BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXX1l1 
These extracts explain Whitman’s position with reference to 
the functions of instruction in a primarily research institution. 
His ideas seem to have been sound, if we may judge from the 
experience of twenty-three years, during which the two have 
existed side by side with mutual advantage. 
During the third session of the Laboratory Whitman organized 
the evening course of Biological Lectures which has proved ever 
since one of the stimulating features of the Laboratory life. In 
his report for this session Whitman outlines the idea as follows: 
These were not intended to take the place of systematic lectures, such 
as are given in the regular courses of instruction; they stand rather for 
the higher and the more general needs of the science. Their leading 
purpose, if I may be permitted to define it more with reference to the 
possibilities of its future development than to its present attainment, 
was to meet the rapidly growing need of cooperative union among special- 
ists. Specialization has now reached a point where such union appears 
to be an essential means of progress. Specialization is not science, but 
merely the method of science. For the sake of greater concentration 
of effort, we divide the labor; but this division of labor leads to inter- 
dependence among the laborers, and makes social coordination more and 
more essential. This is the law of progress throughout the social as 
well as the organic world. An organism travels towards its most per- 
fect state in proportion as its component cell-individuals reach the limit 
of specialization, and form a whole of mutually dependent parts. Sci- 
entific organization obeys the same law. As methods of investigation 
improve, specialization advances, and at the same time the mutual de- 
pendence of specialists increases. Isolation in work becomes more and 
more unendurable. Comparison of results, interchange of views and 
ideas, and a thousand other advantages of social contact, become of 
paramount importance to the highest development. 
In such considerations may be found the leading motive for this 
course of lectures. While directed in the main to the higher needs of 
investigators, they deal, as a rule, with subjects of present and quite 
general interest to beginners. In general, it may be said that the 
authors undertake to set forth what has been accomplished in their 
special fields of research, to give the conclusions of the best work and 
thought, to point out general bearings, and to state the problems that 
await solution. 
The educational value which such lectures may be presumed to have, 
and the consideration that through them the aims, the needs, and the 
possibilities of biological work might, in some measure, be made better 
known to the public, especially to those whose liberal benefactions have 
enabled the Laboratory to carry forward its work, suggested the propri- 
ety of publication. 
