638 BACTERIAL DISEASES OF PLANTS 



theology are such bogs and quicksands of the human intellect. 

 They have not been, and from their very nature, in many cases, 

 cannot be subjected to rigid experiment, and, therefore, have 

 not arrived at, and in many cases, never can arrive at cer- 

 tainty. They belong on another plane, that of possibilities or 

 probabilities and some are not even possibilities. 



The best advice I can give the young pathologist is this: 

 // you would go far, experiment continually. Try out all of your 

 theories and other men's theories by experiment. Let no day 

 pass without something done to verify the correctness of the 

 various ideas you have formed from your observations. In 

 this way you will be able to discard many specious but erroneous 

 assumptions, and will be continually adding to your sum of exact 

 information. 



The reason many men are only hewers of wood and drawers of 

 water is because they are content with simple observations and 

 reflections, often very superficial ones, and stop short of experiment 

 which would show them where the truth lies. They may lack 

 the seeing eye and the inquiring mind, may have "hook worm," 

 be simply lazy, or perhaps only untaught. In too many children 

 the eager questioning spirit is repressed by a hard and unsympa- 

 thetic environment. Such persons are conspicuously weak in 

 memory, and in a knowledge of the past. Consequently they 

 are the natural and easy prey of the walking delegate, the 

 political demagogue and the yellow journalist. 



ON BEGINNING WORK THOUGHTLESSLY 



The best advice I can give the ambitious student is this: 

 As far as possible, think out carefully in advance all the main 

 ramifications of your experiments. This is not easy, even for 

 the advanced worker, and surely you will have overlooked 

 something, however thoughtful you may be, but by such 

 preliminary cogitation you will escape many pitfalls, and come 

 at once into the only proper way of research. "But I cannot 

 afford the time," I hear someone say. Well, time wisely spent 

 in the beginning of an undertaking is often time saved in the end. 

 The shrewd commander takes into account all possible contingen- 



