Mat 12, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



503 



influence out of all proportion to the imme- 

 diate significance of his own investigations. 



My challenge to the critics of the present 

 system of research to produce anything better 

 does not rest on the idealistic argument that 

 truth for its own sake is the highest aim of the 

 scholar. This argument might not appeal to 

 those for whom this address is intended, who, 

 while not present in this audience, may yet 

 receive the challenge. It rests on the demon- 

 strated fact that many discoveries thought un- 

 important when made have proven to he valu- 

 able later, on the belief that new investigators 

 are often as successfully prepared by unim- 

 portant practice problems as by moi'e funda- 

 mental ones and with sometimes less danger to 

 the progress of science, and on the assumption 

 that the continuity of labor which problems of 

 small value peimit is conducive to aggregate 

 high productivity. This is the system under 

 which we now operate, a system which leaves 

 the individual free, and which does not chide 

 him too severely if he sometimes engages in 

 insignificant labor. It is a system which pro- 

 vides for the doing of many services in order 

 that some of them may prove valuable. Can it 

 be improved upon? Quite possibly. Can it be 

 improved upon by attempting to suppress all 

 eiforts that seem to have no significance? I 

 think not. The principle of this method is one 

 which has been widely adopted in other affairs 

 of life and has been found good. Firing a 

 whole cartridge full of shot in order that one 

 ball may bring down the game is a recognized 

 principle of the huntsman. Is the remaining 

 shot wasted? It is. Is the system which iises 

 cartridges of shot, most of which is wasted, an 

 uneconomical one? Any hunter will tell you 

 it is not. The bullets of a machine gun are 

 mostly wasted, but the system as a whole 

 insures hitting the mark. Drilling wells that 

 never yield oil is wasteful; but the system of 

 drilling numerous wells where there is a chance 

 of striking reservoirs is a profitable one. Cast- 

 ing bread upon the waters, to return again 

 sevenfold in the form of flesh of fish, would be 

 much more profitable if all the bread, instead 

 of being cast at random, could be put into the 

 mouths of those fishes that were afterwards 

 going to be caught, and denied to those that 



would later escape the net. But could such 

 individual feeding be carried out? Not eco- 

 nomically ; not even at all. Casting bread upon 

 the waters is the easiest and least wasteful way 

 of obtaining a return. Hundreds of inventions 

 are made for every one that fills an important 

 place in human economy. Numerous excur- 

 sions, genuine or spurious, were necessary 

 before the north pole was discovered. Busi- 

 ness concerns by the hundred are established 

 and succeed or fail, but by only a few of them 

 is economic progress made. Thousands of stu- 

 dents must be gathered into colleges, so that a 

 few scholars may be produced. Even presiden- 

 tial addresses are subject to the same rule. In 

 order that a few of distinction may be pro- 

 duced, many that fall short of the goal must 

 be wi-itten and heard. If presidential ad- 

 dresses must be had, trial and eiTor is the only 

 way to secure quality. 



The factor of safety has been employed for 

 awns in animals, which waste millions of eggs 

 and spermatozoa to insure continuity of the 

 species. Professor Jennings, in one of the 

 brilliant presidential addresses to which refer- 

 ence has been made, pictured himself as the 

 accidental product of union of one among 

 thousands of eggs and one among millions of 

 sperms, and congratulated himself on being 

 with us. We congratulate cm-selves on having 

 him with us. Along with Jennings, it is true, 

 we have to accept a lot of inferior persons. We 

 even have to take those who decry research be- 

 cause much of it is useless. But these disad- 

 vantages, these wasted combinations, are what 

 insure such as Jennings. Only a small per- 

 centage of seeds ever germinate, and fewer 

 stUl ever mature. The entire struggle for ex- 

 istence is based on the principle that security 

 and advancement are best secured through 

 wasteful over-production. 



So in research. To find radium, we must 

 permit scores of fruitless efforts in chemistry. 

 To invent the wireless telephone, there must 

 be munerous investigations that concern 

 hmnanity little or not at all. To discover the 

 mechanism of heredity, some one must be per- 

 mitted to do much that has little or no bearing 

 either upon that or upon anything else worth 

 while. The great advances of the theory and 



