46 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1333 



college is an isolated missionary among bar- 

 barians who know not even his language, and 

 wbo can give little inspiration to his par- 

 ticular work. And as the foreign missionary 

 must refresh himself first-hand at the source 

 of all spirituality, so ought the college 

 scientist to get his needed inspiration by 

 digging into ^Nature's secrets and striking 

 for himself the fountains of scientific truth. 



Too much can hardly be said by way of 

 caution to college professors against growing 

 "stale." Shut out from the intellectual com- 

 munion which they crave by their virtual 

 isolation from their own particular species 

 (except at long intervals on such happy 

 occasions as this) ; oppressed by a monotonous 

 routine of hearing recitations, conducting 

 quizzes, correcting papers and notebooks and 

 attending faculty meetings; and oft-times 

 discouraged by a lack of all evidence of ap- 

 preciation, at least as expressed by any ade- 

 quate compensation or equipment : what 

 wonder is it that these men are prone to fall 

 into the commonplace, to vegetate, as it were, 

 and fail even to keep pace with the progress 

 in their own fields? There is only one 

 remedy. It is action. And research is action 

 that extends to the very roots of the scien- 

 tist's being (if, indeed, he be a true scientist 

 at all), and regenerates his whole pro- 

 fessional attitude. 



There are, furthermore, certain very prac- 

 tical advantages to be gained from a reason- 

 able activity in research. One can not en- 

 gage in such work without becoming tolerably 

 familiar with the field in which it lies, and 

 with the subjects associated with it. It fur- 

 nishes an incentive to more thorough study 

 on the part of the teacher himself, and gives 

 a mastery and a self-confidence in teaching, 

 along these particular lines at least, that 

 could hardly be gained otherwise. The pro- 

 fessor of physics, for example, who has 

 worked out some little line of inquiry con- 

 nected with radio-activity, even though it be 

 with the aid of a home-made electroscope 

 housed in a tin can, and utilize no more ex- 

 pensive radio-active preparation than a cast- 

 off Wellsbach mantle, has had first-hand ex- 

 perience with the obstinacy of electroscoi>es 



and the practical difficulties of radioactive 

 experiments generally that will give him the 

 feeling of knowing what he is talking about 

 when it comes to teaching that part of his 

 subject. The same circumstance gives the 

 teacher the more complete confidence of his 

 students and colleagues, who justly feel that 

 a man who is making original contributions 

 to his science is one who can be trusted to 

 teach it with some authority. ISTor is this 

 feeling confined to the individual : it reflects 

 credit upon the college and gives it character 

 among scholastic institutions in such pro- 

 portion as its researches are published and 

 become known to the intellectual public. 



There is also a still more direct benefit to 

 the college whose professors are engaged in 

 productive research in the laboratories of 

 their own departments. Students like to see 

 things. However reassuring may be the 

 knowledge that their teachers have formerly 

 studied and done research in some university 

 or other, there is nothing so stimulating to 

 their immediate interest as the opportunity to 

 see research actually going on, to see new 

 truth actually coming to light. The botanist 

 who can beckon to his students to the micro- 

 scope and say that here is a form of life 

 never before described, or the geologist who 

 can take his class to a rock exposure that 

 disproves some prevalent theory of local 

 geology, excites at once the interest and con- 

 fidence of his pupils. No text-book statement 

 is half so convincing. And the college stu- 

 dent takes a measure of pride, and experi- 

 ences a sort of awe, in the presence of what 

 seems to him to be genius. 



Can any one deny that the students in our 

 hundreds of small colleges have as good a 

 right to such advantages as the students of 

 the few large universities of the land? 



Now there seems to be an unfortunate im- 

 pression among scientific people that research 

 is practicable only with the elaborate equip- 

 ment and in the stu'charged atmosphere of 

 the great university graduate school. It 

 must be admitted that there are many re- 

 search problems of which this is in a measure 

 true. But research, like music, has its rolea, 

 of which the minor ones have their own 



