to promote the use of scientific methods, and 



1 Abstract of an address before tbe section of economic sci- 

 ence and statistics of tbe American association for tbe advance- 

 ment of science, at Philadelphia, Sept. 4, by G-en. John Eaton, 

 U. S. commissioner of education, Washington, vice-president of 

 the section. 



disseminate scientific knowledge in common life. 

 Science has had a hard struggle with ignorance. A 

 host neither small nor amiable has been arrayed 

 against it. What wonder, then, that it has first 

 intrenched itself where the use of instruments of 

 precision and the demonstrations of mathematics 

 separated it from the critical issues of man's every- 

 day conduct? Nevertheless, history may in the re- 

 mote future express surprise that in America, where 

 the power and conduct of man are so important, 

 science has so long neglected the rugged issues as- 

 signed to this section. 



There is now no good reason why scientific men 

 should neglect to apply scientific methods to the 

 economy and statistics of e very-day life. If mathe- 

 matical principles and processes are applicable to the 

 statics and dynamics of physics, why not also to the 

 statics and dynamics of society? If useful in econo- 

 mics, why not in personal and domestic life? True, 

 in all questions of conduct, we must include man's 

 free action of will, and leave room for doubt or for 

 alternatives or for contrary choice; yet how many 

 questions of daily life are left to the merest conjec- 

 ture, to superstition, or to the wild estimaginings, and 

 how large a percentage of blunders might be avoided ! 

 We smile that a pagan commander moved his army 

 by the flight of a crow or by the aspect of an animal's 

 entrails; but how many merchants sail their ships, 

 and agriculturists plant or harvest, by the guesses of 

 charlatan weather-prophets, or how many actions 

 are determined by seeing the moon over the right 

 shoulder, or by confidence in a horseshoe! Myriads 

 of groundless notions to-day affect the conduct of 

 personal and public affairs. It is time for science to 

 enter. Many a juggler would then lose his business, 

 many a prejudice have to be given up. Pockets, 

 policies, and politics are involved in the issue. The 

 disposition to revel in the marvellous, to dally with 

 uncertainties, and to treat all mystery as concealing 

 the superhuman, would be disturbed. The phrases 

 ' we guess,' ' we reckon,' are giving way to the phrases 

 ' we will inquire,' ' we will try to know.' 



Sir William Thompson has said, "Accurate and 

 minute measurement seems to the non-scientific 

 imagination as a less lofty and dignified work than 

 looking for something new; " but he adds, " Nearly all 

 the grandest discoveries of science have been but the 

 rewards of measurement and patient, long-continued 

 labor in the minute shifting of numerical results." 

 Thus the methods of economic science are the same 

 as those of other branches of science, while the latter 

 also yield statistical results. 



It is unfortunate that scientific men aspire so 

 exclusively to original research. We need men to 

 couple love of science with love of mankind. Liv- 

 ingstone desired to explore Africa for science, but as 

 much so for the civilization of benighted Africans. 

 Is science for man, or man for science ? Is not bene- 

 fit to mankind the real measure of the good that is 

 in science? 



Doubtless Stephenson was more perplexed with the 

 mood of the parliamentary committee than with the 

 questions of improving his steam-engine. From a 



