June 5, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



811 



It does not appear likely that this class 

 of investigators will occupy a prominent 

 place in the future. It is only about 150 

 years ago that Frederick the Great asked 

 Lambert, as a new member of the Berlin 

 Academy, what science he understood espe- 

 cially well, and he received the reply "all 

 of them." Frederick the Great then asked 

 how he secured all this knowledge, and 

 Lambert answered "by myself like the 

 noted Pascal. ' ' ^ While these answers 

 could scarcely be justified at the time of 

 the founding of the Berlin academy, they 

 would be much less appropriate in our day, 

 and there is an ever-increasing need of 

 using the results of others in research. 

 Fortunately the means of arriving at these 

 results are also improving. While the in- 

 vestigator becomes continually more de- 

 pendent upon others he has the advantage 

 of securing, by means of known results, a 

 much wider freedom as regards fruitful 

 subjects exposed to investigation. 



In recent years the term graft has re- 

 ceived a large amount of public attention. 

 This is probably partly due to a rapid 

 change in our ideals as regards political 

 and financial standards. Our ideals as re- 

 gards scholarly standards are also chang- 

 ing very rapidly, and it appears natural to 

 inquire whether the term scholarly graft 

 is not destined to receive more public at- 

 tention unless some of our university prac- 

 tises are changed. 



The fact that scholarly practises fre- 

 quently improve with more light has been 

 emphasized recently by results from the 

 publications of the Carnegie Foundation 

 for the Advancement of Teaching, as well 

 as from the publication of a classification 

 of educational institutions on the part of 

 the U. S. Bureau of Education. Many 

 other similar efforts have recently been 

 made. One of the most important of these, 



3 JahreshericM der deutsohen Mathematiker — 

 Vereinigung, Vol. 23 (1914), p. 1. 



as far as scientific subjects are concerned, 

 is the work entitled "American Men of 

 Science." It is a hopeful sign that such 

 works have become possible. Naturally 

 some institutions, as well as some men, have 

 not welcomed this type of light, and slight 

 injustices could scarcely have been avoided. 



The history of the system of the honor- 

 arium in European universities furnishes 

 many instances of injustice, and empha- 

 sizes the fact that even in good universities 

 there is danger as regards the development 

 of graft. The German universities have 

 been very conservative as regards changes 

 along this line, but in 1897 it was decided 

 that one half of the honorarium over 3,000 

 Marks (in Berlin over 4,500 Marks) , should, 

 in general, be paid into the state treasury. 

 In April, 1909, it was decided that the pro- 

 fessors outside of Berlin were to receive, as 

 before, all of the honorarium up to 3,000 

 Marks; but, if the total honorarium ex- 

 ceeded this amount, 75 per cent, of the sum 

 between 3,000 Marks and 4,000 Marks, and 

 only half of that beyond 4,000 Marks, was 

 to be paid to the professors. 



Two of the most serious charges against 

 the practise of paying all of the honorarium 

 to the professors were that it tended to in- 

 fluence some of the most noted men to give 

 the most elementary lectures in the popu- 

 lar subjects, and that some professors who 

 happened to be on the commission of ex- 

 aminers were tempted to make it very un- 

 comfortable for the students who had not 

 taken the courses offered bj^ these professors. 

 At any rate the system led to very great 

 inequalities in the incomes of different pro- 

 fessors and it was the source of many sus- 

 picions on the part of students and others. 



Our American universities have thus far 

 been comparatively free from gross schol- 

 arly graft, but it seems desirable to look at 

 ourselves at times in a critical spirit in 

 order to check tendencies which might 



