74 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



breakdown somewhere. "We who are commonplace and undistinguished 

 are not offered a competency for the rest of our lives as the price of a 

 single crooked deal ; or if our tastes are cheap and vulgar, they are not en- 

 shrined in sculpture or music to go down the ages to our disgrace and the 

 corruption of others. We keep most of our cheapness, our stupidity, our 

 dishonesty, for ourselves and our immediate circle, and much of it is 

 never revealed at all. In the lottery which human inheritance at present 

 is, good qualities will commonly, when they appear, lack the support we 

 could wish for them ; but when this is true, there can be no doubt that 

 much of the evil resulting from this can often be remedied by good social 

 conditions. That is to say, we can help the individual to leave unstimu- 

 lated the bad and to make the most of what is good. Thus, in a sense, 

 he may actually choose his ancestors. Instead of doing this, however, I 

 fear we often do the reverse, and especially is this true when men have 

 to appeal to the multitude rather than to their peers. The eccentricities 

 of modern art and literature, so foreign to the mood of the great masters 

 of the past, may have their root in the want of adequate balance in the 

 make-up of the workers, but they are unquestionably stimulated by a 

 public which, as a newspaper editor once put it, must have the "ge- 

 whiz sensation " every morning. Science workers must be sheltered from 

 such demands, and this alone is enough reason for not hastening their 

 public fame until such time as they are too old to learn new tricks. 



The much-debated question whether training in one subject increases 

 ability in other quite diverse ones may have some bearing on the peak of 

 efficiency. If it is possible to increase the general ability to deal with 

 problems, without unduly prejudicing the mind in respect to the partic- 

 ular problems to be solved, it seems that the altitude of the peak of effi- 

 ciency will be increased. The indications are that when one has reached 

 his peak in respect to his particular line of work he may yet find another 

 peak ahead of him by shifting his base to a limited extent. How much, 

 as a rule, it is profitable to shift it might be determined more or less by 

 careful enquiry. I think, however, that from this point of view there is 

 a good deal to be said for taking up a new subject every five or ten years. 

 Even if the altitude of the successive peaks is not increased, it is worth 

 something to have these successive maxima of ability in a life time. 



