Captains Maurain and Lacombe completed a first reconnaissance, and the rapidity with which they accomplished their mission, crossing the roughest regions and climbing the most precipitous summits, is worthy of all praise. It won the admiration of General Alfaro, President of the Republic of Ecuador, who called them 'los hombres de hierro,' the men of iron.
The final commission then set out under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Bourgeois. The results obtained have justified the hopes entertained. But our officers have encountered unforeseen difficulties due to the climate. More than once, one of them has been forced to remain several months at an altitude of 4,000 meters, in the clouds and the snow, without seeing anything of the signals he had to aim at and which refused to unmask themselves. But thanks to their perseverance and courage, there resulted from this only a delay and an increase of expense, without the exactitude of the measurements suffering therefrom.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
What I have sought to explain in the preceding pages is how the scientist should guide himself in choosing among the innumerable facts offered to his curiosity, since indeed the natural limitations of his mind compel him to make a choice, even though a choice be always a sacrifice. I have expounded it first by general considerations, recalling on the one hand the nature of the problem to be solved and on the other hand seeking to better comprehend that of the human mind, which is the principal instrument of the solution. I then have explained it by examples; I have not multiplied them indefinitely; I also have had to make a choice, and I have chosen naturally the questions I had studied most. Others would doubtless have made a different choice; but what difference, because I believe they would have reached the same conclusions.
There is a hierarchy of facts; some have no reach; they teach us nothing but themselves. The scientist who has ascertained them has learned nothing but a fact, and has not become more capable of foreseeing new facts. Such facts, it seems, come once, but are not destined to reappear.
There are, on the other hand, facts of great yield; each of them teaches us a new law. And since a choice must be made, it is to these that the scientist should devote himself.
Doubtless this classification is relative and depends upon the weakness of our mind. The facts of slight outcome are the complex facts, upon which various circumstances may exercise a sensible influence, circumstances too numerous and too diverse for us to discern them all. But I should rather say that these are the facts we think complex, since the intricacy of these circumstances surpasses the range of our mind. Doubtless a mind vaster and finer than ours would think differently of them. But what matter; we can not use that superior mind, but only our own.
The facts of great outcome are those we think simple; may be they really are so, because they are influenced only by a small number of well-defined circumstances, may be they take on an appearance of simplicity because the various circumstances upon which they depend obey the laws of chance and so come to mutually compensate. And this is what happens most often. And so we have been obliged to examine somewhat more closely what chance is.