OOTOBKK 19, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



587 



Several times this summer there has 

 come into my mind a passage from an early 

 work by Ernst Renan, in which he im- 

 presses one with the fact that it is melan- 

 choly to contemplate the bewildering masses 

 of monographs with which the increasing 

 specialization on the part of scholars threat- 

 ens to flood the world. 



Upon returning to the University this 

 fall, and turning over the leaves of the new 

 journals, the new books and the off-prints 

 sent me by various friends and correspond- 

 ents, I am impressed anew by the thought 

 that, in every field of science, the swelling 

 mass of material is indeed bewildering — I 

 will even say appalling — and that the 

 amount of attention that it is possible for 

 any of us to bestow upon much of it seems 

 a poor repayment to the author for his days 

 and nights of a labor usually but poorly re- 

 quited in the current coin of the realm. I 

 am not speaking of papers printed for the 

 sake of printing, precipitately created out 

 of nothing at the fiat of a restless desire to 

 keep one's self in evidence — the ' let there 

 be noise,' which results in thunder not pre- 

 ceded by the illuminating fiash. I speak of 

 earnest efforts to add a little to the sum of 

 human knowledge — a new historical fact 

 dragged from some obscure and out of the 

 way corner by a man who thinks it not with- 

 out significance ; an odd case of the use of 

 the dative in mediaeval Latin ; a set of ex- 

 periments, of perhaps doubtful import, on 

 the borderland which separates psychology 

 from physiology ; a description of some 

 rather uninteresting beetle ; or an analysis 

 of the argument of some equally uninter- 

 esting philosophical writer. Of printing 

 for print's sake, many of you know my 

 opinion. But what shall we say touching 

 the numberless publications over which 

 their authors have spent blood and sweat, 

 and which seem to be read chiefly, if at all, 

 by the ungrateful reviewer ? When so few 

 care to listen to the song. 



" What boots it, with incessant care, 



******* 



To strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? " 



I speak to those who expect to devote 

 their lives to science, and who, if they have 

 within them any grain of modesty, will 

 probably sometimes feel inclined to ask 

 themselves seriously whether human life is 

 really enriched in any appreciable degree 

 by the fruit of their labors. 



There have been ages in the world's his- 

 tory when such questionings would not so 

 naturally have arisen. The many-sided in- 

 tellectual curiosity which accompanied the 

 new awakening of the world in the four- 

 teenth and fifteenth centuries, did not find it 

 necessary to enquire whether it ' paid ' to 

 establish the text of Cicero or to speculate 

 touching the significance of Plato's Timseus. 

 The greater the number of the intellectual 

 enthusiasms alive at a given epoch, the less 

 the likelihood that such a doubt as I have 

 mentioned should arise in any given field. 

 At every age, it is generally assumed that 

 something or other is of importance, and 

 the judgment of the age supports and in- 

 cites to activity even the humblest worker 

 in that particular field. Who would to-day 

 think of doubting the value of the inven- 

 tion of a new air-brake, the discovery of a 

 new process for obtaining dye-stuffs, or the 

 devising of a new mechanical contrivance 

 for quieting the baby. But scholars who 

 spend their time upon matters which seem 

 to have no connection with such things as 

 these, are, perhaps naturally, called upon, 

 from time to time, to give an account of 

 their stewardship, and not infrequently have 

 reason to doubt whether their contempor- 

 aries view their labors as of any value at 

 all. No one likes to stand alone. He who 

 is doubted comes to doubt himself; and he 

 may even come to work in the half-hearted 

 way natural to one without the enthusiasm 

 which is born of faith. 



What can I say to you in the face of 



