October 16, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



505 



the energy of chemical combination he con- 

 tributed, in the words of Professor Ost- 

 wald, "untouched treasures in the greatest 

 abundance, and of the greatest importance 

 for the tlieoretical and experimental in- 

 vestigator, and revolutionized in some of 

 its branches the theories of chemical sci- 

 ence." 



Last fall one of the professors of this 

 university by chance read in French a folk 

 lore story which, after some research, he 

 found was common to the Scandinavian, 

 the German, the Hebrew, and probably 

 other, peoples. As a result of his investi- 

 gation he read an important paper last 

 December at the meeting of the Modern 

 Language Association in Columbus, Ohio, 

 trjnng to show that this story and the 

 spiritual or ethical precepts i^nderlying it 

 were the common property of many na- 

 tions. Was his time wasted? Can such 

 an inquiry be of any use to the people 

 of a democracy? I answer yes. It is of 

 use for its own sake, because it reaches 

 down and stirs again into activity the ele- 

 mental feelings common to all nations, and 

 leads them to think of the unity of the 

 race and the oneness, if I may say so, of 

 its basic, moral and intellectual ideas. It 

 is defensible, too, on a lower, or utilitarian, 

 ground. I can conceive of the use of the 

 facts brought out by this investigation as 

 a help in promoting the assimilation of the 

 foreign elements of our population. One 

 fact concerning our immigration, which 

 more than any other stands in the way of 

 rapid assimilation, is the feeling of sepa- 

 rateness or alienation among thoiisands of 

 the foreigners who are now coming to our 

 shores. The Slav, the Magyar, the Italian, 

 the Russian, the Jew, feels that there is 

 nothing common to him and this new 

 American life into the midst of whose 

 hurly-burly he is thrust. The telling of a 

 story which is the common property of 

 many races, to a group of such foreigners, 



gives them a certain community of feeling 

 and interest, helps to break down their 

 feeling of separateness, and shows them 

 that the distance between the emotional 

 and intellectual nature of themselves and 

 the native American is after all not so 

 great. This is one of the keys to success 

 in some social-settlement work. 



The other day we laid at rest, with such 

 poor honors as we could show, one of the 

 gentlest spirits and most enthusiastic 

 scholars of our gToup. Gustav Karsten 

 had a passion for research in his chosen 

 field. Although from my conversations 

 with him I judge that he had no thought 

 that his work was capable of any possible 

 practical application, yet who shall say 

 that in time to come his study of philology 

 and his researches into the elements com- 

 mon to many languages and his study of 

 phonetics, may not aid in producing a 

 language that shall be the common prop- 

 erty of the commercial world and promote 

 that very practical life from which his 

 subject of study was so far removed? It 

 is not a new thing in experience for philo- 

 logical and historical reseai'ch to produce 

 political and practical, as well as scientific 

 and literary, results. 



But the study of abstract subjects has 

 another defense than is found in the fact 

 that they may unexpectedly contribute to 

 the practical. Even a democracy has 

 classes with spiritual and intellectual 

 aspirations, and such studies tend to pro- 

 duce results that satisfy the desires and 

 better the lives of some classes, at any rate, 

 in the community. Now a democracy may 

 not insist that public money spent on edu- 

 cation shall be restricted to the kind of 

 education that will benefit one class only. 

 Every class in the community has a right 

 to ask that its interests, the subjects to 

 which its heart and mind turn, shall re- 

 ceive their due attention. To justify the 

 promotion of scholarly study in cultural 



