THE SPIRIT AND METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY. 207 



ject and the observer. Reap your field so thoroughly that gleaners 

 must despair. Fortify your position, that your most experienced rival 

 can find no point of attack. Lay your plans with such a superfluity of 

 patient carefulness that Fate itself can invent no serious emergency. 

 Demonstrate your theory so utterly and evidently that it shall require 

 no defender but itself. Die for youi' work, that your work may live 

 forever. Forget yourself, and your work will make you famous. En- 

 slave yourself to it, and it will plant your feet upon the necks of kings, 

 and your mere Yes or No will become a law to multitudes. This is 

 what the dead-work of science, when well done, does for the expert in 

 science. 



My fourth proposition — that only the habitual performance of dead- 

 work can preserve the scientific intellect in pristine vigor, and prevent 

 it from becoming stiffened with prejudices, inapt to receive fresh truth, 

 and forgetful of knowledge already won — hardly needs discussion. 

 Human muscles become atrophied by disuse. Men's fortunes shrink 

 and evaporate by mere investment. I pray you to imagine what I 

 wish to say, for it all amounts to this — that the grass will surely grow 

 over a deserted foot-path. Let me hurry to the close of this address, 

 which I have found too serious a duty for my liking, and perhaps you 

 also have found it too personal a preachment for yours. One more 

 suggestion, then, and I have done. 



My fifth proposition was, that the wearied and exhausted intellect 

 will wisely seek refreshment in dead-work. 



The physiology of the brain is now sufiiciently well understood to 

 permit physicians to prescribe with some assurance for its many ills, 

 and to regulate its restoration to a normal state of health. Its tissues 

 reproduce themselves throughout life if no extraordinary overbalance 

 of decay takes place, if there be no excessive and too long-continued 

 waste. For the majority of mankind, Nature provides for the adjust- 

 ment between consumption and reproduction of brain-matter by the 

 alternations of day and night, noise and silence, society and solitude, 

 and also by the substitution of the play of fancy in dreams for the 

 work of the judgment and the will in waking hours. We follow the 

 lead of Nature when we seek amusement as a remedy for care. We 

 bring into activity a rested portion of the brain, to jDermit the wearied 

 parts of it to restore themselves unhindered. 



This is the rationale of the pathological treatment of the brain. 

 Tell an overworked president of a railway company, who falls asleep 

 at the directors' meeting, that he must rest, or die of softening of the 

 brain, and he will smile a sad reply that he can not rest. He is right, 

 thus far : he can not rest his whole brain, but he can rest the cerebel- 

 lum — the seat of the will-power — by bringing into higher activity and 

 more frequent exercise the upper and frontal lobes. Let him stop 

 thinking of leasing rival lines, and read novels and play billiards. Let 

 him ride some youthful hobby, revive his practice on the violin, culti- 



