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SCIENCE PROGRESS 



responsibility to the requirements of the research worker, an 

 exact knowledge as to the use of this term becomes a preliminary 

 essential. "Research," he says, "as we now understand the 

 word, means simply a systematic application of the methods of 

 science," but " to journalists and to their readers it would seem 

 that research is akin to necromancy. . . . Closely akin to this 

 infantile fallacy is the more subtile error entertained by a 

 majority, perhaps, of our highly educated contemporaries, that 

 the more remarkable results of research are produced not by the 

 better balanced minds, but by aberrant types of mind popularly 

 designated by that word of ghostly, if not ghastly, implications, 

 namely ' genius.' " Another interesting point is the differentia- 

 tion between the inventor, who, in his opinion, works mainly 

 for his own advantage, and the true investigator who labours 

 unremittingly from purely altruistic motives. If such a view is 

 correct it needs little discernment to discover to which of these 

 two classes the most financial support should be given. He 

 also puts forward a criticism on the attitude of educationalists in 

 general and colleges and universities in particular, who, by 

 forcing their finest minds to confine their attention exclusively 

 to the training of youth, have materially hindered the progress 

 of knowledge. To quote his own apt words, " Research has 

 been and is still rarely regarded by the great majority of academic 

 men and women as anything but an unimportant incident to the 

 principal business of academic life. This principal business is 

 the transmission from generation to generation of acquired 

 learning; and it has been adhered to so generally and so 

 rigorously in the past that until our own time educational 

 institutions might be said, with only slight qualifications, to have 

 been depositories of stationary thought." One of the chief 

 difficulties which beset all institutions, whether large or small, 

 is that they insensibly drift into a backwater — and not only do 

 they fail to perceive whither they are drifting, but fail to recog- 

 nise their backsliding even after they have reached the point of 

 stagnation. Gratitude is therefore due to any clear thinker like 

 Prof. Woodward, who can see and point out the trend of thought 

 and action. He finally makes a strong appeal for adequate 

 funds for the maintenance of an adequate system for the further- 

 ance of research. He makes this appeal in America to Americans, 

 whom he owns to have given generously towards this end. If 

 their liberal endowment of research is not sufficient for its crying 



