EDITORIAL. 303 



follows the result of wisely judged experience. All experience right- 

 fully interpreted is helpful, but without the knowledge of the reason 

 or the modifying causes and without the application of what is des- 

 ignated as the scientific spirit its interpretation is likely to be mislead- 

 ing and its generalizations erroneous or only half true. Hence the 

 productive worker in science is helping to build the world's knowl- 

 edge and his work is singidarly one of public service. 



Assuming that a scientific career as a teacher and investigator has 

 been entered upon because of the appeal Avhich it makes to the indi- 

 vidual, the satisfaction which comes from its pursuit is one of its 

 greatest compensations. It makes his life virile, purposeful, produc- 

 tive; it is a carrying out of an impidse which finds its reward in the 

 satisfaction of a deep inward craving — a satisfaction entirely different 

 in kind from that pride which the skilled worker takes in the 

 performance of his task. 



As Dr. Armsby has said, "A man may be at least a fairly efficient 

 bricklayer or machinist or farmer or bookkeeper or Government 

 clerk or follow successfully any one of a score of skilled trades with- 

 out necessarily having any very special desire to do that particular 

 thing rather than anything else. With the investigator it is different. 

 His chief desire, if ho l)e a true investigator, is not to Jo but to 

 know — to penetrate behind the appearance of things in nature and 

 learn their secret causes and complex interrelations." 



To such a man a scientific career meets his tastes and his natural 

 inclinations. It brings him into an atmosphere, an association, a 

 freedom not found in business. The purpose and the spirit of work 

 are distinctly different, as is the reward. The pleasure that comes in 

 the pursuit of knowledge and its effective diffusion, and especially 

 of knowledge which will find an application in the lives of men in 

 our own generation, is of a different kind from that which comes of 

 success in most other callings. The gratification which follows 

 accomplishment for purely personal ends is not to be compared 

 with it. 



The chief interest of the investigator lies, as Prof. Cannon'* has 

 recently pointed out, in the territory which has not been traversed. 

 " Indeed, he is to be classed with explorers and pioneers. For such 

 men the complacent contemplation of things accomplished is intol- 

 erable — they chafe under the routine of established ways, and find the 

 satisfaction of life in adventures beyond the frontiers. . . . The 

 satisfactions of a life devoted to investigation, like the satisfactions 

 of other careers, arise from the profitable use of one's powers. The 

 employment of these powers is perfect freedom, and the immeasur- 

 ably important results that flow therefrom render the satisfaction of 

 productive scholarship especially keen. . . . 



« /Science, n. ser„ 34 (1911), No. 864, p. 66. 



