24 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



2. Quite recently it has been ''discovered" that the air and the 

 ether contain ''free energy." If this is so, if energy hke urbanity 

 is free, why should it not be rendered available at the expense of 

 the Institution for the improvement of mankind? 



Study and reflection concerning these aberrant types and an 

 intimate association with them beginning thirty years before the 

 foundation of the Institution, all point to the conclusion that 

 responsibility for their undue prominence must be attributed in 

 large degree and in the last analysis to a prevalent inadequate 

 development of critical capacity even amongst the best educated 

 classes of contemporary life. Many representatives of these 

 latter regard the eccentric individual as thereby worthy of special 

 attention. He is often referred to as a sprite or as a male witch, 

 but commonly, of course, under the more familiar designations 

 of our day as "a genius" or as "a wizard." Thus it is quite easy 

 for obvious charlatans and ignoramuses, as well as for those in 

 pursuit of Sisyphean paralogisms and anachronisms, to secure 

 letters of introduction and commendation to the Institution 

 from distinguished people, who pass the applicants along on the 

 theory apparently that no harm can result from an effort to assist 

 in the laudable work of extending learning. It is assum.ed that a 

 research establishment must have effective facilities for utilizing 

 the necromantic capacities attributed to those in particular to 

 whom the terms genius and wizard are by common assent applied. 

 Such introductions and commendations are generally held to 

 be equivalent to approvals which may not be lightly set aside. 

 The suggestion of tests of the pretensions and of checks on the 

 deductions of these applicants is repulsive to them. What they 

 desire is not diagnosis but indorsement. In all these matters 

 there is revealed likewise a widely diffused misapprehension con- 

 cerning the meanings of the terms science and research. The first 

 may mean anything from occultism to the steam engine or to the 

 telephone and thence up to those rarely appreciated principles of 

 which the law of conservation of energy is one of the most con- 

 spicuous examples. The other term has a similarly wide range of 

 meaning, but it stands most commonly either for a secret process 

 which leads to riches by way of patent offices or for enterprises 

 in which the Institution is supposed to act as a complaisant 

 disbursing agency. 



