October 13, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



515 



sue his self-sacrificing and arduous quest 

 for that truth which is certain as time goes 

 on to bring in its train so many blessings 

 to mankind? Who is to furnish the labo- 

 ratories, the funds for apparatus and for 

 traveling and for foreign study? 



Because of the extraordinary practical 

 results which have been attained by scien- 

 tifically trained men working in the indus- 

 trial laboratories and because of the 

 limited and narrow conditions under which 

 many scientific investigators have some- 

 times been compelled to work in univer- 

 sities, it has been suggested that perhaps 

 the theater of scientific research might be 

 shifted from the university to the great 

 industrial laboratories which have already 

 grown up or to the even greater ones which 

 the future is bound to bring forth. But we 

 can dismiss this suggestion as being un- 

 worthy. 



Organizations and institutions of many 

 kinds are engaged in pure scientific re- 

 search and they should receive every en- 

 couragement, but the natural home of pure 

 science and of pure scientific research is to 

 be found in the university, from which it 

 can not pass. It is a high function of the 

 universities to make advances in science, 

 to test new scientific discoveries and to 

 place their stamp of truth upon those which 

 are found to be pure. In this way only can 

 they determine what shall be taught as 

 scientific truth to those who, relying upon 

 their authority, come to them for knowledge 

 and believe what they teach. 



Instead of abdicating in their favor, may 

 not our universities, stimulated by the won- 

 derful achievements of these industrial 

 laboratories, find a way to advance the con- 

 duct of their own pure scientific research, 

 the grand responsibility for which rests 

 upon them. This responsibility should 

 now be felt more heavily than ever by our 

 American universities, not only because 



the tragedy of the great war has caused the 

 destruction of European institutions of 

 learning, but because even a worse thing 

 has happened. So great have been the 

 fatalities of the war that the universities 

 of the old world hardly dare to count their 

 dead. 



But what can the American universities 

 do, for they, like the pure scientists, are 

 not engaged in a lucrative occupation. 

 Universities are not money-making institu- 

 tions, and what can be done without money ? 



There is much that can be done without 

 money. The most important and most fun- 

 damental factor in scientific research is the 

 mind of a man suitably endowed by nature. 

 Unless the scientific investigator has the 

 proper genius for his work, no amount of 

 financial assistance, no apparatus or labo- 

 ratories, however complete, and no foreign 

 travel and study, however extensive, will en- 

 able such a mind to discover new truths or 

 to inspire others to do so. Judgment and 

 appreciation and insight into character on 

 the part of the responsible university 

 authorities must be applied to the problem, 

 so that when the man with the required 

 mental attributes does appear he may be 

 appreciated as early in his career as pos- 

 sible. This is a very difficult thing to do 

 indeed. Any one can recognize such a man 

 after his great achievements have become 

 known to all the world, but I sometimes 

 think that one who can select early a man 

 who has within him the making of the scien- 

 tific discoverer must have been himself 

 fired with a little of the divine spark. Such 

 surely was the case with Sir Humphry 

 Davy, himself a great discoverer, who, 

 realizing the fundamental importance of 

 the man in scientific discovery, once said 

 that Michael Faraday, whose genius he 

 was prompt to recognize, constituted his 

 greatest discovery. 



I can furnish no formula for the identi- 



