194 



NATURE 



[May 9, 1918 



THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION AND THE 

 "HUMANITIES." 



ONE section of the report of the president of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington for the year 

 ending October 31, 19 17, which appears in the Year 

 Book, No. 16, recently received, deals exhaustively 

 with the relations of the institution and the public. 

 The subjoined extracts from the report are ot more 

 than domestic interest. 



It is often openly asserted and more often tacitly 

 iissumed that an endowed altruistic organisation acting 

 under a State or a national charter may proceed with- 

 out restrictions in the development of its work. Thus, 

 in accordance with this view, the institution is frequently 

 congratulated on its supposed freedom from govern- 

 mental control and on its supposed immunity from 

 social restraint. But this view is neither consonant 

 with fact nor consistent with sound public policy. All 

 such organisations are properly subject not only to 

 the literal constraints of their charters, but also to the 

 commonly more narrow, though unwritten, limitations 

 imposed by contemporary opinion. The ideal to be 

 sought by them in any case consists in a reciprocity 

 of relations between the individual endowment on 

 one hand and the vastly larger and more influential 

 puiblic on the other. This ideal, however, like most 

 ideals, is rarely fully attainable. Hence, any new 

 altruistic organisation is apt to find itself oscil- 

 lating between two extreme dangers : one arising 

 from action on the part of the organisation prejudicial 

 to public interests; the other arising from public ex- 

 pectations impossible of attainment and therefore pre- 

 judicial to the organisation. 



Happily for the institution, neither of these extreme 

 dangers has been seriously encountered. Its_ evolution 

 has proceeded without surpassing charter limitations 

 and without permanent hindrance from an aggregate 

 of expectations certainly quite unparalleled in the his- 

 tory of research establishments. But while thus far it 

 has been practicable to steer clear of the rocks and the 

 shoals towards which enthusiastic friends even of the 

 institution would have it head, and to demonstrate 

 the inappropriateness, the futility, or the impossibility 

 of a large number of recurring suggestions for appli- 

 cation of the institution's income, there remains a 

 multitude of subjects and objects of omnipresent im- 

 portunity for which the institution has furnished and 

 apparently can furnish only general disaj>pointment. 

 There are two classes of them presenting widely 

 different aspects, which appear worthy of special men- 

 tion at the present unusual epoch in the intellectual 

 development of mankind. These two classes find 

 expression respectively in the perennial pleas of 

 humanists for a larger share of the institution's in- 

 come and in the more persistently perennial pleas of 

 aberrant types of mind for special privileges not asked 

 for, and not expected by, the normal devotees to 

 learning. 



Claims of Humanists. 



Whenever and wherever the rules of arithmetic are 

 ignored, then and there will develop vagaries, mis- 

 understandings, and errors of fact that only the slow 

 processes of time can correct. Hence it was not simply 

 natural but also necessary that in the evolution of the 

 institution something like conflict surpassing the bounds 

 of generous rivalry should arise between claimants 

 whose aggregate of demands for application of income 

 has constantly exceeded the endowment from which 

 income is derived. It might likewise have been pre- 

 dicted with certainty that the largest share of the 

 resulting disapprobation visited upon the institution 

 should come from the province of the humanists, not 

 NO. 2532, VOL. lOl] 



because they possess any property of superiority or 

 inferiority, or any other singularity, but, first, for 

 the reason that they are more numerous in the aggre- 

 gate than the devotees of all other provinces combuied ; 

 and, secondly, for the less obvious but more important 

 reason that the subjects and objects of their province 

 are more numerous, more varied, more complex, and 

 in general less well defined than the subjects and ob- 

 jects of any other province. 



Concerning all these matters humanistic which have 

 agitated academic circles especially for centuries, the 

 administrative office of the institution is naturally 

 called upon to share in an extensive correspondence. 

 Some of this is edifying, most of it is instructive, but 

 a large, if not the greater, part of it appears to have 

 been relatively fruitless in comparison with the time 

 and the effort consumed. 



An appeal to that correspondence shows, in the first 

 place, that there is no consensus of opinion amongst 

 professed humanists as to what the humanities are. 

 It is well known, of course, by those who have taken 

 the trouble to reflect a little, that the words " human- 

 istic" and "humanist" are highly technical terms, 

 more so, for example, than the term "moment of 

 inertia," the full mechanical and historical significance 

 of which can be understood only by consulting Euler's 

 "Theoria Motus Corporum Solidorum." Technically, 

 the humanist is not necessarily humane, though for- 

 tunately for the rest of us he generally possesses this 

 admirable quality ; he needs only to be human. 



But these finer shades of verbal distinction which, 

 with more or less elaboration, have come down to 

 plague us from the days of the illustrious Alcuin and 

 Erasmus, but with no such intent on their part, are 

 less disconcerting than other revelations supplied by 

 this expert testimony. It shows, in the second place, 

 the surprising fact that some few humanists would 

 restrict this field of endeavour to literature alone. 

 From this minimum minimorum of content the esti- 

 mates of our esteemed correspondents vary with many 

 fluctuations all the way up to a maximum maximoriim 

 which would embrace all that is included in the com- 

 prehensive definition of anthropology to be found in 

 the Standard Dictionary. 



Thus some eminent authorities would exclude from 

 the humanities all the ancient classics even, except 

 their literatures. To such devotees philology, literary 

 or comparative, has no interest; while archaeology, 

 classical or cosmopolitan, is of no more concern to 

 them than comparative anatomy, which latter, by the 

 way, is held in certain quarters to comprise the whole 

 of anthropology. Equally confident groups of en- 

 thusiasts, on the other hand, animated by visions 

 held essential to prevent our race from perishing, 

 would, each in its own way, have the institution set 

 up boundaries to knowledge within which the humani- 

 ties, as always hitherto, would play the dominant 

 part, but *he appropriateness of fixation of which would 

 be immediately disputed by other groups. There would 

 be, in fact, only one point of agreement between them, 

 namely, that the institution's income is none too 

 large to meet the needs of any group. 



It should be observed in passing, however; in fair- 

 ness to our friends the humanists, that they are not 

 alone in their regressive efforts to establish metes 

 and bounds for advancing knowledge. Contemporary 

 men of science have likewise pursued the same ignis 

 fatuus with similarly futile results, as is best shown 

 by the arbitrary and often thoutrht-tight compartments 

 into which science is divided by academies and royal 

 societies. A sense of humour leads us to conclude 

 that these likenesses between groups and assemblages 

 thereof, still more or less hostile at times to one 

 another, serve well to prove that the individuals con- 



