650 BACTERIAL DISEASES OF PLANTS 



you neglect and must cite it, and as a rule you should see, as I 

 have said, the original papers. To this end, learn several foreign 

 languages and have accurate translations made of such impor- 

 tant papers as you cannot read in the original. 



Finally, you must not minimize the work of the earlier author 

 to magnify your own work. This is a common and mean sin. 

 Such meanness of soul is its own reward, but always there is 

 further punishment in store, since by no shift can such a person 

 avoid the moral judgments of his own generation and of pos- 

 terity. When a man has made use of an earlier author without 

 citation it would seem that the work is his own, but often he has 

 copied not only the discoveries but also the peculiar mistakes 

 of the first writer and thus his dishonesty is revealed and 

 punished. 



Treatment of Contemporaries. — There is much honest 

 rivalry in science and to this there can be no objection what- 

 ever. No one has any right to build a tight board fence around 

 any locality or any problem and claim it as his peculiar pre- 

 serves. Such a claim is highly absurd. Nature is free, or should 

 be, for all, and the more outspoken the criticism and frequent 

 the rivalry, the more rapidly will science advance. Nothing 

 throws such a wet blanket over the advancement of science as 

 the suppression of free speech and the domination of a few would- 

 be masters. Feel perfectly free, therefore, to take up any prob- 

 lem that interests you, unless you know that some one else has it 

 already well in hand, in which case courtesy would seem to dic- 

 tate the choice of another subject. The mere fact, however, that 

 others have begun to work on it need not deter you, if you are 

 not beholden to them for any of your ideas, and know that their 

 researches are as yet only in the dough, and this is peculiarly 

 true if the disease is wide-spread and economically important. 



The things which you must not do are these: You have no 

 right to begin a research, or to finish one, building it on the 

 unpublished ideas of another man which he has imparted to you 

 in confidence, or which you have obtained in some illicit way. 

 It may be you have overheard a conversation, or have seen by 

 accident some of the other man's experiments, or have received 

 information from a friend who has heard the news or seen the 



