WHAT IS RESEARCH? 173 



pendently of any names or language by which they may be symbolized. 

 On the other hand, it is important to notice that things and their phe- 

 nomena are grasped by the mind in the same way that words and lan- 

 guage of common speech are learned. By study we gain knowledge of 

 words, by investigation knowledge of the things and phenomena of our 

 experience. The laboratory, the museum, the world at large are the 

 normal fields of this process of investigation; much as books and the 

 words of the lecturer are the normal fields of pure study. This brings 

 us to the definition of research. 



Original research goes beyond investigation in that the things 

 sought for are not only undescribed, but, when the research begins, are 

 actually out of sight, that is, unseen. The field of research may be 

 visible, but the genuine meaning of research is a looking beyond what 

 can be seen; herein is found the most essential characteristic of suc- 

 cessful research, viz., a comprehensive, a keen and a disciplined imag- 

 ination of things and truths before they become objects of experience. 

 We must distinguish, too, between scientific research and haphazard 

 stumbling upon strange things in out of the way places. Curiosity 

 hunters may discover novel and undescribed things, and may even point 

 the way to their source, but it is the trained scientific investigator who 

 discriminates their true value, orients them in the known world of 

 things and makes them available for the use of man. 



Kesearch, as was noted at the outset, is not a special faculty pos- 

 sessed by a few, but a common faculty specially trained and systematic- 

 ally exercised by but the few, for whom it becomes a tool of the highest 

 value, and the means of opening up new fields of knowledge to mankind. 



The underlying principle of original research is simple inquisitive- 

 ness ; that trait so characteristic of the Yankee and the fox. I use the 

 term Yankee as the name for a typical American, not a local or political 

 term, but the name for the smart, shrewd, inventive man, who depends 

 upon his own resources and, if without learning or education, still 

 succeeds in penetrating untried fields, and in making headway under 

 all manner of reverses, hindrances and difficulties, always exhibiting a 

 quickness to observe differences and to interpret the meaning of things. 

 All kinds of successful pioneers are made of such stuff. 



This quality is generally more active in youth than in grown men; 

 the common methods of education repress rather than encourage its 

 activity ; and the old classical system of education is particularly effect- 

 ive in this direction. This repressing result is reached, however, not by 

 direct means, but by the very perfection with which study, pure and 

 simple, is fostered. It is a conspicuous fact in schools that often the 

 keenest and brightest boy is not always the best student ; he may know 

 more and observe more closely than any other, but he gets low marks 

 in spelling, reading and, may be, in arithmetic, even in geography as 



