62 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION B. 



If he is to be a specialist his training' in his main subject 

 must be fairly prolonged. The major portion of the time other- 

 wise spent in training for an orthodox professional career must 

 be spent in a more intense concentration on the subject in which 

 he afterwards hopes to do research, and more particularly in 

 the time-consuming task of acquiring " practical technique." 

 Unless his training is to he unduly prolonged his " cognate 

 subjects " must be well chosen, so as to bear upon the prospective 

 border-line, and he must select some unorthodox curriculum for 

 himself. Since this is a sporting procedure, and demands a 

 stronger individuality, or at least a more impelling individual 

 taste, the number of men consciously taking to border-line 

 sciences will remain few, unless some definite career is offered 

 b\- which consciousness is aroused. As a rule, this incentive 

 is absent, since border-line specialisation precedes its own public 

 recognition, and remunerative occupation therein is "chancey." 

 As .soon, of course, as the border-line is roughly mapped out by 

 inquisitive spirits from the pure sciences, the economic possibilities 

 of the new territory become apparent. But the territory remains 

 imperfectly exploited until it is in the position to offer a career 

 to the " honest hodmen of science,'' whose labour is so necessary 

 to develop it. 



The first exploration may demand genius of the highest 

 order ; such genius as only appears at intervals in the history of 

 science. But the developing of the new scientific territory 

 demands a host of ordinary, presentable, well-trained brains and 

 capable hands. 



The problem of the development of the border-lines of 

 a science, is therefore three-fold. 



First and foremost, the purely scientific worker with no 

 utilitarian end in view must be encouraged. Since his end is 

 not utilitarian, but his nutritional needs none the less pressing 

 for that, he must either side-track himself in seeking nutriment 

 in ways alien to his work, in subsidiary uncongenial tasks as the 

 price of his researches : or he must depend upon private or State 

 endowment. The search for truth for its own sake has been 

 hampered through all the ages bv the unfortunate circumstance 

 that the most earnest seeker after truth has got a .stomach. 

 Private endowment of pure research has done much for progress, 

 especially in America, where it is now fashionable for industrial 

 millionaires to return part of their sDoils to strengthen the ladder 

 bv which they climbed ; as witness Rockefeller. But any nation 

 which relies upon private enterprise for encouraging non- 

 utilitarian work is destined to disaster ; is, at any rate, an ass. 

 There must be national endowment of pure research, of the pursuit 

 of knowledge for its own sake, and copious endowment at that. 

 Pure research is the basis upon which the superstructure of 

 economic progress is built. 



Secondly, but not less important, there must be provision for 

 the band of workers who commence to carry the data of pure 

 science into fields where it may find its economic application ; 



