Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/286

282 and sexual instincts, is a conspicuous and remarkable illustration of this truth, and the so-called economic interpretation of human life and society is an illustration from a different angle of the same thing. From the natural history standpoint, on the other hand, there is no more question about the reality and validity and fundamentality of man's higher attributes than of his lower attributes, for it recognizes that the attributes of natural objects, being the very fundamentals of knowledge itself, never are, and seemingly never can be, reduced or explained by referring them to the attributes of other bodies lower in the scale. Its office is not to find something more fundamental and elemental behind attributes either high or low, but to make sure of the validity and generality of all attributes and then get them into a consistent scheme of classification. It, consequently, in the very nature of its procedure, has to fix upon standards of value and importance of attributes. It is in position to accept—nay, more, from the very nature of its undertaking, it must accept men like all other beings and objects in the full range of their natures.

But while I am emphasizing the belief that the natural history way of viewing the world is capable of meeting the deepest needs of man's nature, while the materialistic can not possibly do this, I would wish to make it quite clear that this is not my main motive, as a man of science, in defending the natural history standpoint. Primarily, my position is, that the natural history standpoint is the only one that is in accord with both the historic development of natural knowledge and the fundamental nature of knowledge itself, as well as with the processes by which it is acquired. And I should like to establish the claim that when the scientific interpretation of nature is genuinely sound, as judged by its own undertakings and best interests, it will encourage in every way the fullest and freest development and expression and satisfaction of the whole gamut of man's nature consistent with the healthful coordination of all the independent parts thereof; that is, consistent with the whole of life, individual and social.

And this brings me to the focus of the evening's enterprise: The chance and the duty of natural history to beneficently influence the attitude of people generally toward the world—toward nature, man and society. You will not, I trust, have understood me to mean natural history in any restrictive sense. As I am thinking of it, it includes every aspect of knowledge that aims to find out in the most comprehensive and accurate way possible, the make-up of the world outside our own heads. The distinctive thing about it is not so much how far its knowledge shall reach, as is the character of what that knowledge shall be. The goal of its striving is not to understand the constitution of the matter of which the world is composed, but of the world itself. Physical geography, geology, mineralogy, oceanography and astronomy are