SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 245 



Conspicuous ability as an investigator is comparatively 

 rare and every effort should be made to discover the men 

 who give promise of such attainment. When found, they 

 should have their chance, should be given clearance papers 

 for a voyage into the unknown. Men who have this ability, 

 who, standing upon the ground already mapped, can see the 

 distant mountains, and whose imagination pictures the path 

 across the intervening valleys and deserts, are like the 

 explorers of a virgin continent; they "yearn beyond the sky- 

 line where the strange roads go down." The human race 

 has emerged from barbarism because the desire for knowledge 

 has impelled men of this adventurous spirit, in spite of dis- 

 couragement and misunderstanding, persecution and death, 

 to search after the facts of science in what is for man the last 

 "dark continent" the realm of nature: 



" We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, 



in the man-stifled town ; 

 We yearned beyond the sky-line where 



the strange roads go down. 

 Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came 



the Power with the Need, 

 Till the Soul that is not man's soul was 



lent us to lead." 



This stanza of Kipling will serve to enforce the analogy 

 between the "nature-searcher" and the explorer which we 

 shall here develop. It shows also that modern science has 

 not destroyed the opportunity for imagination. For, 

 though "the old order changeth," there remains in our 

 thinking that which brings the emotional appeal of lofty 

 imaginings; for here indeed, man does contend with gods 

 and strives to wrest from them the knowledge that shall 

 make his future more secure. 



The history of almost any line of scientific investigation 



come into being. One of the encouraging possibilities of this organization is 

 its emphasis of research as a profession demanding adequate recognition. 



