THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 251 



But what especially lends dignity and strength is the maintenance 

 of an ideal. German students in their expansive intimacies discuss 

 their ideals quite openly, their " Lehensphilosophien " as they term 

 them. "We Anglo-Saxons are not inclined to talk of such matters. But 

 a man should keep a nohle aim in sight and never let it be hidden by the 

 clouds of circumstance. That ideal must be something much grander 

 than any detail we have immediately in hand, our several efforts only 

 approximations towards it. "We are, it seems to me, to consider the in- 

 vestigations of science as all directed to one end, though no man 

 will see its consummation, the interpretation of that great melody, the 

 universe. Here is a subject without end, all human knowledge may be 

 employed in its elaboration. Men of the world do not understand why 

 we are busying ourselves with fixing the exact date of the first render- 

 ing of a play, the number of times that a certain prefix occurs in the 

 writings of Pindar, the exact length of a heat wave, or the behavior of a 

 particular microscopic particle of one kind of organic cell. And in 

 themselves these are not great things; an average man with patience 

 and training might deal with them. They are on the whole so gen- 

 erally uninteresting that each has the world over only a small group of 

 devotees. But when they are seen as steps in a synthesis of explana- 

 tions their value is at once apparent. Our business is to weld all these 

 separated bits of knowledge together, to make of them a great sustain- 

 ing wall. And when the utilitarian inquires what will be gained by 

 this giant effort, be ready with the prompt reply: on this knowledge 

 depends our control of ourselves and of nature. Scientific inquiries 

 are not to be pursued wholly academically, as games to amuse. They 

 are attempts to explain the processes of nature, in order that we may 

 use this knowledge for the advancement of our kind. And it is as true 

 as the night follows the day, that explanation must precede application 

 and consequently human progress. 



This is the apology for the investigator. He has to do neither with 

 the cataloguing and rearranging of facts, nor with their transmission, 

 but with the enlargement of knowledge by discovery and intrepretation. 

 Both stand for the development of character, but while the under- 

 graduate work is for the transmission of knowledge, the graduate de- 

 partment is for a higher aim, its increase. If it is difficult to garner 

 and hand over knowledge, it is still harder to add to it, and no faint 

 heart need try to be an investigator. 



Our project is to try to decipher the nature of man and of the 

 universe, and for this there is full need of every iota of strength and 

 determination and talent there may be in us. 



