ic type, the history of human races,
the development of human faculty and of social institutions, and the
evolution finally of even the highest elements of human life. These are
scientific problems, and if we are to solve them we must employ the now
familiar methods of science which only yield sure results.

We must not underestimate the many difficulties to be encountered, for the
field before us is a vast territory of complex human life and of manifold
human relations. Without prolonged exercise in scientific methods, it is
impossible to view our own kind impersonally, as we do the creatures of
lower nature. Furthermore it seems to many that an analysis of human life
and biological history, even if it is possible, must alter or degrade
mankind in some degree; this is no more true than that a knowledge of the
principles of engineering according to which the Brooklyn Bridge has been
constructed renders that structure any different or unsafe for travel. Man
remains man, whether we are in utter ignorance of his mode of origin, or
whether we know all about his ancestry and about the factors that have
made him human. It is because our species appears to occupy a superior and
isolated position above the rest of nature that the mind seems reluctant
to follow the guidance of science when it conducts its investigations into
the history of seemingly privileged human nature. And it is feared also,
that if evolution is proven for man as well as for all other kinds of
animals, our cherished ideas and our outlook upon many departments of
human life must be profoundly affected. This may be so, but science
endeavors only to find out the truth; it cannot alter truth, nor does it
seek to do so. We might well wish that the world were different in many
respects and that we were free from the control of many natural laws
besides that of evolution, but if the real is what it is, then our duty is
plain before us; as we think more widely and deeply on the basis of
ripened experience, it becomes ever clearer that a knowledge of human
history gives the only sure guidance for human life.

To the zooelogist it seems strange that so many are opposed to a scientific
inquiry into the facts of human evolution, and to the conclusions
established by such an inquiry,--though, to be sure, this opposition is
directly proportional to ignorance or misunderstanding of the nature and
purpose of scientific investigation and of human evolution. The naturalist
c