New-York tribune., 1910-06-08

place Jonville, for the very reason that
| Joinviles place is in both history and lit
erature no minute study of the NapOleOnic
wars will teach us more than Marriott
and Marriott is as interesting as Walter
Scott. Moreover, certain at least of the
branches of science should likewise be treat
ed by masters IN the art of 1resentment, so
that the layman interested In science, no
less than the layman interested in history
shall have on his shelves classics which can
be read. Whether this wish be or be not
capable of realization, it assuredly remains
true that the great historian of the future
must essentially represent the ideal striven
after by the great historians of the past
The Industrious collector of facts occupies
an honorable but not an exalted position,
and the scientific historian who produce
books which are not literature must rest
content with the honor, substantial but not
| of the highest type, that belongs to him
who gathers material which some time some
great master shall arise to usa.
Double Method of Treatment.
Yet, while freely conceding all that can
be said of the masters of literature, we
must insist upon the historian of mankind
working in the scientific spirit and using
the treasure houses of science. He who
! would fully treat of man must know at
least something of biology, of the science
that treats of living, breathing things; and
especially of that science of evolution which
is inseparably connected with the great
name of Darwin. OF course, there is no
act parallelism between the birth. growth
and death of species in the animal world
and the BIRTH growth and death of So
cieties in the world of man. Yet there is a
certain parallelism. There are strange an
alogies; it may be that there are homol-
ogies.
| How far the resemblances between the
two sets of phenomena are more than ac-
cidental, how far biology can be used as
an aid in the Interpretation Of human his
tory, cannot at present say. The his
torian should never forget, what the high
est type of scientific man is always teach
ing us to remember, that willingness to
admit ignorance is prime factor In de-
veloping wisdom out of knowledge. Wis
dom is advanced by research which enables
us to add to knowledge; and. moreover. the
way for wisdom is made ready when men
who record facts of vast but unknown i'm
port, when asked to explain their full sig
nifcance. are willing frankly to answer
that they do not know The research
complete knowledge stands first; but sec
ond only stands the research which, while
enabling US clearly to pose the problem
also requires US to say that with our pres
ent knowledge we can offer no complete
solution.
Changes in Mammalian Life.
Let me illustrate what 1 mean by an
instance or two taken from one of the
fac hron of
the history of the higher forms of life, of
mammalian life, on this globe
| Biologists and astronomers are not
agreed as to the length of time necessary
for the changes that have taken place.
! At any rate, many hundreds of thousands
| Of years, some millions of years have
passed by since in the eocene, at the be-
ginning Of the tertiary period, we find the
traces of an abundant, varied and highly
developed mammalian life on the land
masses out Of which have grown the CONT
| nents see them to-day. The ages
swept by until. with the advent of man
substantially in the physical shape in which
! we now know him, We also find man.
malian fauna not essentially different in
kind, though widely differing in distribu-
ton, from that of the present day.
Throughout this immense period form sue
cetdS form type succeeds type, in obedi-
ence to laws of evolution, of progress and
retrogression, of development and death,
which we as yet understand only in the
most imperfect manner. AS knowledge it
Creases our wisdom is often turned into
fColishneS. and many of the phenomena
Of evolution which seemed clearly ex-
pltcable to the learned master of science
who founded these lectures. to us nowadays
| far
Many Changes Unexplained.
The scientific men of most note now diff
fer widely in their estimates of the relative
parts played in evolution by natural selec-
tion by mutation, by the inheritance of ac-
QuiYcI characteristics; and we study their
writings with a growing impression that
there are forces al work which our blinded
eyee wholly fail to apprehend: ard where
this is the case the part of wisdom is to
say that we believe we nave such and such
partial explanations but that we are not
warranted in saying that we have the whole
explanation. In tracing the history of the
development of faunal life during this
period, the age of mammals, there are
| some facts which are clearly established,
some great and sweeping changes for which
We can ascribe with certainty a reason.
There are other facts as 10 which we grope
in the dark. and vast changes. vast catas-
trophies, of which we can give no adequate
explanation.
The Meaning of New Species."'
Before Illustrating these types, let us
settle two matters of Technology.
In the changes. the development and ex-
tinction, of species must remember that
such expressions as "a new Species" or
as "a species becoming extinct" are each
commonly and indiscriminately used to eX-
press totally different and opposite mean
ings. OF course, the new species is not
new in the sense that Its ancestors ap-
peared later on the globes surface than
those of any old species tottering to ex-
tinction. Phylogenetically, each animal
| now living must necessarily trace its ances
trail descent back through countless gen
erations. through seons of time, to the
early stages of the appearance of life on
the globe All that we mean by new"
| species is that from some cause or set of
causes. one of these ancestral stems slowly
or suddenly develops into a form unlike
any that has preceded 1t: so that while in
one form Of life the ancestral type Is con-
tinuously repeated and the old species con-
tinues to exist in another form of life there
is a deviation from the ancestral type and
a new species appears.
Definitions Of Extinction.
Similarly extinction of species is q
term which has two entirely different mean
tngs The type may become extinct by