THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA 15 



Where shall these men obtain their ideals and their training? 

 Not in Europe, for years after the war. Where then? From 

 contact with instructors and professors of second or third rate 

 intellectual ability? 



Unless pure science is brought up to and maintained at a 

 high average level, technical science along with pure science 

 will suffer, and in the future as in the past America will con- 

 tinue to trail in the wake of foreign scientific progress. 



The situation is indeed grave, the more so, since it is but 

 little understood and our more or less artificial industrial expan- 

 sion consequent on war conditions is mistaken for real scientific 

 progress. A lasting development of science in America will 

 come when our academic scientific positions are clothed not 

 alone with the dignity of social position but likewise with the 

 dignity of adequate remunerative reward. Then, and only then 

 will science be able to attract men of the highest intellectual 

 attainments, men who possess, among other things, that most 

 essential prerequisite to creative work, namely, originality. The 

 present barrenness of science in America is due not so much to 

 a lack of opportunity and material facilities as to a lack of 

 aptitude for research among our scientists. The only practical 

 means of raising the intellectual standard of the academic pro- 

 fession, indeed of our universities as a whole, lies in increasing 

 the desirability of our academic positions, in making the com- 

 petition for such positions so keen that all but the most able 

 and original will be weeded out. And this process must not stop 

 with the selection of instructors and assistants from among 

 graduate and undergraduate students, it must continue until 

 the holder of an academic position has reached the point of 

 his highest efficiency. Scientific merit must be assured of recog- 

 nition and the sooner recognition follows performance and the 

 more nearly it corresponds to the merits of the performance, 

 the larger will be the number aspiring to recognition and the 

 greater will be the production of scientific work. 



Out publicists who deal with scientific educational matters 

 must wake up and give these questions candid discussion, even 

 though they may occasionally offend our vanity. The public at 

 large as well as those more immediately interested in educa- 



