Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/312

308 make from nature a faithful transcript. It has been said that all advance in knowledge is really quantitative. We must come down to micro-measurements if we are to see more deeply than others have seen, if we are to add to the store of human knowledge.

On the great chart made by the descriptive naturalist the experimenters locate their work. As well try to study geography without maps as to work at the great problems of geographic distribution, without correct faunal lists of species. To study wisely the origin of species, the evolution of forms without knowing species, many species, and knowing them as species, is impossible, as many naturalists have clearly shown by the method of awful example. To fill out the great chart of the descriptive chemists, experiments in chemistry are carried on, and in some degree the same condition holds for physics, astronomy and the other sciences. The word science has been defined as knowledge set in order. A large adjunct of research, even if it be not part of research itself, is the work of setting knowledge in order. Very often the man who brings clearness out of confusion has contributed more to science than the discoverer of the facts with which he deals. It takes a high order of mind to sift the evidence, to brush aside the cobwebs, to bring forth the truth. To do this well, one should have large experience with creative work. It was not the least of Darwin's merits that he was able to deal with the records of thousands of men, to bring out clearly what these records showed, though not one of the actual discoverers even dimly suspected the meaning of their work. At the same time Darwin was not once deceived by the errors of other men. Each record he accepted from some one else remains unimpeached to this day. To set knowledge in order requires a master in the value of evidence, and for this reason the authors of index, record, anzeiger and bibliography should be held in esteem in science. To do this work one must know how to do it, and to know how is to have had already a large experience in the kind of work which the index or bibliography is designed to help.

Setting in order the results of research may not demand as high an order of genius as is needed to push forward the line of advance, yet most great investigators have found relating their own work to the work of others a welcome as well as a necessary task. It is the duty of every investigator to enable his successors to start farther along than he was able to do. To enter into the work of others implies that our predecessors have smoothed the path and cleared the way to further advances. Whence the experimenter should not look down on the bibliographer or even the compiler, providing that these do their work with a master's mind and conscience. Good work in the poorest fields is better than bad work in the richest. The progress of science depends not so much on the field actually worked, not even on the method chosen, but rather on the brains, conscience and courage a man puts into his work.