630 



SCIENCE. 



[S.S. Vol. XV. No. 381. 



There is some reason for this state of things. 

 If we were brutally frank we might agree that 

 a man with us is hardly eminent until he has 

 been acknowledged as an intellectual commodity 

 in some foreign market. From some points of 

 view' this self -distrust and lack of independent 

 judgment is laudable; but there is also a habit 

 acquired in such things that is pernicious. It 

 is not so long ago that the Germans went 

 tuft-hunting in France, a custom from which 

 they awoke one day in consternation. They 

 have not gone there since. The question to 

 consider is whether it is not now high time for 

 us, in turn, to awake to a spirit of scientific 

 patriotism. One does not have to read many 

 books to learn with what enthusiasm an Eng- 

 lishman, a Frenchman or a German refers to 

 the real intellectual accomplishments of his 

 countrymen. Is there such pride among us ? 

 I doubt it. There is rather a tendency to ex- 

 haust all other bibliography first. 



Somebody has wisely said that for the Eng- 

 lish-speaking race there is but one aristocracy, 

 and that it has taken the vigor of England to 

 found it. Certainly the daughters of our mil- 

 lionaires offer much convincing if not elo- 

 quent testimony. In a somewhat similar sense, 

 it seems to me that the aristocracy of Ameri- 

 can scientists also resides in England, though 

 one cannot deny that the continent has some 

 fascination. Our efficient scientific men are 

 apt to outgrow the American Association first, 

 then they outgrow the National Academy, and 

 finally the country itself is altogether too small 

 for them. Their voices reach us in this final 

 stage, harmoniously blended, from across the 

 water. It is all very nice as a well-devised 

 scheme of gradation, but where is the spirit 

 of patriotism in all this ? Can we ever hope to 

 reach intellectual maturity in the eyes of the 

 world if we belittle the dignity of our ov?n 

 institutions ? Self-confessed incompetency may 

 be a virtue, but one should at least first be 

 sure that the incompetency really exists. If 

 Europe were to close its gates systematically 

 to American scientific research, I believe that 

 no greater blessing could befall us. There is 

 enough good work done here, that if it were 

 only properly centralized and presented in 

 bulk, it would command the attention of the 



world. We should then have on our own shores 

 what we now so frequently run for abroad. 



The urgent desirability of an attempt at 

 centralization is precisely the point which I 

 want to accentuate. In physics we now have 

 two prominent journals, one of them old and 

 widely distributed, but covering a scope much 

 beyond ijhysics. Its contributors are naturally 

 the older conservative physicists of the coun- 

 try. Recently the desirability of a journal 

 devoted to physics alone was responded to, and 

 a thriving magazine now exists among us, 

 whose contributors are, as a rule, the 

 energetic younger physicists of the coun- 

 try. Between the two journals, I fear, there 

 will be an inevitable breach, for no man who 

 has materially contributed to the older journal 

 will be willing to see that magazine go down, 

 and with it the accessibility of the bulk of his 

 own work. 



I mention this now, since with the advent 

 of the Carnegie Institution there will be, 

 almost unavoidably, another center of vigorous 

 publication in physics. I say unavoidably at a 

 venture, for I am quite ignorant as to any 

 plans in that direction. There would then be 

 further divergence, and oh, the pity of it! If, 

 however, it should be in some way possible to 

 unite the two existing journals,* with the con- 

 sent of all interested and at their instigation, 

 into a single American Journal of Physics, 

 under the auspices of the institution, I believe 

 that the greatest good would thereby accrue to 

 the country. It is the national, apart from the 

 sectional, spirit which I am anxious to see 

 fostered. I do not know how the editors of 

 these journals may look on such a scheme. 

 They are my friends, though they may be shak- 

 ing their fists at me now; but I am innocent 

 of guile. If through the Carnegie Institution 

 we could get an American Journal of Physics, 

 continuous with the physical part of the 

 American Journal of Science and of the Phys- 

 ical Review, definitely established, and if every 



* I do not refer, of course, to journals with a 

 unique purpose like Science, or the Astrophysical 

 Journal, or Terrestrial Magnetism, or the Cir- 

 culars of universities, etc. It is the overlapping 

 of journals of the same kind that I have wholly 

 in mind. 



