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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 405. 



in need, scholars complaining that their 

 means for work and research and publica- 

 tion are inadeciuate, students sighing for 

 fellowships : happy the day when some hun- 

 dred thousand dollars more every year 

 appear on the horizon. And yet that hap- 

 piness is a delusion; the loss would be 

 greater than the gain: the help from the 

 inside would stop not the willingness to 

 help, but the willingness to make a strong 

 effort to help on the outside, and just this 

 strong effort in the local groups not only 

 sums up in the long run to a much greater 

 result than any single central aid, but it is 

 also more wholesome, more educative, more 

 adjustable, mox'e American. 



I do not speak as a spectator; I feel the 

 want deeply myself. As chairman of the 

 Harvard Philosophical Department I know 

 our desire for the two hundred thousand 

 dollars for Emerson Hall, the corner stone 

 of which we wish to lay next May on the 

 hundredth anniversary of Emerson 's birth ; 

 we have only sixty thousand at present; 

 how grateful should I be for a Carnegie 

 cheek of a hundred thousand ! As director 

 of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory I 

 should like to have an appropriation of ten 

 thousand every year and should feel sure 

 that, spent for apparatus and equipment 

 for psychological research which I am anx- 

 ious to make, not a cent of it would go for 

 superfluous luxuries. As editor of the 

 Harvard Psychological Studies I should 

 need just one thousand dollars a 3rear to 

 print the material we gather, of which so 

 much has been lost from lack of funds for 

 publication. I need, thus, the large and the 

 small sums like any one else, and if it be 

 decided that the institution shall take up 

 such patehM'ork I shall of course look out 

 for my share of the spoil: but if I had to 

 make the decision, I should ignore my small 

 and my large needs and should prefer to 

 go on with my suffering in the higher in- 



terest of the scholarly life of the whole 

 country. The institution might build our 

 Emerson Hall, but that would not only take 

 away the pride of all lovers of Emerson in 

 having done their duty, but it would frus- 

 trate the hopes of all my colleagues in Har- 

 vard who need new buildings or libraries 

 or laboratories or collections for their de- 

 partments and who would hear in future 

 everywhere the stereotyped answer : why do 

 you not ask the Carnegie Institution ? We 

 want to stimulate the trustees, the alumni, 

 the local friends, to build up their institu- 

 tions by their generosity, by their enthu- 

 siasm, by their sacrifice ; just such friendly 

 rivalry has built up the intellectual life of 

 the land. Every cent from Washington 

 which disburdens the local officials is an 

 opiate for this feeling of responsibility. It 

 would be the gain of the moment and the 

 ruin for the strongest factor of progress in 

 the long run. The alumni would simply 

 turn to other fields. We know how the aids 

 for the church have slowly decreased and 

 those for scholarship increased ; just such a 

 diversion from scholarship would take 

 place, to other good things perhaps, but 

 when we discuss the progress of scholarship 

 we must ignore the fact that other good 

 things stand waiting. And the trustees 

 woixld imitate the alumni ; to-day they 

 scratch their funds together to find some 

 hundreds for a new instrument or for print- 

 ing expenses ; to-morrow when the research- 

 ers are considered as provided for from 

 Washington, all ready cash of the college 

 treasurer will flow back again to the under- 

 graduate needs and the higher work will 

 soon be worse off than before. 



The only centrifugal help which could be 

 given without harm for the whole system is 

 to be sought in such an arrangement as 

 would aid not special individuals or insti- 

 tutions but the totality of scientific workers. 

 A large printing establishment which un- 



