SKCTION 22. OBSERVATION. 311 



are our protection against certain dangerous bacteria, nor would 

 observation of this kind have disclosed to us the existence of 

 countless classes of such bacteria, much less that in many in- 

 stances the malignant bacteria are carried and nursed by some 

 animal or insect, as in the case of malaria, the "Nagan" horse 

 and cattle disease, sleeping sickness, and the plague. Nor would 

 ordinary reasoning have led us to observe that the telegraph 

 wire guides, but does not carry, the electricity, that telegraphic 

 messages might be sent without any conductor, or that it might 

 be possible to be in London and yet make one's voice heard in 

 Paris or Rome. And it required alertness for a medical student 

 to notice that ether numbs pain, or for some one to identify 

 the specks of yeast with vegetable life, to be struck with the 

 nucleus of the cell, or to suggest that lunatics should be ordered 

 to bed. 1 The longer one revolves such discoveries, the more 

 one is astonished that most of them should not have been 

 made long ago, and the intenser becomes the conviction that, 

 when once a scientific methodology is established, obscure or 

 delicate hints will seldom be neglected by even amateur workers 

 in science. 



However, alertness is not less a virtue in the domain of 

 practice, and this is admitted by business men. Yet so far as 

 officialdom is concerned, it is largely, allowing for certain 

 honourable exceptions, in an arrested stage of development. 

 Here we have, so to speak, an exemplification of the workings 

 of the more or less primitive mind. The typical official reasons 

 that in lack of caution lurk dangers, and he thus arrives at 

 the suspicious conclusion that in doubtful matters he must do 

 no more than he is absolutely bound to. Risks and there are 

 risks in practically everything are therefore to be avoided at 

 all costs, an attitude which every business man knows spells 

 disaster, if not ruin. Similarly, everything tends to be organised 

 on the Noah's ark principle. Every official has assigned to him 

 a narrowly and arbitrarily circumscribed sphere of action, and 

 a hierarchy of public servants is established with definite in- 

 elastic responsibilities and human relationships reduced and 

 degraded to an exchange of minutes. Initiative, adaptability, 

 and progress are hence seriously obstructed, and an organisa- 

 tion is created which will not only do nothing that is wrong, 

 but do nothing beyond what it is forced to do. Hence the govern- 



1 Catalysers and enzymes form an excellent illustration of our thesis, for 

 nothing save dogged alertness would have revealed them. Here are some 

 examples relating to catalysers: "A mixture of oxygen and hydrogen im- 

 mediately explodes when it is brought in contact with platinum black. 

 Common coal gas inflames when brought in contact with finely divided 

 platinum. Sulphur dioxide is by the same agency quickly oxidised to sul- 

 phuric acid. Hydroperoxide is rapidly split into oxygen and water when in 

 contact with platinum black. In all these cases the quantity of platinum 

 black is not diminished after the reaction, and the products of the reactions 

 are never any of the platinum compounds." (Frederick Czapek, op. cit., p. 84.) 



