AMERICA'S INTELLECTUAL PRODUCT 203 



pretty evident that our product is as yet hardly what we might justly 

 expect considering the stress we lay on education and the amount of 

 money we spend. 



What is to be done in order to change this state of things, and to 

 relieve the United States from the aspersion of mediocrity in intel- 

 lectual achievement ? Is it not our plain duty to urge in season and 

 out of season the importance of research, and to insist upon it as the 

 main concern of every occupant of a university or college position ? I 

 put this not only on the ground of duty to our country in order to 

 maintain her position with self-respect among the other nations, but on 

 account of its preeminent importance as a vitalizing and energizing 

 influence on teaching. If the public does not take a great interest 

 in the doings of the colleges and the professors, is it not because of the 

 fact that the professors do not produce that crop of fruit that may 

 fairly be expected of them? How can the public become enthusiastic 

 over professors whom they consider in the light of pedagogues paid to 

 hear the young men say their lessons, and to repeat over to them 

 what they themselves have read in the books of others ? Will not that 

 teacher make a far greater impression on the student if he knows that 

 he is continually occupied in work that is his own individual creation 

 and that is increasing the sum of human knowledge? There is no 

 doubt that the absolutely essential quality in a teacher is enthusiasm, 

 without which it is impossible to exert any inspiration. Who is so 

 likely to possess this quality sine qua non as the man who is continually 

 occupied in the engrossing task of wringing her secrets from nature, or 

 drawing new conclusions that his powers of reasoning have enabled him 

 to perceive for the first time ? I well remember my first impressions on 

 arriving in Germany. After an experience of five years as student and 

 instructor in Cambridge, where it was considered (among the students, 

 for I will not do the professors the injustice of making them respon- 

 sible) good manners not to be warmly interested in anything in par- 

 ticular, the entrance into a community where every one was tremen- 

 dously interested in the piece of work on which he was engaged, and 

 was not ashamed to talk of it, where there were persons enough stud}'- 

 ing the same subject to make discussion attractive, and where, after a 

 morning in the laboratory, one would adjourn to a restaurant and talk 

 shop all through dinner, this was to me a tonic like the effect of a 

 cold bath. I shall never forget the first time I saw the great Helm- 

 holtz. In my anxiety to secure a place in his laboratory, I committed 

 the breach of etiquette of calling on him at his house instead of at 

 the laboratory. Ushered into his study, I found him standing at work 

 at his desk, from which he turned and transfixed me with those piercing 

 eyes. Never in my life have I felt so small and insignificant, know- 

 ing myself to be in the presence of the greatest scientist alive. During 



