Sept., ?9oo[ THE CONDOR t t7 Facts and the IJse We Make of Them. [Read before the ?qouthern Division ot tile Cooper Or- nithotogica! Ctub.]
- 1I?'. tb'csidcnt and Gentlemen:
For a month past--since work slacked up a little and I have had time to think of any- thing but skinning birds and "spoiling them by setting them up on wires," as Joe Grinnell puts it--I have been haunted by a phautom of a duty uuperformed. I have felt that, in return for the privilege of belonging to this genial Club, I ought to at least tC?' to do something, as others of you have done, to brighten our meetings after the disposal of routine business. Giving to this the name "duty" recalls what Spencer says (I'rin. of Ethics, No. 46, pp. 127, et seq.) as to the disappearauee of tile feeling of obligation (duty)when the moral lnotive has reached its complete development. "The truly honest man, here and there to be found," he says--naively recogniziug the fact that we are not all of us truly honest---" The truly honest ?nan, when he discharges an equitable claim on him, is without thought of self-com- pulsion. tie does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it." Now, while I do not wish to pose as more honest than nly fellow nlen, I do wish you to believe that the fulfilhnent of this that I have, for couvenience, called a duty, gives me "a simple feeling of satisfaction." To me it would be an unmixed pleasure were it not for the fear that it may not be a pleasure to you-- that I may, in plain words, bore you and vex yot?. At the risk, however, of "getting myself disliked" I feel impelled to offer you my views on the kind of work we should do, believing that we are not doing our best. Inlay be entirely wrong, and it is rilerely for the purpose of opening up the discussion of a question of paramount importance, that I do what a more politic, but not more si?lcere, friend might shirk. i am going to rub some of you the wrong way. I cannot give you the kind of talk you are used to on the collecting oF eggs, uor on the results of an expert oruithologist's observations of bird life. I have, of course, in my forty odrl years of close association with our relatives of the woods, the prairies, the mountains and the lakes, uoted habits and idiosyncrasies very interesting aud very iustructive; but I am sure all of you have seen or read of the same thing? and I could not put the old material in a new dress that would ?end it a fresh interest. When I was a young man I had the good fortune to be, for SOlUe years, on terms of the closest intinmcy with a very thorough student of nature, a man of really unusl?al l)raill, com- bining a keen, eahu, cold, almost cruel reason- ing power with the poetical tenlperament, the vivid imagination, lacking which the scientist is but a one-sided creature. It is this power of inmgiuation--under pereet control, of course, and nourished by a geuerous diet of solid fact --that made possible tile brilliant results of Darwin's patient and infinitely painstaking investigations. I was very raw in those days--had tile most absurdly crude ideas of Nature's methods. I was somewhat cocky, too--pertly pig-headed-- and I did not then appreciate my friend's gen- tleness and patience in pointing out to me the absurdities I had naturally and inevitably imbibed from the teachings of parents, pastors and masters, and in setting my feet ill the only path that can lead us to the truth. I owe it to this clear-headed gentle-natured philosopher that I have not fi-ittered away my life ill the aimless acquisition of a mass of disconnected facts, lint have devoted my time to the arrang- ing and classifying of the facts that crone under my ol)servation in such manner' that they would help to a fuller and clearer conception of how things have come to be what they are? would help in tracing the path evolutiou has followed in this particular field we are studying --would assist iu comparing this phase of evolu- tion with the course of evolution in general;for it isonly by generalization thatwe reach knowledge worth attaining. This thing of collecting facts, labeling Illera and poking thenl away into sonic out-of-the-way pigeonhole of our brain, i,4 a waste of time and energy. Complete knowledge is what we should seek. "The most complete knowledge," says Spencer again, "is that knowledge of the highest degree of generality. We may know things nlore com- 'pletely than they are known through sinlple experiences, mechanically accumulated in nlemory or heaped up in 'cyclopaedias. We innst nmke, first. generali- ??ations of a simple or low order, and rise grad- ually to higher and nlore extended generali?a- tions. The ulost highly generalized truths of science are generalized and consolidated by Philosophy. Knowledge of the lowest kiud is ununified knowledge: Science is partially unified kuowledge.; Philosophy is conlpletely unified knowledge." It is the attainment of this completely unified knowledge we should strive for. Are we doiug so in follow- ing our present course ? Now, while strenuously denying guy desire to set up a hobby of lny own as a better one to ride than yours, lily object this evening is to lead you to think seriously on this question of the value of tile facts collected by us, and the use we put them to. if I trample your crops it is only because I cannot walk around theat --I must go straight to lily object. I ?ltlt$[
