April 29, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



403 



occurring many years ago. I only introduce 

 reference to it here because I am reminded 

 that in defense of the quite undeniable fact 

 there was advanced an explanation which 

 sometimes, in less flagrant cases, has to be 

 seriously considered. The culprit when con- 

 victed pleaded that he had imbibed the 

 author's ideas from lectures he had heard 

 him deliver and essays of his he had read, so 

 that when he came to write these uncon- 

 sciously flowed from his pen. This too is one 

 of the implications of plagiarism, but alas! 

 in this particular instance it was a question 

 not of ideas — these were in no way notable — 

 but of two or three thousand words repeated 

 in the same sequence, certainly a monstrous 

 accomplishment for the subconscious. With 

 this aspect of plagiarism I am not here con- 

 cerned, as I am not writing on the under- 

 lying causes of crime. 



Where indeed shall we draw the line be- 

 tween a peccadillo and crime? At a not very 

 remote period in the past there was no patent 

 law, no copyright, far less any code punish- 

 ing purloining even of words to say nothing 

 of ideas. There seems only comparatively 

 recently to have arisen a public opinion con- 

 demning such transgressions. They were 

 once scarcely censurable. In the time of the 

 Renaissance there was an entirely different 

 point of view. Their equivalent for research 

 was then the digging up of buried treasure 

 out of ancient literature. This was so uni- 

 versal that it seemed a sort of affectation to 

 be bringing in allusions to the derivation even 

 of transliterations from ancient, authors, 

 forcing on the reader, as it were, the recogni- 

 tion that the writer was accurately and inti- 

 mately acquainted with ancient models. It 

 was taken for granted of any idea or incident 

 that some Aristotle or Plato or Pliny had 

 originated or transmitted it. Why bore the 

 reader by continually reminding him of it? 

 Indeed such impatience occasionally becomes 

 vocal in the modern reader from this annoy- 

 ance. Among the ancient authors Pliny was 

 the only one who grouped his references in 

 separate bibliographical categories. He alone, 

 so far as I know, in his " Natural History " 



went about the matter in a way that ap- 

 proaches our systematic bibliographies, and 

 he took good care to save the reader from the 

 weariness of continual textual indications of 

 the sources of his astounding statements. 

 Any story, however good, any lesson, however 

 valuable, any humor, however infectious it 

 otherwise would be, is apt to evaporate under 

 less careful supervision. The literature of 

 the subject is what the rushed researcher to- 

 day first skips, the details next and the " con- 

 clusions," least of all. The form of a modern 

 research article at best is a grisly horror. I 

 do not know if the man has been born yet who 

 can avoid bibliography, details and conclu- 

 sions, and yet have his essay stand forth in 

 shining attractiveness in its exposition of 

 original work in science. One sometimes 

 wishes to be born again when that blessed 

 time is a reality. It is therefore hardly fair 

 to group the conventional essay of modern 

 science with real literature. The real masters 

 of science sometimes approach it; they very 

 rarely indeed attain it. 



But in order to pursue our inquiry into the 

 nature of plagiarisms, it is in general litera- 

 ture for the most part we must seek our illus- 

 trations. When Moliere wrote his comedy 

 " Le Medecin Malgre Lui," he put in the 

 mouth of his own characters the discourse, 

 found in Rabelais, of Panurge, as to tlie man 

 who had married a mute wife. It is not 

 worth while to pursue the joke further back- 

 ward, as we shall find other illusti'ations 

 easily enough, but those who saw Joe Jeffer- 

 son play " Rip van Winkle " in Bouoicault's 

 adaptation of Irving's tale will remember the 

 soliloquy of Rip on the mountain as to the 

 vision of a happy married life, excited by the 

 contemplation of the mute dwarfs he met 

 there. Petrarch furnished Moliere with other 

 scenes, not the ideas alone but a considerable 

 stretch of word for word translation. I have 

 traced this back, not quite so literally per- 

 haps, to Pliny and evidently through him to 

 Pindar. The ancient Greek legends repre- 

 sent the complaint of Zeus finding practical 

 executive attention in the smiting of .^scu- 

 lapius for transgressing the permissible limi- 



