August 3, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



145 



these things, as the diversion of attention in direc- 

 tions wholly foreign to that in which their 

 original work lies, and the destruction of that 

 unconscious cerebration which is one of the most 

 important factors in working out scientific re- 

 sults. 



At the same time I fully recognize that a uni- 

 versity is also a body of students that must be 

 systematically taught, and I do not think that the 

 work of the effective teacher should be considered 

 as in any way inferior to that of the investigator, 

 nor should professors whose fir^ instinct is that 

 of the teacher, be led to feel that their advance- 

 ment depends on the accomplishment of original 

 work. 



You doubtless know better than I that investi- 

 gation that is done under pressure of this kind 

 is oftentimes a rather poor pretense. The tend- 

 ency seems to me to be to differentiate these two 

 types of university professors, and it is probably 

 on the whole a good division of labor. 



One thing seems to me quite certain, and that 

 is that our universities will not attain their real 

 aim until they are prepared to give full oppor- 

 tunities for research to men of the first type I 

 have indicated. These are the men who form 

 the real nucleus of the university, and their pres- 

 ence and labors seem to me of more importance 

 from the point of view of real university work 

 than all the rest of our educational machinery 

 put together. 



President Woodward, of the Carnegie 

 Institution, says: 



The way I put it to myself is this: Can we ex- 

 pect a college professor to do as good work of 

 research for our institution as we might expect 

 from him if he were taken over to the institution 

 and had no work but that of research? Much ex- 

 perience convinces me that work of instruction 

 is very valuable to a man who is pursuing investi- 

 gation. On the other hand, I find that most men 

 who are pursuing at once work of instruction and 

 investigation in the colleges are giving only the 

 smaller fraction of their time to investigation. 

 Their first duty is toward the institutions with 

 which they are connected, and any man who is 

 efficient as an investigator is also likely to be 

 efficient as an administrator and as a worker on 

 the numerous committees essential to educational 

 institutions. My personal experience and ob- 

 servation would seem to show that here again the 

 work of investigation is commonly given second 

 place. 



On one point there is little or no room for 



doubt, namely, that the work of investigation 

 done by professors and instructors in our American 

 universities has only lately come to be justly 

 appreciated, especially by trustees and regents. 

 From the point of view of an educational insti- 

 tution, there is likewise another point quite clear 

 to me, namely, that no man can be an instructor 

 of the highest grade without he is also simul- 

 taneously at work in some sort of research con- 

 nected with his work of instruction. 



Here I must close my quotations, resist- 

 ing all temptation to continue. For in fifty 

 other letters I find important considera- 

 tions pithily stated. But as these all agree 

 more or less distinctly with my own thesis, 

 I must suppress them for the present on 

 the principle adopted some ten centuries 

 ago in burning the library at Alexandria. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 The Dynamics of Living Matter. By Jacques 

 LoEB. (Columbia University Biological 

 Series, VIII.) New York, The Columbia 

 University Press. 1906. The Macmillan 

 Company, agents. 



This interesting book owes its origin to a 

 series of eight lectures delivered by the au- 

 thor at Columbia University in the spring of 

 1902. The aim of the lectures was to give 

 a presentation of the author's researches on 

 the dynamics of living matter and the views 

 to which they led him. In the present book, 

 however, Loeb gives quite a complete survey 

 of the modern problems of experimental biol- 

 ogy, records a great many interesting facts 

 and laws which were recently discovered in 

 this field and discusses them from a broad 

 point of view. The book still retains the 

 division into lectures which are here extended 

 to twelve. 



The following quotations from the intro- 

 ductory remarks (lecture I.) inform us of 

 the philosophical attitude of the author 

 towards biological problems. " In these lec- 

 tures," he says, " we shall consider living 

 organisms as chemical machines, consisting 

 essentially of colloidal material, which possess 

 the pecxiliarities of automatically developing, 

 preserving, and reproducing themselves." He 



