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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



which is pro])al)ly true to the extent 

 that those who hold their fellow men 

 effectively in hand are, commonly, men 

 and women of some brute force. One 

 might say, as the converse of this, that 

 the thinkers of the world have been 

 below the average in physical attain- 

 ment. For, while it cannot be stated 

 accurately, it seems clear that nature 

 exacts heavy penalties for much intel- 

 lectual effort and that for most of the 

 race physical toil, even though arduous, 

 is still the most wholesome of all ac- 

 tivities. How to realize the old Greek 

 ideal of the beautiful body and the 

 beautiful mind is still afar off. 



Our present results indicate that 

 heredity, and not environment or edu- 

 cation, leads to permanent progress. 

 If this is so, the application of the 

 facts of heredity to our species will be 

 one of the great problems of the future, 

 and we see now that we are on the 

 right track and that adequate knowl- 

 edge, and hence control, of heredity 

 may be possible sooner than we had 

 thought. 



What we have seen in the history of 

 man's study of the microorganisms, in 

 a more restricted case like the fresh- 

 water mussel, and in the broad field of 

 heredity, will be found in other lines. 

 Facts apparently remote from present 

 needs come to be the very life blood of 

 a subsequent generation. There are, 

 doubtless, barren fields, but almost any 

 fact of nature is worth studying, since 

 only by continued searching do we find 

 that for which we seek. In our quest 

 for facts, we must so advance that no 

 spot is left wholly unexplored; for we 

 cannot tell what importance any part 

 of tlie field may assume. We cannot 



afford to concern ourselves today merely 

 with what seems useful, since the more 

 important advances of the past have so 

 commonly been made through fields 

 which at first gave small promise of 

 value. 



To some extent, the needs of practi- 

 cal life have induced men to explore the 

 unknown territory of nature. But to a 

 greater extent investigators have been 

 led into this territory by their attempts 

 to learn more of nature irrespective of 

 utilitarian values. We should, there- 

 fore, spare no effort to make such in- 

 vestigations possible. The recent his- 

 tory of science indicates that a larger 

 amount of research is now in progress, 

 "where the strange roads go down," 

 than at any time in the past, and that 

 the more important part of this work is 

 being pursued without the incentive of 

 immediate gain. Workers in science 

 should, in the face of the very general 

 failure of the public to appreciate this 

 situation, consider the ways and means 

 to a better understanding. The case 

 should be presented to the people and 

 to students in scientific courses in a 

 way to make all understand that sci- 

 ence is not "just a lot of this bug busi- 

 ness," as I heard one man say of zool- 

 ogy, but "a man's job" which appeals 

 to the imagination and which taxes to 

 the limit the intellectual resources — a 

 task we must take up where our fore- 

 bears laid it down. 



"Follow after — we are waiting 



by the trails that we lost, 

 For the sound of many footsteps, 



for the tread of a host. 

 Follow after — follow after^ 



for the harvest is sown : 

 By the bones about the wayside 



ye shall come to your own ! " 



