302 EXPERIMENT STATION KECORD. 



to which personal attention is thought necessary to prevent disap- 

 pointment, leads to a scattering of energy, a dissipation of time, and 

 a lack of serious attention to the matters under investigation. It 

 can not be otherwise. 



If research is, as has often been said, an attitude of mind, it is 

 an attitude of sound inquiry, of thoughtful consideration, of con- 

 centration of all the powers for the time being upon the subject in 

 hand. It is an intellectual product, in which the things actually 

 done are a resultant of the reasoning that lies back of the doing. It 

 is a searching process, directed by reasoning from a well founded 

 hypothesis, and carried forAvard by the accumulation of facts and 

 their correlation in a manner to establish a truth. Hence, it calls 

 for attentive study at all stages, and applies to all kinds of inquiry. 

 The grade will atfect the intensity but the essentials must be present 

 if the eftort is to be productive. Investigation or experiment or 

 any form of inquiry which is not accompanied by thoughtful con- 

 sideration is little more than routine, and can establish little. 



As a speaker at one of our station meetings a few years ago said : 

 " To get an intelligible and decisive answer of nature requires more 

 than zeal or hard work. It needs hard thought and wide knowledge 

 in framing the question. It needs what Lowell has called the ' un- 

 sullied temper of a well taught mind.'" To meet this need frag- 

 ments of time, periods subject to frequent interruption, intervals 

 when confusion and commotion prevent concentration, are far from 

 being sufficient. And because they are not sufficient, and because 

 conditions do not afford more opportunity for seclusion or it is not 

 insisted upon, results are sometimes accumulated without being 

 studied, and finally published without proper digestion, in the mis- 

 taken idea that they are a record of investigation. 



The taking of records is not all of investigation but a means to it, 

 an essential step in it. The records may often be made by a careful 

 assistant who faithfully follows directions, but if anything vital 

 comes of them it will be through a critical study which weighs 

 cause and effect, correlates the new data with reference to an idea 

 or hypothesis, and derives from them the facts they prove or a new 

 point of departure. This comes from close work, a sinking of 

 oneself into the subject, a thorough mastery of the facts, and their 

 logical interpretation. It requires time and concentration. 



The experience of a typical research institution, the Carnegie In- 

 stitution of "Washington, has unusual interest in this connection. In 

 the thirteen j^ears of its existence it has entertained proposals for 

 research " in nearly every imaginable field of abstract thought and of 

 applied knowledge," and has actuall}^ undertaken a limited number 

 of investigations of its own. Out of its wide and complex experience 



