PUBLIC INTEREST IN RESEARCH. 31? 



and the great flood of dammed up opportunities that broke loose when 

 this chance offered itself is a matter of record. This endowment, vast 

 as it seemed to any individual, proved to be a mere pittance as com- 

 pared with the pressing needs of research in America. To choose 

 among these needs was bewildering, and no committee could choose 

 wisely in every instance. But whether the choosing was wise or not 

 has nothing to do with the impressive illustration afforded of the press- 

 ing needs of research even in its present stage of development. There 

 is no need at present of a fund. to stimulate research; what it needs 

 just now is opportunity. 



What Mr. Carnegie was brought to see, the intelligent American 

 public must be brought to see, for one institution and one board of 

 control can not hope to meet the need. The appeal to American in- 

 terest is utility, and there is no need to blink the fact. If our relief, 

 therefore, is to come from American interest, we must tell the public 

 what we are doing and of what service it may be; and this is to be 

 done, as I have shown, without any change in our subjects or methods 

 of research. I may say in passing, however, that it has long seemed 

 to me wise to select among profitable subjects of investigation, which 

 are included in our immediate interest, those that may have some bear- 

 ing upon human interests. Nothing is lost by such a choice, and 

 investigation is strengthened thereby in public estimation. I have not 

 the slightest sympathy with those who select subjects for public effect; 

 but I have also no sympathy for those who avoid them when they 

 come in the natural sequence of work. 



Why should not the public expect some tangible service from the 

 large body of men best equipped to render it? This is the question 

 I was asked by a prominent business man. whom I was trying to interest 

 in a botanic garden, and after I had explained that such an equipment 

 would make certain important investigations possible that could not 

 be undertaken without it. One may inveigh against this utilitarian 

 point of view, but that it exists is a fact, and it does not alter a fact 

 to despise it. Should it have been expected that this business man 

 would break suddenly with the training of a lifetime, even when a 

 botanic garden with an alluring corollary of experiments was pre- 

 sented suddenly to his vision ? It was impossible to educate this par- 

 ticular man in a short time, but had he heard over and over again, for 

 he is interested in horticulture, that the very experiments proposed 

 made possible a better horticulture, he would not have asked such a 

 question. An appreciation of the utility of purely scientific investiga- 

 tions must get into the atmosphere. An atmosphere of appreciation 

 can be created for such non-utilitarian things as music and art, even 

 in a commercially saturated environment, but it is not by keeping still 

 about them or by only revealing them to the cult. 



