10 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



humanity now finds itself is only a symptomatic prelude to an 

 era of greater enlightenment and of progressive development. 



Probably no other organization in the evolution of learning 

 has been so beset by what Dr. Johnson called the anfractuosities 

 of the human mind as the Carnegie Institution 

 ^"""FanadeT °^ ©^ Washington. Much in its history would be 

 incredible if it had not occurred, and much is so 

 far stranger than fiction that few would believe it without the 

 evidence which comes from personal contact. Many of our 

 contemporaries, indeed, find it easier, if not more rational, to 

 dispute the evidence than to grapple with its crudities and 

 subtleties. It should be observed, however, that while the 

 vagaries to which reference is made here have been greatly 

 stimulated by the mere existence of the Institution, these did 

 not originate with it or at the time of its foundation in 1902. 

 They are, on the contrary, as old as primitive man. The excess 

 of their revival now is only a manifestation of the atavistic 

 tendencies against which progress must long, if not always, 

 contend, and especially during periods of national and interna- 

 tional turmoil. 



Adequate discussion of this complex subject must be left to 

 the historian and to the psychologist who may work in calmer 

 times than ours. Many of the data they will need are in cheated 

 in previous reports, while the archives of the Institution contain a 

 vast store of materials for those who may have the fortitude 

 to undertake the tasks of an analysis and melioration of these 

 adventitious stumbling-blocks which impede rational devel- 

 opment in the Institution and in all similar organizations as 

 well. But while this is neither an appropriate time nor an appro- 

 priate place for anything like a comprehensive exposition of the 

 Institution's unrivaled experience in the elusive domain of 

 futilit}^, it appears essential to reiterate protest against certain 

 of the more obstinate and prevalent misconceptions concerning 

 the plainest matters of fact, misconceptions inimical alike to 

 the interests of the Institution and to its contemporaries. 



When the Institution was founded, now nearly two decades 

 ago, it was in the nature of things that the wildest flights of poetic 

 ideaUsm should be tolerated or even welcomed, in accord with 



