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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 167. 



dren ; some of the most destructive plagues 

 are understood and the antidotes are pre- 

 pared by the culture of antagonistic germs ; 

 antiseptic treatment has robbed surgery of 

 half its terrors, and has rendered almost 

 commonplace operations which, less than 

 two decades ago, were regarded as justifia- 

 ble only as a last resort. The practice of 

 medicine has been advanced by outgrowths 

 of Pasteur's work almost as much as it was 

 by Liebig's chemical investigations more 

 than half a century ago. 



In this review the familiar has been 

 chosen for illustration in preference to the 

 wonderful, that your attention might not 

 be diverted from the main issue, that the 

 foundation of industrial advance was laid 

 by workers in pure science, for the most 

 part ignorant of utility and caring little 

 about it. There is here no disparagement 

 of the inventor ; without his perception of 

 the practical and his powers of combina- 

 tion the world would have reaped little 

 benefit from the student's researches. But 

 the investigator takes the first step and 

 makes the inventor possible. Thereafter 

 the inventor's work aids the investigator in 

 making new discoveries, to be utilized in 

 their turn. 



Investigation, as such, rarely receives 

 proper recognition. It is usually regarded 

 as quite a secondary affair, in which scien- 

 tific men find their recreation. If a geolo- 

 gist spends his summer vacation in an 

 effort to solve some perplexing structural 

 problem he finds, on his return, congratu- 

 lations because of his glorious outing; the as- 

 tronomer, the physicist and the chemist are 

 all objects of semi-envious regard, because 

 they are able to spend their leisure hours 

 in congenial amusements ; while the natu- 

 ralist, enduring all kinds of privation, is 

 not looked upon as a laborer, because of the 

 physical enjoyment which most good peo- 

 ple think his work must bring. 



It is true that investigation, properly so- 



called, is made secondary, but this is because 

 of necessity. Scientific men in government 

 service are hampered constantly by the de- 

 mand for immediately useful results. De- 

 tailed investigation is interrupted because 

 matters apparently more important must be 

 considered. The conditions are even more 

 unfavorable in most of our colleges and 

 none too favorable in our greater universi- 

 ties. The ' literary leisure ' supposed to be- 

 long to college professors does not fall to the 

 lot of teachers of science, and very little of it 

 can be discovered by college instructors in 

 any department. The intense competition 

 among our institutions requires that pro- 

 fessors be magnetic teachers, thorough 

 scholars, active in social work, and given 

 to frequent publication, that, being promi- 

 nent, they may be living advertisements of 

 the institution. How much time, oppor- 

 tunity or energy remains for patient in- 

 vestigation some may be able to imagine. 



The misconception respecting the relative 

 importance of investigation is increased by 

 the failure of even well educated men to 

 appreciate the changed conditions in 

 science. The ordinary notion of scientific 

 ability is expressed in the popular saying 

 that a competent surgeon can saw a bone 

 with a butcher knife and carve muscle with 

 a handsaw. Once, indeed, the physicist 

 needed little aside from a spirit lamp, test 

 tubes and some platinum wire or foil ; low 

 power microscopes, small reflecting tele- 

 scopes, rude balances and home-made ap- 

 paratus certainly did wonderful service in 

 their day ; there was a time when the 

 finder of a mineral or fossil felt justified in 

 regarding it as new and in describing it as 

 such ; when a psychologist needed only his 

 own great self as a basis for broad conclu- 

 sions respecting all mankind. All of that 

 belonged to the infancy of science, when 

 little was known and any observation was 

 liable to be a discovery ; when a Humboldt, 

 an Arago or an Agassiz was possible. But 



