REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1916. 13 



RESEARCHES OF THE INSTITUTION. 



Much, perhaps too much, has been said in preceding reports 

 concerning the maxims and the principles which should be 



observed on the administrative side in the conduct 

 pSctdure! ^^ ^^ research. To a great extent these maxims and 



principles are the same as those developed in the 

 common experience of the race; but to a greater extent they are 

 derived from the more concrete and the more sharply defined 

 experience developed in the evolution of the older sciences. All 

 experience teaches that effective research depends on pains- 

 taking labor, arduously, patiently and persistently applied; 

 while all science teaches that research is effective only in those 

 regions wherein something Uke demonstration can be attained. 

 If investigations can not be well done they are of little worth; 

 if nothing can be proved they are of still less worth, or at best 

 only of negative value. But obvious as these truisms are when 

 stated by themselves, they have been contradicted daily in the 

 plexus of events which make up what our successors will call the 

 history, recorded and unrecorded, of the Institution. Thus it 

 has been suggested not infrequently that promising researches be 

 suspended in order that equally or less promising researches 

 might be taken up; and it has happened that proposals to abolish 

 departments of research have been seriously advanced before 

 these departments have had time to prove their rights to exist- 

 ence. It is not infrequently suggested, likewise, by otherwise 

 irreproachable correspondents, that the experts of the laboratories 

 and observatories of the Institution be set at work under the 

 direction of amateurs, or, in some cases, of those even who have 

 not reached that earliest stage of capacity in science. 



It goes without saying that all such untoward influences should 

 have little effect on the rise and progress of a research establish- 

 ment; but he would be an incompetent administrator who failed 

 to recognize the existence and the dangers of these influences. 

 Most men are still opportunists; many contemn principles and 

 theories of procedure; while the characteristic defect of deUbera- 

 tive bodies, strikingly illustrated by legislative assemblies, is lack 

 of deliberation. Moreover, what any organization, altruistic or 

 otherwise, may accomplish at any epoch, or during any period, 



