THE DEBT TO PURE SCIENCE 35 



In this review the famiUar has been chosen for illustration 

 in preference to the wonderful, that attention might not 

 be diverted from the main issue, that the foundation of indus- 

 trial advance was laid by workers in pure science, for the most 

 part ignorant of utility and caring little about it. There is 

 here no disparagement of the inventor ; without his perception 

 of the practical and his powers of combination the world would 

 have reaped little benefit from the student's researches. But 

 the investigator takes the first step and makes the inventor 

 possible. Thereafter the inventor's work aids the investi- 

 gator in making new discoveries, to be utilized in their turn. 



Investigation, as such, rarely receives proper recognition. 

 It is usually regarded as quite a secondary affair, in which 

 scientific men find their recreation. If a geologist spends his 

 summer vacation in an effort to solve some perplexing struc- 

 tural problem he finds, on his return, congratulations because 

 of his glorious outing; the astronomer, the physicist, and the 

 chemist are all objects of semienvious regard, because they 

 are able to spend their leisure hours in congenial amusements; 

 while the naturalist, enduring all kinds of privation, is not 

 looked upon as a laborer, because of the physical enjoyment 

 which most good people think his work must bring. 



It is true that investigation, properly so called, is made 

 secondary, but this is because of necessity. Scientific men 

 in government service are hampered constantly by the de- 

 mand for immediately useful results. Detailed investiga- 

 tion is interrupted because matters apparently more impor- 

 tant must be considered. The conditions are even more 

 unfavorable in most of our colleges and none too favorable 

 in our greater universities. The literary leisure supposed 

 to belong to college professors does not fall to the lot of 

 teachers of science, and very little of it can be discovered by 

 college instructors in any department. The intense com- 

 petition among our institutions requires that professors be 

 magnetic teachers, thorough scholars, active in social work, 

 and given to frequent publication, that, being prominent, 

 they may be li\dng advertisements of the institution. How 

 much time, opportunity, or energy remains for patient in- 

 vestigation some may be able to imagine. 



