126 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1310 



Quite as often, the pioneers set o£E in a 

 direction that is uninteresting to the rest of 

 us. They go and come, and we hear with 

 passing attention if at all what they have 

 been doing. 



Sometimes they do a good deal of talking 

 about the inadequacy of what is accepted cur- 

 rently; they are regarded as heretics or at 

 best as destructive critics. "We complacently 

 await the calamity that we believe them to 

 court, and are incredulous if not really dis- 

 appointed when they do not disappear for 

 good but return and ask for an impartial ex- 

 amination of what they claim to have brought 

 back. 



Each of these types has been represented 

 over and again in our science, which has 

 profited by the good of each; and in the long 

 run it can not suffer through the bad, because 

 time inexorably eliminates this. But there 

 have been quite enough instances of mistakes 

 and delays and discouragements on the one 

 hand, and of spurts of stimiilated effort on 

 the other, following the activities of men 

 blessed with the gift of originality and at the 

 same time favored or hampered by its human 

 concomitant of radicalism or conservatism, 

 of sanguine credulity or of phlegmatic in- 

 credulity. 



Starting from isolated springs of impulse, 

 progress has settled into a continuous flow of 

 constantly increasing volume and rather fixed 

 direction, over and over again, until a new 

 touch of genius or a new revolt against the 

 established order has opened new channels 

 that have broadened and deepened with the 

 years without causing the main course to rim 

 dry. 



Sometimes change has come through the 

 talent of coordination, as when Linnseus 

 brought chaos into order in the arrangement 

 of flowering plants, or Saccardo in laboriously 

 assembling the fungi. Sometimes it has come 

 from an attempt to dam the main channel as a 

 means of diverting a part of the flow in a new 

 direction, as when Schleiden fought the sys- 

 tematists. Sometimes broad epitomization has 

 caused the change, as when Sachs revivified 

 the science by giving it coherence as a whole. 

 Sometimes an epoch-making improvement in 



technique is to be seen, as when Strasburger 

 showed how the most transient inner processes 

 of the dividing cell may be preserved for com- 

 parative study extending over months or 

 years. Sometimes a device accurately record- 

 ing for later study every phase of a passing 

 physiological process has shown what was un- 

 seen before. Sometimes, and perhaps more 

 often, the result has been achieved through 

 the purposeful imtiring straightforward work 

 of a man possessed at once of the plodding 

 industry of the laborer, the genius of the de- 

 signer, and the perspicacity of the philoso- 

 pher: such men were von Mohl, Hofmeister 

 and De Bary. 



Whatever its type, work that has left its 

 mark indelibly on the science has been done 

 by men endowed with an infectious enthu- 

 siasm. These men may have lived to see 

 their own discoveries set aside as incomplete 

 or even faulty, like Schleiden; or they may 

 have discarded their own forceful convictions, 

 like Sachs; or they may have known that in 

 doing a serviceable work effectively, they were 

 as effectively placing a barrier before the 

 greater work that they foresaw ahead, as did 

 Linnseus when he substituted an artificial key 

 for the real taxonomy that he could not 

 develop. But, however far it may have been 

 from perfection, what these men did appealed 

 to the understanding; what they said obtained 

 a hearing; and, above all, their consuming 

 interest was communicated to others and yet 

 others. They proved leaders as well as 

 workers. 



The personnel of botany forms a roster of 

 men sometimes working alone, unstimulated 

 and without following, sometimes founding 

 schools, sometimes following in the footprints 

 of masters. The suggestive thought is that 

 these masters for a considerable part have 

 been self made: that their followers who have 

 become masters have broken for themselves 

 new paths; and that one and all they have 

 been workers fitting their work on to that of 

 others, systematizing all, and enlisting eager 

 hands to do the work that they saw ahead 

 waiting to be done. They may not always 

 have had what we call a proper veneration for 



