May 22, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



737 



of the botanist, however, can not be so 

 measured, for the service which he renders 

 to society is of an order entirely different 

 from that of the craftsman. His work is 

 to explore the boundaries of knowledge in 

 his search for additional truth, to break 

 the bonds of tradition and opinion when 

 they fetter progress in the solution of sci- 

 entific problems, and through creative 

 thought to advance the science of botany 

 and its useful applications. The value of his 

 service is not necessarily conditioned by his 

 salary, his degrees, his hours of work or the 

 number of his printed pages, but it does de- 

 pend, in part at least, upon his open-mind- 

 edness to truth, upon his ability to direct 

 his efforts along productive lines, upon the 

 validitj' of the conclusions based upon his 

 researches, upon the contribution which his 

 discoveries make to social welfare, and 

 upon his power to inspire and right to re- 

 tain public confidence in the value of bo- 

 tanical investigations. Through his deep 

 sense of community of interest and the 

 recognition that his studies may be of serv- 

 ice to all mankind, he thus places himself 

 beyond the pale of economic class distinc- 

 tions, and is entitled to be judged solely 

 by his personal value. 



Nevertheless, botanists themselves have 

 a tendency to judge each other by stand- 

 ards which fall far short of those of per- 

 sonal value. Too often is the sign accepted 

 at par value when the thing signified is 

 only debased currency. An array of scho- 

 lastic degrees and a long list of titles of 

 published articles may gain for the for- 

 tunate possessor a recognition wholly dis- 

 proportionate to the service he is rendering 

 either to science or to society. The much- 

 deplored tendency to "rush into print" on 

 slight provocation or on no provocation 

 at all, and the frequent occurrence of the 

 legend "Read by title" in the proceedings 

 of our societies and associations, is at least 



presumptive evidence that judicious adver- 

 tising is not without its reward to the indi- 

 vidual irrespective of any other results that 

 may follow. The objection which may 

 here be made, that men who are widely 

 separated can come to know each other's 

 work only through their respective publi- 

 cations, answers itself, for the argument is 

 entirely against setting up as standards of 

 measurement, degrees, instead of the per- 

 sonal value to society of the man bearing 

 the degree, and against regarding titles of 

 publications rather than the merits of the 

 publications themselves. 



When scientific men overestimate the 

 importance of its symbols to the neglect of 

 achievement itself they give hostages into 

 the hands of those who seem to think that 

 scientific activity can be measured accord- 

 ing to some fixed standard, and its value 

 expressed in numerical terms. They also 

 limit and restrict their usefulness to soci- 

 ety when too much account is taken of those 

 personal distinctions which are often made 

 between workers in different lines of scien- 

 tific activity and sometimes between those 

 in lines which are closely related. It is 

 necessary to emphasize the standard of 

 personal value and to insist that a clear 

 distinction be made between the nature of 

 the task of the scientist and that of the in- 

 dustrial worker if the former is to remain 

 free from checks and hindrances which are 

 incompatible with true scientific progress, 

 and if he is to be awarded recognition on 

 the basis of his real contribution to the 

 progress of civilization. 



It is a social obligation of the botanist 

 to be a man of affairs. The outlook for 

 the future is that the bond between scien- 

 tific investigation in botany and economic 

 work will become closer and stronger, and 

 that botany, already occupying an impor- 

 tant place in the applied sciences and in 

 human affairs, will gain even wider recog- 



