628 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



The pursuit of science involves not only values but opportunit3\ 

 The opportunit}^ which the right-minded student desires is a field 

 of work where he may make enduring and Ijeneficent additions to the 

 sum of human knowledge. Can he do this if he is chiefly occupied 

 with the solution of problems important to practical life? I venture 

 the prediction tliat the greatest contributions to science, even to that 

 which we term pure, during the century upon which we have entered, 

 will flow from the labors of those investigators whose main eflorts are 

 directed either to the mastery of Nature's energies as a means of 

 industrial advantage, or to the amelioration and improvement of the 

 conditions of human living. Possibly it is already true that more 

 generalizations of an important character are reached as by-products 

 from the stud}^ of specific economic problems than from research 

 that has as its primary object the discovery of abstract principles. 



You will doubtless recall that at our last meeting Fries presented 

 new facts concerning the composition of atmospheric air, a direct 

 result of Armsby's researches touching the economics of animal nutri- 

 tion. The New York Agricultural Experiment Station has been 

 engaged for two or three years in the study of problems important to 

 the cheese industry, out of which have come contributions to chem- 

 ical knowledge as well as facts that are likely to more fully explain the 

 processes of gastric proteid digestion. The histor}^ of the progress 

 of science is full of similar instances where researches having in view 

 purely utilitarian ends have added materially to abstract facts and 

 principles. Properly conducted investigation of specific economic 

 questions can not fail to discover related causes or laws that are of 

 general interest, so that the student in the field of applied science has 

 the almost sure hope of a double reward. 



Doubtless there are those who regard these by-products of economic 

 studies that come to us in the formulation of abstract truths as of 

 more value than the solution of the practical problems around which 

 these truths cluster. Few of us would consent to this conclusion, I 

 fanc3^ The assertion that to know is greater than to act, that abstract 

 truth is a larger value than service, is intolerable in this humanitarian 

 age. Such an assertion is equivalent to the statement that a mode of 

 action is superior to the ends it serves. To accept such a creed is to 

 assent to the doctrine that facts and principles are all sutiicient ends 

 in themselves, and are more important as isolated entities than as 

 utilities for promoting human progress and welfare. 



We can not condemn too severely an estimate of the value of educa- 

 tion and research based solely iipon the aid they give to money get- 

 ting; but we should not confuse this degrading point of view with the 

 instinctive purpose of humanity to use all its acquired powers in 

 securing the most complete adaptation possible to its environment. 

 No result could be more unfortunate than the repression of that 



