June 18, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



601 



We are given now to naming our chosen 

 activity — whether in science, literature, his- 

 tory or art — research, and the dictionaries 

 permit each of us who cultivates it produc- 

 tively, to be spoken of as a researcher. I do 

 not like the words : the second is not euphon- 

 ious to my ear; and the first is too suggestive 

 of the cyaniding of the tailings of an aban- 

 doned mine or of the sifting of what may be 

 called variously a dust-bin or an ashpile. Un- 

 fortunately it is true that neither mining 

 nor furnace management nor refuse collection 

 is exhaustive, and re-search of their refuse 

 must be made over and over again as values 

 change or methods are improved. But I like 

 to think of our profession as that of investi- 

 gation and of our colleagues as investigators 

 — trailing the truth wherever it must be 

 sought — through the debris left by our pre- 

 decessors when necessary, but by preference 

 in the virgin field of nature. 



This profession in its history parallels in 

 many ways that of a phylum of plants or of 

 animals. It has had its days of fruitless aim- 

 lessness ; some of its products appear grotesque 

 to us of to-day; some of its branchlets, like 

 those of a cottonwood or an elm in autumn, 

 have been cast off, perhaps to the benefit of 

 the whole, when they did not continue to pro- 

 duce in proportion to their early promise or 

 in comparison with others more favorably en- 

 vironed. Some, too favorably circumstanced, 

 may even have been pruned out as unfruitful 

 or destructive of a collectively effective bal- 

 anced symmetry because of their rank vege- 

 tation. iN^atural and artificial selection have 

 worked on it since its beginning, and there 

 is little reason to suppose that they will not 

 continue operative until its end. 



The parallel may be carried somewhat fur- 

 ther than one would carry it at first thought. 



Long before man began to find the products 

 of organic nature profitable — indeed long be- 

 fore his appearance on the scene — plants had 

 developed the power of making food and of 

 applying it to their needs; and animals had 

 acquired the habit of carrying its use into a 

 much more dynamic field. The greatest tilth 

 of this field is by man, the present culmina- 



tion of the family tree of our living world; 

 and what the struggle for existence among his 

 more lowly relatives had produced, that he 

 could use, he has selected and favored and 

 modified to his greater benefit. 



The strife between purposeful intelligence 

 and productive capability, in which within 

 limits the former is fore-ordained to dominate 

 the latter, is not peculiar to human civiliza- 

 tion and to the dominance of man over man : 

 it reaches far into his relations with his 

 fellow-creatures of lesser endowment.^ He has 

 shaped them to his needs or fancies, very 

 often in opposition to the selective law of 

 nature; he has multiplied, at the expense of 

 others, those that he fancied, and thereby has 

 increased the power of the earth to support 

 human life and human activity far beyond its 

 unaided capacity; he has become a potent 

 factor in natural selection, and will continue 

 operative as long as he does not kill the goose 

 that lays the golden egg. It is significant 

 that what he does not use, directly or indi- 

 rectly, he commonly permits to exist through 

 indolence or impotence rather than tolerance. 



He knows that what he calls vermin are 

 troublesome if not injurious. He protects 

 himself and what he considers his property 

 against them more or less consistently and 

 completely; but in proportion to their power 

 to evolve helpfully in harmony with condi- 

 tions of life in the chinks and crannies of 

 the world into which he can not or does not 

 follow them, they escape and thrive not only 

 despite him but at his expense and literally 

 on him. The rat is his uninvited guest the 

 world over, and the gray rat, if he were 

 worshipful and learned, would render daily 

 thanks to the patron who has made him the 

 rat of rats, transporting, housing and feed- 

 ing him to an almost unbelievable extent. 

 Eust, smut, mildew, and fermentative germ 

 thrive under his regime ; the world jjopulation 

 of codling moth and chinch bug has enlarged 

 a myriadfold through the ability of these self- 

 seeking creatures to get forward as riders on 

 man's own self-seeking progress. 



Perhaps in this survival and increase of 

 parasites and other vermin lies the token that 



