Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/318

314 the battle go on to its natural end while he forges new arms for new struggles in new places. There was no need for Darwin to combat the attacks made on the Darwinian theory. It could take care of itself. There were better things for the master to look after. In fact all scientific controversies are essentially unscientific. It is a little more than a century since the great war of the Plutonists and Neptunists was on in geology. The battle was not fought out by the doughty combatants on either side, but by men outside the struggle who brought new truths unknown to the controversialist. Desmarest mapped the volcanoes of Auvergne, and his answer to the question as to the origin of deposits was simply, 'Go and see.' The rocks will tell you. And in London the answer of Sedgwick and Murchison was not different. Let us make a geological map of England; then the rocks will tell us where they came from and the conditions of their deposit.

Yet whatever the discouragements within or without, we have in America two splendid sources of encouragement in scientific research. Ours is a motor country with a democratic people. Every impulse is toward action. Each thought finds its end in doing something. And this makes for zeal in science. It makes for the saving in time. It makes for singleness of heart. For to engage in scientific research is really to do something. It is not talk. It is not meditation. It has an end in view and this end must be reached by activity. Science is positive, aggressive, dynamic. It does not spring from lethargy, and the lands of physical inactivity are lands of scientific ignorance. To be in the forefront of action is a pledge of ultimate leadership in science. This pledge America has given and this she has begun to redeem. It is already true that no other country in the world has done so much as our own in scientific investigation carried on for the benefit of the people and at the people's expense.

The spirit of democracy favors the advance of science. Democracy seems at first to level, because it tears down all artificial props. All men start alike, and all ideas must struggle alike for existence. The tradition of a thousand years to a democracy, is, to borrow Huxley's phrase, 'but as the hearsay of yesterday.' And this should be true of all tradition in the face of truth. A truth is valued for what it is—nothing more. In a democracy truth stands on its own feet, as a man ought to, and it may be assailed from any side. Tradition does not help it, and there is no weight in authority. Democracy at least brings each one to his own. It is not a leveler. It is the great unequalizer, the power which makes each man equal to his own fate, regardless of the fate of all other men. And as no two men deserve the same in life, fair play must end in final inequality.

In the field in which I have worked, that of systematic zoology, it is easy to notice the influence of political conditions on the individual point of view. The American worker applies his rules regardless of