16 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



he appears to play a unique role man has met with little or no 

 success during the past twenty centuries; on the other hand, 

 during the same interval, his efforts along scientific lines to 

 interpret that cosmos have been rewarded by extraordinary 

 advances, whose aggregate constitutes the bulk of the learning 

 we may pass on unreservedly to our successors. The superiority 

 of the learning of to-day over that of the first centuries of our 

 era is indicated, for example, in the difference between the navi- 

 gation of the Greeks and Romans by aid of knowledge and 

 appliances available to them and modern navigation by aid of 

 the compass, the sextant, and the nautical almanac. 



(3) When the Institution was organized there was a widely 

 spread opinion that much of its work would prove to be transi- 

 tory, requiring here and there temporary subsidies to complete 

 investigations already started and to publish conclusions already 

 formulated. It was also commonly held that the Institution 

 could act as a sort of promoter, starting by aid of initial grants 

 many worthy undertakings and leaving them for subsequent 

 support to the grantees themselves or to the establishments with 

 which the grantees were connected. Closely related to these 

 opinions was another to the effect that a large amount of valuable 

 work could be accomplished under academic guidance by needy 

 students who might thus earn from the Institution small sti- 

 pends while doing the drudgery and acquiring the inspiration of 

 research. But these plausible theories, praiseworthy enough in 

 the abstract, failed to meet the requirements of conditions as 

 they actually developed. It soon appeared that the completed 

 investigations, or those nearly ready for publication, were not 

 numerous. It was found that stimulating promising enterprises 

 in other establishments by means of initial grants called, in gen- 

 eral, for sustaining subsidies; and that in some instances such 

 subsidies from the Institution had the sinister effect of decreasing 

 independent support for research. And as for the students from 

 whom so much for so little was expected, it turned out that they 

 were preoccupied as a rule with the elementary notion that 

 research means that modicum of investigation which leads to 

 higher academic degrees. 



Thus the Institution was compelled to recognize, in the face 

 of much popular protest, what is clearly evident on reflection. 



