276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



I would reply that it is one aspect of reality, and would paraphrase 

 a poet's lines regarding a too narrow view of reality : 



Never mind reality . . . 

 Holy hold life's ecstasy. 



The enjoyment of the arts and the sciences, of nature and life, is 

 the individual's privilege, but it can be thwarted or encouraged by 

 a social control. The munificence of princes made possible the paint- 

 ing and sculpture of the Renaissance, that of the wealthy men in 

 our country the foundation of research institutes and of well-endowed 

 centers of learning. Now that learned activities depend more and 

 more on society at large, on its delegates to the Congress and the 

 State legislatures, an enlightened understanding of the spiritual 

 significance of thought and search must be kept awake and strength- 

 ened over the widest possible ranges of our citizenship. Should 

 that not be possible in a country in which almost one-fifth of the young 

 people between 18 and 24 years of age are enrolled in school or college? 



Genetics has a particular reason to sound a warning. Its recent 

 fate in Russia was intimately bound up with a disdain for the 

 humanistic aspects of science. It is unavoidable, in any society, 

 that the support of humanistic activities is subject to general con- 

 ditions. The demands of economics, of a mobilization, of changing 

 social needs, will create forces which divert at one time more, at 

 another time less manpower and funds to a given function. There 

 would not have been necessarily dangerous implications had the 

 Soviet Government decided to curtail to some extent the expenditure 

 of its intellectual and financial resources which had been devoted 

 to genetics. It would probably have meant bad judgment about the 

 long-term advantages to be gained from asking experts in basic 

 research to turn to more immediate tasks. What is so distressing 

 was the contempt for scholarship and abstract — yet real — thought 

 which motivated, not the curtailment, but the suppression of 

 genetics. In his "victory" address of 1948, Lysenko made this clear 

 once more when he emphasized "... what led me to study pro- 

 foundly theoretical problems . . . was never mere curiosity and a 

 fondness for abstract theorizing," and when he held up to the ridicule 

 of his audience a basic work of one of the most brilliant of his 

 countrymen. 



We ourselves are by no means immune to influences which regard 

 the activities of the spirit as dispensable luxuries. Let us remember 

 the sober words which Washington wrote in the war-torn America 

 of 1780: "The Arts and Sciences essential to the prosperity of the 

 State, and to the ornament and happiness of human life, have a pri- 

 mary claim to the encouragement of every lover of his country and 

 of mankind." 



