THE STUDY AND TEACHING OF BIOLOGY. 301 



come a Linnaeus, or a Cuvier, or an Agassiz. It may not be given to 

 any of us to make some brilliant discovery, or to first expound some 

 illuminating generalization ; but we can, each and all, if we will, do 

 good and valuable work in elucidating the details of various branches 

 of knowledge. All that is needed for such work, besides some leisure, 

 intelligence, and common-sense (and the more of each the better), is 

 undaunted perseverance and absolute truthfulness ; a perseverance 

 unabated by failure after failure, and a truthfulness incapable of the 

 least perversion (either by way of omission or commission) in the 

 description of an observation or of an experiment, or of the least 

 reluctance to acknowledge an error once it is found to have been 

 made. Moreover, this love of truth must extend to a constant 

 searching and inquisition of the mind, with the perpetual endeavor 

 to keep inferences from observation or experiment unbiased, so far 

 as may be, by natural predilections or favorite theories. Perfect suc- 

 cess in such an endeavor is, perhaps, unattainable, but the scientific 

 worker must ever strive after it ; theories are necessary to guide and 

 systematize his work, and to lead to its prosecution in new directions , 

 but they must be servants, and not masters. I may, perhaps, seem to 

 be insisting at too great length on a self-evident point ; but the more 

 one knows of scientific work and workers, the more does one realize 

 the importance and the difficulty of attaining a perfectly-balanced 

 mind and of arriving at an unprejudiced deduction from observation. 



I believe, then, that the only absolutely necessary faculties for 

 the scientific investigator are love of his work, perseverance, and 

 truthfulness ; to make the great leader and master in science, one of 

 those who cast a new ray of light on our conceptions of the universe, 

 other and far rarer powers are, of course, needed the most essen- 

 tial being originality of thought ; and, as that cannot be either 

 self-taught or taught from outside but must be born in the bone, 

 all that the rest of us can do when we meet such men is to snve them 

 a free course and ungrudging help. That an army may attain its 

 best success, needs indeed that every man be brave and loyal, but it 

 is by no means requisite that every soldier be a brigadier-general ; 

 so in the army of Science there is place for soldiers of all ranks and 

 capabilities and, at any rate, we know this, that Nature reveals her 

 secrets, which are her rewards, on no system of purchase or favor- 

 itism what a man deserves that he gets, every drummer-boy who 

 enters her service carries the marshal's bdton in his pocket. His re- 

 ward will be proportionate to the amount of time and intelligence he 

 devotes to his work ; given, in addition, certain opportunities which 

 every one has not for himself, but which it is one great object of such 

 institutions as this to provide for all. 



If what I have just stated be the general requisites of the scientific 

 investigator, we have next to inquire what special needs has the biolo- 

 gist : these may all be ground under the head of preliminary train- 



