I ask the indulgence of the members of this gathering in honor of Joseph
Leidy and fellow workers in the fields of science if I present what I
have to say in an informal manner, and I trust that you will not for a
moment imagine that, because it is presented informally, I do not
appreciate the honor conferred upon me in asking me to speak on this
historic occasion in reference to a man for whom I have such great
admiration as for Joseph Leidy. I shall not repeat except in a very
general way the homage that was paid to Leidy in the series of important
and penetrating addresses which we have listened to today, but I shall
endeavor to present a summary, especially along the lines of
palæontology and comparative anatomy, of some of the distinctive
features of his work in comparison with those of the men who accompanied
and immediately followed him, and to show what great results have come
from his efforts as a pioneer and as a founder of this most interesting
and fascinating branch of science in America.
Leidy started with an entirely new world of life; he soon learned that
he could not base his study of American fossils on the work of French
palæontologists, for the life of our western regions was not known in
the Old World. Every specimen represented a new species or a new genus
or a new family, and in some cases a new order. Never was there a
greater opportunity than was offered to Leidy in this virgin field of
our then virgin West. Never was a man more ready to grasp it than that
quiet, unpretentious, unassuming, wonderfully gifted observer of nature.
It is particularly interesting to review his work, which was written in
the exact spirit of Cuvier, and to see his long record of direct
observation of the entire extinct fauna not only of the eastern but,
especially, of the great western territories. We find today how
permanent that work was, how little we have to modify it, how well it
stands the test of time, how accurate are his descriptions, how perfect
his figures and illustrations, and how even today they form admirable
standards for all the work that has been done since. After a continuous
series of epoch-making papers and contributions which he was in the
habit of contributing year after year, in meeting after meeting of the
academy, he brought his initial work to a climax in 1869 when he
published his great monograph, “Extinct Mammalian Fauna of Nebraska and
Dakota.” That work still ranks in breadth and accuracy as the finest
single contribution that has been made to vertebrate palæontology in
this country, if not in the world.
Whereas in Leidy we had a man of the exact observer type, Cope was a man
who loved speculation. If Leidy was the natural successor of Cuvier,
Cope was the natural successor of Lamarck. Leidy, in his contributions
to the academy, covered the whole world of nature, from the Protozoa and
Infusoria up to man, and he lived as the last great naturalist in the
world of the old type who was able by both capacity and training to
cover the whole field of nature. Cope, in contrast, mastered—and this
mastery in itself was a wonderful achievement—the entire domain of
vertebrates from the fishes up. Marsh, with less breadth and less
ability, nevertheless was a palæontologist of a very high order and had
a genius for appreciating what might be called the most important thing
in science. He always knew where to explore, where to seek the
transition stages, and he never lost the opportunity to point out at the
earliest possible moment the most significant fact to be discovered and
disseminated.
It is most interesting to contrast the temperament of these three men,
Joseph Leidy, Edward Drinker Cope, and Othniel Charles Marsh. They were
as different as any three men could possibly be made, both by nature and
nurture. As Professor Edward Smith said, in one of his addresses on
Leidy, “scientists are only mortals after all.” Your scientific genius
may hitch up with a star on the one hand and with an anchor on the
other. Whereas Leidy was essentially a man of peace, Cope was what might
be called a militant palæontologist. Whereas Leidy’s motto was peace at
any price, Cope’s was war whatever it cost. I do not know that I can
find from Shakespeare any characterization of Joseph Leidy, but I think
in “Henry IV” there is a pretty good characterization of my friend
Edward D. Cope:
I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the north; he that kills
me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands,
and says to his wife, “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.”
