REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1915. 11 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INSTITUTION. 



Aside from the high purposes set forth by the Founder in his 

 Deed of Trust and the declaration of maxims for general guidance 

 Theory of made by the Executive Committee in the first 

 Research. Year Book, there has appeared no pubhc state- 

 ment of the theories of procedure in the Institution, or of the 

 objects to be attained. These prime characteristics have, 

 indeed, developed in large degree along with the Institution's 

 growth. It has furnished an extensive and probably unequaled 

 experience, chiefly destructive to inappropriate theories and to 

 impracticable objects. For this reason, mainly, it has not 

 seemed opportune hitherto to make any additional formal state- 

 ment concerning these matters, although many inferences from 

 the ruthless experience just referred to have been indicated here 

 and there in the ten preceding reports. It appears advantageous 

 now, however, in the interests of all concerned, after a decade of 

 patient observation of actual developments and of considerate 

 attention to an unsurpassed wealth of private and public opinion, 

 to state briefly the ideas and the ideals which have animated the 

 present administration and which seem fitted to endure in the 

 conduct of any similar organization. Certain special reasons 

 why altruistic establishments should reexamine, revise, and 

 restate their articles of faith from time to time are found in the 

 well-known persistence of influences inimical to progress and in 

 the well-known tendency of such establishments, hke biotypes, 

 to revert to antecedent forms. Thus, for example, it is now 

 happening that many of the fallacies which have beset the devel- 

 opment of the Institution are recurring in the experience of the 

 more recently founded research organizations. Moreover, there 

 is always danger of such unfavorable reversion in any establish- 

 ment whose governing body, or legislative assembly, is subject 

 to rapid changes by reason of death or political revulsion. Expe- 

 rience of the past is easily forgotten, and there are few lessons so 

 little utiHzed as those of human history. 



Definitions are here essential and of these the first needed is 

 one of the Institution itself. In its earlier years President Gil- 

 man found it easier to explain what the Institution is not than 

 to define what it is. Elaborating his negative characterization, 



