THE POSSIBILITIES OF COOPERATION 395 



army does not depend upon occupation or purpose but upon human 

 nature; that the effective power of a great number of scientific 

 men may be increased by organization just as the effective power 

 of a great number of laborers may be increased by military dis- 

 cipline. 



The emphasis laid by Mr. Root on the importance of organ- 

 ization in science must not be misinterpreted. For many years 

 he has been President of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, and an active member of its Execu- 

 tive Committee. Thus kept in close touch with scientific re- 

 search, he is well aware of the vital importance of individual 

 initiative and the necessity of encouraging the independent 

 efforts of the original thinker. Thus he goes on to say : 



This attitude follows naturally from the demand of true scientific 

 work for individual concentration and isolation. The sequence, 

 however, is not necessary or laudable. Your isolated and concen- 

 trated scientist must know what has gone before, or he will waste 

 his life in doing what has already been done, or in repeating past 

 failures. He must know something about what his contemporaries 

 are trying to do, or he will waste his life in duplicating effort. 

 The history of science is so vast and contemporary effort is so 

 active that if he undertakes to acquire this knowledge by himself 

 alone his life is largely wasted in doing that; his initiative and 

 creative power are gone before he is ready to use them. Occa- 

 sionally a man appears who has the instinct to reject the negligible. 

 A very great mind goes directly to the decisive fact, the determin- 

 ing symptom, and can afford not to burden itself with a great 

 mass of unimportant facts; but there are few such minds even 

 among those capable of real scientific work. All other minds need 

 to be guided away from the useless and towards the useful. That 

 can be done only by the application of scientific method to science 

 itself through the purely scientific process of organizing effort. 



It is plain that if we are to have effective organization in 

 science, it must be adapted to the needs of the individual worker, 

 stimulating him to larger conceptions, emphasizing the value 

 of original effort, and encouraging independence of action, 