Perhaps there was a scientific providence in all this; perhaps such
antagonistic spirits were necessary to enliven and disseminate interest
in this branch of science throughout the country. This subtle combative
quality in a palæontologist is a strange quality; it is a strange
inversion, because the more ancient and difficult the study, the more
refractory the fossil, the greater the animation of discussion regarding
its relationships. From this subtle ferment there arose the famous
rivalry which existed not between Leidy and either of the others,
because it was impossible to quarrel with Leidy, but between Cope, the
descendant of a Quaker family, and Marsh, the nephew of a great
philanthropist. When I took up the subject as a young man and first came
to the City of Brotherly Love I always expected to learn of some fresh
discussion, some recent combat; it was even in the shade of the Academy
of Natural Sciences that one found echoes of these convulsive movements.
I remember one day coming into the dignified halls of the academy and
finding two of the youthful attendants engaged in hot discussion over a
dispute they had overheard at a meeting of the academy the night before.
Leidy, after the characterizations that we have heard of his life from
Conklin, Jennings, Scott and others, occupied a pivotal position, a very
interesting pivotal position. He was in an intellectual environment and
more or less in a social environment entirely different from our own.
This is very important to keep in mind in estimating his work. In spirit
he was, I think, a true pre-Darwinian in the sense of seeking what may
be called facts for Darwin and in the breadth and scope of his
researches. But he lived in an entirely different intellectual
atmosphere from that which surrounds our scientific world of today; he
was a John the Baptist for Charles Darwin. We must remember that twelve
years before Darwin brought forth the “Origin of Species” this young man
was beginning to assemble a mass of data which would have been of great
value to the great British naturalist. As shown by Professor Scott, he
was tracing the ancestral lineage of the horse, the camel, the
rhinoceros, the tapir family, the titanotheres, and last, but not least,
the anatomical forebears of man.
Nevertheless, Leidy was an evolutionist _sub rosa_; he was an
evolutionist without ever using the word evolution. There is no doubt
about that when you read a citation from his writings such as was
selected by Professor Jennings:
The study of the earth’s crust teaches us that very many species of
plants and animals became extinct at successive periods, while other
races originated to occupy their places. This probably was the result,
in many cases, of a change in exterior conditions incompatible with
the life of certain species and favorable to the primitive production
of others.... Living beings did not exist upon the earth prior to
their indispensable conditions of action, but wherever these have been
brought into operation concomitantly, the former originated.... Of the
life, present everywhere with its indispensable conditions, and coeval
in its origin with them, what was the immediate cause? It could not
have existed upon earth prior to its essential conditions; and is it,
therefore, the result of these? There appear to be but trifling steps
from the oscillating particles of inorganic matter to a bacterium;
from this to a vibrio, thence to a monas, and so gradually up to the
highest orders of life! The most ancient rocks containing remains of
living beings indicate the contemporaneous existence of the more
complex as well as the simplest of organic forms; but, nevertheless,
life may have been ushered upon earth, through oceans of the lowest
types, long previously to the deposit of the oldest palæozoic rocks as
known to us.
This really is a sketch in 1847 of environment and survival such as we
now know to be the actual course of evolution and was truly anticipatory
of modern results, substituting modern language as we may do for the
quaint phraseology of the period.
On the subject of the evolution of man especially Leidy certainly had
very clear and positive ideas. He caught from Goethe the significance of
the occasional reversion and the embryonic suture between the
premaxillary and maxillary bones—constituting a single bone in the human
subject, two bones in the lower order of mammals. He pointed out this
suture in 1847 in the skull of a native from one of the Hollander
Islands. In 1849 he pointed out the separate embryonic condition of the
intermaxillary bones. In both cases, as was his habit, Leidy obviously
saw the significance but, always sticking to facts and a presentation of
facts, he let the matter rest there. The most pronounced adumbration,
however, of the evolution of man from the primates is to be found in a
citation of his volume of 1873, a period when the descent of man was
still not recognized:
But little change would be necessary to evolve from the jawbone and
teeth of _Notharctus_ that of the modern monkey. The same condition
that would lead to the suppression of a first premolar tooth in
continuance would reduce the fangs of the other premolars to a single
one. This change with the common teeth shortening and the increase of
the depth of the jaw would give the character of the living South
American monkey. A further reduction would give rise to the condition
of the jaw in the Old World apes and in man.
