COMRADES IN ZEAL. 3", 



under diverse environment. Only Darwin could show with the demon- 

 stration of ten thousand instances that this condition was naturally 

 inevitable, that the origin of species was written in the very nature of 

 things set in the creation of life. 



As causal interpretation in weak hands degenerates into specula- 

 tion, so are all other forms of research subject to deterioration. 

 Experimenters are peculiarly subject to myopia, shortsightedness, nar- 

 rowness, carelessness as to truth obtained in other ways, and indiffer- 

 ence to the outlooks a broader horizon obtains. With all the intensive 

 accuracy of the science of Germany, we have often to look to other 

 countries, notably to England, for the broader view which sets each 

 fact in place. 



Systematic or descriptive work often finds its end in pedantry, the 

 accumulation or the ostentation of meaningless knowledge, or in the 

 forming of useless names and the gathering of pointless statistics. The 

 work of setting in order often slides downward through easy stages of 

 copying, compiling and dictionary work, work designed to 'hold the 

 eel of science by the tail,' but which sometimes retains only the slime 

 from that vivacious fish. Ecology too easily falls into sentimental 

 personification of living organisms, not the study of Nature, but the 

 cultivation of our own emotions regarding her. Inventive science 

 degenerates into management of properties and science is lost in the 

 search for salaries for holding down a job. For in engineering there 

 is a subtle line, easily passed, which separates the comrade in zeal from 

 the successful superintendent of a mine or foreman of a machine shop, 

 just as in pure science there is a narrow line which distinguishes ad- 

 vance in knowledge from the simple keeping of what is already in our 

 possession. 



We must all rejoice in the steady increase of means for work in 

 America, the multiplication of libraries, laboratories, museums, instru- 

 ments of precision and facilities for publication, made ready to our 

 hand. These will increase the output in science ; they will improve its 

 quality; but they will have little effect on the actual number of in- 

 vestigators. 



I am forced to believe that investigators can not be made by oppor- 

 tunity only — merely made better. Not many who would have been 

 investigators have been deterred by scanty means, by burden of work, 

 by lack of encouragement. The impulse of the investigator, as his 

 reward, must be within himself. His results may be incomplete, his 

 product scanty, his outlook narrow, but he will not fail to bring forth 

 after his own kind. A stalk of corn in stony soil may yield but little 

 grain, but what there is will still be corn. You can not starve it down 

 to oats nor feed it till it becomes a banana. I have no faith in the 

 men who might have been productive investigators if they only had a 



