52 CICATRIZATION OF WOUNDS 



coloured areas is not quite similar. Their movements are 

 more or less rapid, more or less precise. Their reactions 

 more or less slow. At diflferent moments of the day, the same 

 person does not always react in the same fashion to the same 

 stimulus. Hence the necessity of resorting as often as possible 

 to automatic or recording instruments. It can be admitted 

 that one of the reasons for employing the pronoun 'we' has 

 the same origin. It imposes a more neutral redaction than the 

 T. Another reason lies in the fact that several workers have 

 often materially collaborated in different ways to the dis- 

 covery of the experimental facts described in a paper. Still 

 other motives may exist. 



The result of these combined considerations is that the 

 perusal of a totally impersonal scientific article, from which 

 all human element has been systematically eliminated, is 

 im.possible for all but a student of the same subject or one 

 directly connected with it, and who is interested enough to 

 seek only facts and measurements in the text. In other words, 

 only a specialist reads it. 



And yet there is something else in a discovery or a scientific 

 endeavour. First, the human element which has been care- 

 fully put aside, and second, all the intermediary steps between 

 the salient points of the reasoning, the stages which establish 

 the continuity, the homogeneity of the psychological evolution 

 which enabled the worker to reach his anticipated goal. Only 

 these elements could make the paper interesting to a non- 

 specialized reader. An article written in this fashion would 

 be too long and encumbered by useless details as far as the 

 scientist is concerned, but not without interest from the 

 point of view of the 'sU)rf of a discovery. To be complete, 

 the description of researches having attained a definite result 

 would require the mention of a great number of facts the use- 

 fulness of which vanishes when the final end is achieved, but 

 which, at a certain moment, have served as cement, or as a 

 link between more important facts. The elimination of these 

 links leaves, instead of a continuous curve, a series of points, 

 the interrelationship of which is not sufficiently clear to allow 