I do not need to point out that the human jaw, next to the human
forehead, is the most significant feature in the transformation from the
lower to the higher primates. But some of those here present may not
know that a monograph has been written by my successor and colleague,
Professor William K. Gregory, upon the genus _Notharctus_ Leidy.
Gregory, fifty years after this significant passage was written by
Leidy, chose _Notharctus_ as an ideal intermediate type to place in a
theoretic ancestral series leading up to man, and in the beautiful
series of preparations which he has recently completed showing the
development of the human face in all stages from the most remote
ancestral facial type to the modern human face, Gregory uses
_Notharctus_ as the pivotal point, just as did Leidy fifty years ago.
To return to the matter of Leidy’s intellectual environment: how much we
owe today to our intellectual environment, how much we owe to battles
which have been fought and won over insufficient evidence! Not battles
of words, but battles of facts. Such evidence as that of _Notharctus_
the alert vision of Leidy detected and put in its proper place. In those
days “mum” was the word as regards evolution. Neither Cuvier nor Owen,
the British successor of Cuvier, nor Louis Agassiz, great naturalists
all, had accepted the theory; theologic influence was still
all-powerful. Fortunately for Leidy, William Jennings Bryan was still in
embryo. Trying to form an historic parallel of William Jennings Bryan, I
think it may be found in the figure of King Canute sitting with his
court on the shores of Nature, trying to beat back the waves of Truth.
If Leidy had lived in the era of Bryan, he undoubtedly would have been
classified with Professor Conklin and myself—he would have been made
with us a type of a new genus, _Anathema maranatha_, in which, according
to the zoology of Bryan, are embraced “tall professors coming down out
of trees who would push good people not believing in evolution off the
sidewalk.” Leidy would not have been burned at the stake, only because
of legal obstacles. Similarly, I think that Professor Conklin and myself
owe our lives to the fact that _autos da fé_ in matters of belief are no
longer matters of common practice in our civilization!
It is perhaps particularly fitting that Professor Scott and myself were
asked to speak at this centenary, for one reason above others. We have
been the defendants and supporters of the Leidy tradition. I am not
quite sure, but I doubt if you will find in the writings of Professor
Cope or Professor Marsh a single allusion to the work of Leidy. I make
this statement subject to verification, but I do not recall in their
writings a single allusion to the work of Leidy, except a brief tribute
by Marsh in an early address; the rivalry between the two men went to
such lengths that in their race with each other Leidy was totally
forgotten. Every new animal that was discovered was given a new
scientific name by each of them. _Notharctus_ Leidy, for example, is
exactly the same animal as _Tomitherium_ Cope and _Limnotherium_ Marsh.
Thus arose a trinominal system—three names each for the Eocene and
Oligocene animals—the original Leidy name and the Cope and Marsh names.
It has been the painful duty of Professor Scott and myself to devote
thirty of the best years of our lives trying to straighten out this
nomenclatural chaos. Even to this day we are verifying the observations
of Leidy; we find that he never made an incorrect observation or
published an incorrect figure; his accuracy in these regards is one of
his greatest and most permanent claims to immortality as a
palæontologist.
I do not know that I altogether agree with my friend Conklin in his
address as to the relation of extensive and intensive work. If I
understand him aright, he rather implies that intensive work is an
inevitable feature of modern scientific progress. I would rather cite
Leidy as an example of a man who pursued intensive work and extensive
work simultaneously and who had the capacity to pursue intensive work in
several branches of science, biological and geological, and I would
regard the permanence of Leidy’s work as largely the result of the state
of mind produced by the breadth of his intensive as well as of his
extensive work. I would like to leave on your minds my conviction,
buttressed by Leidy’s life, that it will be necessary even for those of
our day to maintain the Leidy attitude, because, after all, it is in
_the single mind that great hypotheses and theories are generated_. The
comparative anatomist, if he dies out, will leave human anatomy
impoverished. Today our students should return to the Leidy attitude, as
Professor Scott said, of entering palæontology by way of medicine and
base our education in human anatomy, as Leidy did, on a broad knowledge
of comparative anatomy. This is only one instance out of very many that
might be given of the legacies of Leidy to us: namely, that throughout
his life his mind had continuously the intensive as well as the
extensive attitude. He was able to be on the mountain-top and then
descend into the valley, and I believe that while some men who pursue
one subject intensively all their lives are making great discoveries,
for example, such workers as Professor Michelson, whom we all honor, the
chances are that few men can make great discoveries unless they approach
the subject broadly and work from more than one angle of thought.
