612 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 407. 



should be special, unlike those conferred by 

 institutions of learning, and determined by 

 special work. Thus, there might be master- 

 ates of agriculture, of paleontology, of 

 terrestrial physics, of mineralogy, of ento- 

 mology, of ethnology, etc., but not of arts, 

 or philosophy, or laws, or science. The 

 degrees should be special, the well-earned 

 reward for special work; they should be 

 credentials rather than titles ; and the num- 

 ber of classes should be unlimited, in con- 

 formity with the modern multiplication of 

 specialties as well as the fundamental idea 

 of developing individuality— of making 

 men rather than schoolmen. The master- 

 ates should, of course, be permanent, and 

 should not involve financial relations with 

 the Institution — i. e., masters should be 

 neither entitled to, nor debarred from, sup- 

 port by the Institution. 



The terms 'feUow' and 'master' are not 

 without objection, chiefly on the score of 

 current use in other connections; they 

 merely serve the purpose of these sugges- 

 tions. The two classes would correspond 

 roughly with the apprentices (or perhaps 

 rather the journeymen) and masters of an 

 important stage in industrial progress ; they 

 would seem to bridge and unite the two 

 great buttresses of human advancement, 

 i. e., the intellectual development of the 

 schools and the manual development of the 

 shops. 



The advantages of the masterates would 

 be twofold: In the first place, they would 

 afford incentive and stimulus to hard-work- 

 ing fellows ; in the second place, they would 

 form a permanent bond between the Insti- 

 tution and its beneficiaries and among the 

 beneficiaries themselves, producing an 

 esprit de corps by which the usefialness of 

 the Institution would be most effectively 

 extended and perpetuated. 



3. The third suggestion is partly an ex- 

 tension of the second, partly the outcome 

 of current needs. Among the means of 



promoting science in this and other coun- 

 tries, conferences among scientific men take 

 a high if not the leading rank; and the 

 demand for such meetings has been met by 

 the creation of a large number of voluntary 

 organizations. In this country, at present, 

 there is a tendency to form special societies 

 of national character (such as the Ameri- 

 can Chemical Society, the Geological So- 

 ciety of America and the American Anthro- 

 pological Association), and more general 

 societies or academies of largely local mem- 

 bership ; and the effect is to increase the 

 need for such more general organization 

 among scientific societies as will lead to 

 better coordination of effort among scien- 

 tific workers. It has already been pointed 

 out that this great and growing need would 

 be met by a general delegate organization 

 which might be called a Senate of Science 

 (Science, Vol. XIV., pp. 277-280), and it 

 was also pointed out that the chief obstacle 

 in the way of organization of such a body 

 would be the cost of the requisite journeys 

 by delegates. Now it would seem appro- 

 priate for the Carnegie Institution to 

 become a nucleus for such a general scien- 

 tific organization, to be made up of dele- 

 gates chosen for fixed terms by the scientific 

 societies of the country, and to be main- 

 tained for the purpose of fostering and 

 encouraging scientific activity; and that a 

 fraction of the current funds available 

 through the munificence of the founder be 

 so expended as to place all delegates on an 

 equal footing by the payment of necessary 

 traveling expenses to the points selected 

 for the meetings. Such an arrangement 

 would undoubtedly kindle the interest and 

 sympathy of scientists and scientific asso- 

 ciations generally, and, like the establish- 

 ment of masterates, serve to extend and 

 perpetuate the influence of the Institution. 

 The foregoing suggestions of course 

 imply the creation and maintenance of an 

 executive mechanism with the least prac- 



