January 21, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



65 



. Even if the investigator eould hold aloof 

 and adopt a policy of watchful waiting, till 

 the world is controlled by either labor or 

 capital or, as seems more probable, by some 

 compromise between them, he would still be 

 in an unfortunate position. Since both 

 labor and capital are primarily concerned 

 with production, we should expect both to 

 center their interests on applied research, 

 ■or invention and 'to neglect research which 

 is fundamentally concerned with discovery. 

 This would be unfortunate, because the two 

 kinds of research can be most fruitful only 

 in symbiosis, for the neglect of discovery 

 must lead to impoverishment of the theo- 

 retical resources of the inventor, and 

 purely theoretical research strongly tends 

 •to become socially ineffective. "We have as 

 yet, I believe, no concise information in re- 

 gard to labor's attitude to so-ca;lled pure 

 research. The attitude of the capitalist, or 

 business man seems to be much more defi- 

 nite. His lactivities, like those of the in- 

 vestigator, are bound up with certain 

 powerful, highly conditioned instincts, emo- 

 tions and interests, some of which have 

 been elucidated by Taussig.^^ He believes 

 that the business man is driven mainly by 

 the acquisitive instinct, centered of course 

 on pecuniary profits, the instinct of domi- 

 nation or predation, the instinct of emula- 

 tion, in the special form of social emula- 

 tion, and the instinct of devotion or 

 altruism. Undoubtedly we must recognize 

 also the importance of the instinct of 

 ■workship as a powerful drive in many emi- 

 nent business men, but both it and the 

 instinct of devotion are, of course, apt to 

 be directed to practical matters or to those 

 which yield immediate returns, such as 

 philanthropy, charity, medicine, etc. Apart 

 from certain notable exceptions, business 



. 12 ' < Inventors and Money-Makers, ' ' N. Y., Mac- 

 millan Co., 1915. 



men may, therefore, be expected to favor 

 invention and to take little interest in dis- 

 ,covery, except when it relates to natural 

 resources capable of exploitation. 



These considerations lead me to the 

 opinion that so long as our present society 

 endures adequate financial and other sup- 

 port for research in its most comprehensive 

 form will be forthcoming only after the 

 general community has thoroughly grasped 

 the fact that of the four great fields of hu- 

 man endeavor, science, art, religion and 

 philosophy, science is of the most over- 

 whelming social value in the sense that the 

 ^welfare of every individual, physically, 

 mentally and .morally, absolutely depends 

 pn its developments, or in other words, on 

 jScdentific research. To saturate the general 

 public with this conviction is a formidable 

 task and one that can be accomplished only 

 ,by a slow process of education. 



There is also another aspect of the sub- 

 ject which I can best make clear by return- 

 ing to that form of organization which we 

 ^observe inhering in individual animals and 

 plants and in the societies of the former. 

 Occasionally we find such organisms so 

 highly integrated, differentiated or special- 

 ized as seriously to impair their powers of 

 adaptation. When such a condition is 

 reached, the organism either persists with- 

 out phylogenetic change, if its environment 

 remains stable, or soon becomes extinct, if 

 (its environment changes. Most organisms, 

 ^owever, retain a lot of relatively unorgan- 

 ized;, or more or less generalized structures 

 jand functions as reserves for prospective 

 jadjustments to the changing environment. 

 jOur own bodies still contain many such 

 primitive elements, like the white blood cor- 

 puscles, the undifferentiated connective 

 ^tissue, dermal and glandular cells, and in 

 ^arval insects we find even undifferen- 

 tiated nerve cells. And we all carry with 



