6 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



nant over the majority of mankind. It was to be expected, 

 therefore, that the estimates in question would be somewhat 

 clouded by inappropriate ancestral prepossessions and by modern 

 popular tendencies, especially of the pubUc press, to exaggerate 

 and to attribute to occultism the plainest products of forethought, 

 industry, and application of well-known principles. It has been 

 gratifying to observe, however, that in this novel experience with 

 the Panama-Pacific Exposition, as in other experiences alluded to 

 in previous reports, there is manifest an active leaven of intelli- 

 gent desire to discover what are the essentials of a corporation 

 designed to promote altruistic investigation, to differentiate these 

 essentials from what is adventitious to them, and to measure 

 the Institution's right to existence by the more stable standards 

 of capacity to contribute permanent additions to the sum of 

 verifiable and hence available knowledge. 



But there are more important indications of an increasingly 

 favorable attitude of the pubUc towards research than those just 

 referred to. That the scientific method, which 

 ^SToTs^SSffic furnishes the instruments and the criteria for effec- 

 Method. ^-^g investigation, is now gaining esteem with 

 unreflective as well as with reflective minds is in evidence in 

 nearly every field of current activity. In the report for the year 

 1914 attention was called to the rise of other research estabhsh- 

 ments and to the relations of reciprocity the Institution should 

 sustain to them. Several of these have effected organization 

 during the past year and more such are in process of development. 

 They are destined to aid greatly in rationaHzing popular concepts 

 of the meaning and objects of research and particularly of the 

 costs involved and the greater economies to be gained thereby. 

 Concerning these latter rather simple arithmetical matters the 

 wildest illusions are prevalent; they are formidable obstacles 

 to progress and nothing short of a more general distribution of 

 responsibiUty appears adequate to dislodge them. Nearly all of 

 the difficulties and dangers encountered by the Institution may be 

 attributed to the persistency of these ubiquitous illusions, which 

 would be more fitly characterized as delusions if they were not 

 so common. The obvious fallacies entertained, and the fatuous 

 misrepresentations disseminated, with respect to the Institu- 