Speaking of immortality, I share rather the Leidy view than the view of
Cope. I wish it were possible to resurrect Joseph Leidy and to bring him
back into the field of modern American palæontology. I wish it were
possible to bring him back to life and to have taken him with me, for
example, in a motorcar across the wastes of Mongolia. I can imagine the
joy with which he would have welcomed coming upon the remains of the
land dinosaurs, recalling his first description of a dinosaur in
America, in the very heart of the great Desert of Gobi; and perhaps the
still greater joy with which he would have greeted one of his
titanotheres, one of the first mammals which he described from Wyoming,
out on a great plain on the border of the Desert of Gobi.
The desire for this kind of immortality reminds me often of the Greek
poet:
To live like man and yet like nature to endure,
That double gift, to man and nature both denied,
The Gods alone enjoy.
We are rewriting this beautiful Greek verse in the immortality of
Leidy’s work, and we are holding up his example for the prevailing
spirit of truthfulness, which is, after all, its most characteristic
single feature. Would that Leidy and Huxley and Richard Owen and Cuvier
and Marsh and Cope could see the heights which have been reached in the
branch of science to which they devoted their lives and fortunes.
Leidy’s infant science, in which it was most hazardous to make
predictions, has now reached the stage which I believe is the finest in
the history of any science—the stage of prediction—that, as astronomers
have predicted the existence of unknown and unseen planets,
palæontologists can also predict unknown and unseen forms of life and,
moreover, can point out where they may be found.
Is our palæontological path reaching its goal? I think not. Its final
goal will be reached when palæontologists are able through extensive and
intensive methods to join hands with workers in other biological fields
and when we are able, pursuing our branch in the Leidy spirit, to bring
together into one harmony—the harmony which certainly exists, although
at present we do not see it—by bringing together into one harmony the
great underlying principle, the multiple aspects of which we can sum up
in the word “evolution.”
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Gutekunst_
EDWARD DRINKER COPE
]
EDWARD DRINKER COPE
1840–1897
Undoubtedly the most brilliant palæontologist of America and one of
the most brilliant scientists America has produced. This biography
fittingly follows that of Joseph Leidy, although there is the greatest
possible contrast between the life and works of the two men: Cope,
brilliant, daring, combative; Leidy, patient, persistent, cautious,
conservative. It was a contrast between the temperamental Gaelic and
the stable Teutonic type. The work of both men will endure for all
time. That of Cope requires constant emendation and revision, but it
leaves a firm and broad foundation for our knowledge of the evolution
of the vertebrata. Leidy was a master of detail, of accurate
description, of finished workmanship, rarely venturing generalization,
but he left a treasure-house of splendidly collected facts.
The work of Professor Cope began in 1859, a most favorable year, when
comparative anatomy first felt the impetus of Darwin’s “Origin of
Species.” He was then only nineteen, and for thirty-eight years
thereafter his active genius hastened our progress in the knowledge
and classification of all the great divisions of the vertebrata. He
passed away on April 12, 1897, at the age of fifty-seven, in the full
vigor of his intellectual powers, leaving a large part of his work
incomplete. Almost at the last he contributed several reviews to _The
American Naturalist_, and on the Tuesday preceding his death he sent
to the press the Syllabus of his lectures before the University of
Pennsylvania, containing his latest opinions regarding the arrangement
and evolution of the vertebrata.