THE SPIRIT AND METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY. 205 



patient and cautious, and finally bestows the clearest intelligence and 

 largest comprehension of phenomena. And this fatal laziness is fos- 

 tered by a strange misunderstanding, a fancy, sometimes a downright 

 conviction, that the dead-work of science can be done for us by some 

 one else, so as to save our time and strength for speculation, for 

 thought, for fine writing — can be done by menials, employes, assist- 

 ants, colleagues, special experts, by any one rather than by ourselves. 

 Can we not, in fact, often find it already done for us, and even better 

 done than we could do it ? Then, why not let inferior minds occupy 

 themselves with this laborious and time-consuming address of special 

 skill ? Can we not, for instance, hire transit-men to lay out and meas- 

 ure our sections, and artists to draw them ? Why should a paleontolo- 

 gist take the pencil between his own fingers in studying species, when 

 he has trained photographers and lithographers at his command ? Why 

 waste precious weeks and months in tramping and climbing, in meas- 

 uring and plotting, while glory calls us and the scientific world is im- 

 patiently waiting for our conclusions ? Thus possessed by the demon 

 of scientific haste, we continually spoil our own performances and dis- 

 appoint the expectant but not at all impatient world. Could our van- 

 ity permit us to know the fact, the impatience is entirely our own, and, 

 if indulged, is sure to be roundly punished. 



Ko, dead-work can not be delegated. The man who can not him- 

 self survey and map his field, measure and draw his sections properly, 

 and perfectly represent with his own pencil the characteristic varia- 

 tions of his fossil forms, has no just right to call himself an expert 

 geologist. These are the badges of initiation, and the only guarantees 

 which one can offer to the world of science that one is a competent 

 observer and a trustworthy generalizer. Nor has one become a true 

 man of science until he has already done a vast amount of this dead- 

 work ; nor does one continue in his prime, as a man of science, after 

 he has ceased to bring to this test of his own ability to see, to judge, 

 and to theorize the working and thinking of other men. But enough 

 of this. 



My second proposition was, that no teacher of science can be suc- 

 cessful who does not himself encounter some of the dead-work of the 

 explorer and discoverer ; who does not discipline his own faculties of 

 perception, reflection, and generalization by field-work and oflice-work, 

 independently of all text-book assistance ; who does not himself make 

 at least some of the diagrams, tables, and pictures for his class-room, in 

 as original a spirit, and with as much precision of detail, as if none 

 such had ever been made before, and these were to remain sole monu- 

 ments of the genius of investigation. What the true teacher has to 

 do first and foremost is to wake up in youthful minds this spirit of in- 

 vestigation ab initio. The crusade against scholastic cramming prom- 

 ises to be successful ; but the crusade against pedagogic cramming has 

 hardly yet been organized. How is the scholar to be made an artist 



