Febeuakt 16, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



159 



that shall be traveled before he may stand 

 upon the heights. He may be held down, 

 but he can not be pushed up. No power on 

 earth is so impelling as his own initiative 

 and determination to achieve. 



Under what project did Darwin work? 

 Did Faraday report regularly upon the 

 progress of his mental wanderings after 

 firm resting places? Could the searchers 

 after the principle of radioactivity report 

 progress from time to time ? How shall we, 

 even in the interest of efficiency, record the 

 Sermon on the Mount or the Gettysburg 

 address in terms of laboratory hours? Go 

 to, we are dealing with strange gods at this 

 point. Let us be forgiven and return to 

 the worship of the true Deity which is 

 ready to recognize the individual as the 

 source of all real discovery and which is 

 willing to accredit him with as much of 

 honesty of purpose, and of faithfulness to 

 the public as the political appointee, also 

 an hireling. Above all let us not set up to 

 rule over us machinery that is manned by 

 those individuals who could not themselves 

 do the work they attempt to supervise. 

 And above all I protest against the present 

 temper of the public mind which has been 

 tampered with by professional exploiters 

 until it is unwilling to trust its business 

 in the hands of boards or other deliberative 

 bodies even when composed of reputable 

 citizens busy for the most part about their 

 own affairs, but overrules their judgment 

 by exalting individuals who have no occu- 

 pation of their own but whose profession it 

 is to multiply and to fill administrative 

 positions, that render no service but that 

 hinder mightily the progress of the true 

 scientist whose one occupation is research. 



Here have come together the working 

 scientist and the professional officeholder. 

 They face in opposite directions. At pres- 

 ent the office man has the upper hand. He 

 assumes the role of critic and the public has 



accorded him all he asks. The time will 

 come, however, and may it not be long de- 

 layed, when the scientist will again come 

 into his own and the institution to which 

 he belongs will recognize no overlord, ex- 

 cept the auditor, who will be an auditor, not 

 an autocrat in technical science. 



THE RANGE 



So thoroughly has chemistry taken the 

 lead as a science fundamental to all im- 

 provement in agriculture that the terms 

 are sometimes used synonymously. How- 

 ever, the outlook for the development of 

 other sciences in their relation to agricul- 

 ture is extremely suggestive. Physics, for 

 example, has never consciously served farm- 

 ing. I know of but two graduate students 

 in agriculture who have specialized in 

 physics, and it was the experience of both 

 that physicists were somewhat surprised to 

 learn that their science could be of the 

 slightest use in agriculture, whereas the 

 facts are, it is of fundamental importance 

 at many points. 



Both botany and zoology possess undevel- 

 oped opportunities little dreamed of. They 

 have in the past served agriculture mainly 

 in the field of genetics or of animal and 

 plant diseases. We are only beginning to 

 study crop production from the standpoint 

 of the physiology of the plant, its sensitive 

 periods and the conditions essential to suc- 

 cessful growth. 



As a whole we have only scratched the 

 surface of science in its relation to the prac- 

 tise of farming. The outlook is nothing 

 short of a panorama to him who has an ade- 

 quate vision of the future and the ability 

 to work in any one of the great fields of 

 science, distinguishing clearly between sci- 

 ence per se and its application to the arts 

 of man. 



The writer is not pessimistic and is in no 

 sense discouraged with the outlook. He is 



