12 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



fallacies which have beset the Institution during the brief interval 

 of its existence will recur again and again in the rise of similar 

 organizations, while fallacies of a more troublesome type are 

 likely to beset the introduction of the methods and the results of 

 research in governmental affairs. It is in the latter affairs that 

 the most stubborn opposition to progress is usually met, since 

 there exist, as a rule, in such affairs no adequately developed 

 relations of reciprocity between those best qualified to suggest 

 and to formulate improvements and those who control the 

 machinery for their applications. Such improvements can be 

 secured only by overcoming a stolid adherence to precedent as 

 well as the reluctance of rational conservatism. Thus it happens 

 in governmental affairs that the most incongruous ideas often 

 coexist, as is well shown by the contemporary adoption of the 

 most advanced principles of sanitation in certain European 

 countries which are still dominated by medieval theories of the 

 functions of a state. To cite another illustration readily under- 

 stood and verifiable, it is an anomalous fact that the United 

 States Government exacts no professional requirements for the 

 direction of its highly technical affairs except in a single branch 

 of its service, namely, the legal. And in line with this glaring 

 national deficiency it is notorious that the fiat of an executive 

 can make an astronomer, a geodesist, or a biologist out of a man 

 whose works are unknown in the annals of the science of which he 

 becomes the ex-officio representative. We hear much also in 

 these days of the ''mobihzation of genius" in the interests of 

 national preparedness for commercial and industrial competition, 

 if not for the more serious exigencies of national defense; but it 

 is to be feared that this mobilization means fruitless attempts 

 to utilize aberrant types of mind, or perhaps the employment of 

 men of talent under the direction of those whose competency 

 for leadership is admitted, if at all, only in quite other fields of 

 activity than those here considered. In the meantime, it is plain 

 enough, in the Ught of current events, that any nation whose 

 governors mistake necromancy for science, confound invention 

 with investigation, or fail to utilize effectively available and 

 advancing knowledge, is in danger of humiliation in peaceful 

 international competition if not in danger of extinction in 

 international conflict. 



