596 



AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



and to the whole world, but has not immediate 

 commercial value to any individual or group, 

 is the kind of work which' requires public 

 support. If the man of genius exists he 

 should be given opportunity to use his genius 

 to the best advantage of all. It is extremely 

 difficult to find the men most competent to do 

 research work and to plade them under the 

 most favorable conditions, but if the immeas- 

 urable importance to society were realized, the 

 difficulties would be solved. It is possible to 

 imagine a national research university to 

 which the ablest men should be drawn, some 

 permanently and some temporarily, there to 

 be given all possible facilities for their work, 

 together with such honorable consideration 

 and such salaries that science and scholarship 

 would attain their due place and be made at- 

 tractive to the fittest. One can even dream of 

 an international research university to the 

 support of which each nation would contribute 

 a part of the cost of the armaments which it 

 would tend to make useless. 



The figures here given show the advantage 

 of statistics over general impressions. The 

 writer is perhaps as well informed as any one 

 in regard to the distribution of scientific men, 

 but some of the figures came as a surprise to 

 him. He knew, or thought he knew, that 

 Harvard had gained and Columbia had lost, 

 but he had no idea of the extent of the change. 

 He supposed that Chicago had lost and that 

 Yale had stood about stationary, whereas both 

 institutions show decided gains. He had no 

 idea that Princeton had among its instructors 

 a larger proportion of scientific men of stand- 

 ing than Columbia, or that the proportion in 

 different universities varied from one half to 

 one sixtieth. And so in many other cases he 

 had wrong impressions, and others probably 

 had wrong impressions of the same or other 

 kinds. We are apt to form general conclu- 

 sions from striking individual cases without 

 regarding all the conditions. Prominent men 

 lost by or called to an institution attract at- 

 tention rather than the gradual improvement 

 in the performances of a considerable body of 



men. The eminent man that an institution 

 loses is not as a rule supplied by a new man, 

 but a large loss in one case is made up by 

 small advances in many cases. 



It may be hoped that an exposition of the 

 true conditions will be of service to science. 

 From the point of view of abstract philosophy 

 it may not matter whether a scientific advance 

 is made in Russia or America, at one univer- 

 sity qr another. But abstract philosophy in- 

 fluences conduct less than concrete loyalties. 

 A man who cares as much for other people's 

 children as for his own is not likely to care 

 greatly for any of them. The president of a 

 leading university has recently urged the im- 

 portance of increasing salaries, not in order to 

 attract better men to the academic career or 

 to enable them to do better work, but in order 

 that his professors may not be paid less than 

 those of a sister institution. Such a point of 

 view may seem rather nai've, but it is sound 

 human nature and should be appealed to for 

 the improvement of the conditions under 

 which scientific work is done. If the loyalty 

 of alumni could be transferred from football 

 to scholarship, there would result a decided 

 gain to scholarship. The fact that each state 

 wants its university to be as strong as its 

 neighbor's is one of the most potent factors in 

 the advance of the state universities. 



Individual conduct is in the main automatic 

 response to chance circumstance. But the 

 organism and the circumstances and especially 

 their interrelations may be altered. Organic 

 life consists of adjustments brought about by 

 the slow processes of nature. We have now 

 reached the extraordinary position from which 

 it is possible to make such adjustments for our 

 own welfare by foresight and scientific method. 

 The individual can prescribe a life of reason 

 more readily than he can follow it. But r.u 

 environment can be formed in which desirable 

 conduct becomes a reflex response. Reason 

 can have no better use than to select indi- 

 viduals and to arrange circumstances so that 

 science may be advanced and applied for the 

 good of all. 



