AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



577 



with the most productive period of all history. 

 Both physical science and biological science 

 have been rewritten within a generation, and 

 it is possible that our scientific advance is 

 more rapid to-day than it ever was before. 

 None the less it is ominous for the future 

 that there should be only six men of science of 

 standing in the country who are under thirty 

 years of age, and that the number of scien- 

 tific men of standing should increase more 

 slowly than the population. 



There may be a racial senescence such as 

 we seem to find in comparing the peoples of 

 the Mediterranean with the Scandinavians 

 and Sclavs, but it would be contrary to all 

 our biological knowledge to suppose that the 

 human stock could alter in a generation. In 

 this period the number of individuals who 

 have the education opening the gates to a 

 scientific career has at least quadrupled. But 

 eminent men are lacking; and this we must 

 attribute to changes in the social environ- 

 ment rather than to deterioration of the stock. 



The progress of science opposes a real bar- 

 rier to its further advance. This is not be- 

 cause all the great discoveries have been made. 

 The field of science is not a circumscribed 

 territory which can be completely explored, 

 but rather an area which the larger it becomes, 

 the greater is the contact with the unknown 

 and the more numerous and momentous are 

 the problems pressing for solution. But as 

 the known country becomes larger, each ex- 

 plorer has further to go before he reaches the 

 undiscovered regions, and as he travels over 

 the well-mapped land he loses the strength 

 and vigor required for daring exploration. In 

 plain English, the young man who must spend 

 his early manhood in acquiring knowledge has 

 passed the age at which he is most likely to 

 have new ideas. The inherent difficulty we 

 exaggerate by our educational methods. By 

 our requirements for degrees, by our system of 

 examinations, by our insistence on irrelevant 

 information and ridicule of desirable ignor- 

 ance and promising mistakes, we crowd on 

 fat when the athlete should be relieved of 

 every superfluous ounce. The doctor's thesis 

 38 



is supposed to be the first productive work; 

 it is completed at the average age of twenty- 

 eight years and is likely to be the working 

 over of the old ideas of an old professor. In 

 t^e meanwhile the creative instinct has 

 atrophied. 



Racial senescence^ the lack of emotional 

 stimuli and the accumulations of knowledge 

 will probably set limits to the further advance 

 of science. In the presence of racial senes- 

 cence we should be entirely helpless, but it is 

 possible that there is no such thing. Twenty 

 years ago the Chinese were called a senile 

 race, but such a statement could not be justi- 

 fied to-day. In a way our stock is as young 

 as any, and the germ plasm may increase as 

 much in complexity as it has since the amosba. 

 Still a highly specialized organism is likely to 

 become unplastic and extinct, and apart from 

 physical exhaustion of the stock there is likely 

 to be a social senescence. This is closely re- 

 lated to the lack of emotional stimuli. Great 

 men and great achievements are likely to be 

 associated with national excitement, with 

 wars, revolutions, the rivalry or consolidation 

 of states, the rise of democracy and the like. 

 Such stirring events will probably disappear 

 from the world civilization of the future, and 

 it may be impossible to devise artificial stim- 

 uli adequate to arouse men from a safe and 

 stupid existence. But exactly because within 

 a century the great achievements of science 

 may belong to the past, where the great crea- 

 tions in poetry, art and religion may perhaps 

 now only be found, it is our business to do the 

 best we can to assure the race of an adequate 

 endowment policy. 



It is probable that we do not attract to the 

 scientific career the best possible men. There 

 is perhaps no harm in our fellowships and 

 underpaid assistantships, though a subsidized 

 theological education seems to have drawn in- 

 ferior men to the church. Those who carry 

 on investigation for the benefit of society 

 should be paid for their services by society, 

 and the average doctor's thesis is worth at 

 least $500. We must open the scientific career 

 to many in order to catch in our net the few 



