Mabch 11, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



369 



his opportunity— an opportunity which 

 has been made nse of brilliantly in the 

 past and which I hope and believe will not 

 be neglected in the future. For the uni- 

 versity professor is not compelled to stick 

 to the sure thing in research; it is not nec- 

 essary that he should make an annual or 

 semi-annual contribution to science, for he 

 has another excuse for living and drawing 

 his salary. And so it comes about that he 

 is much freer to attack bigger problems, 

 the outcome of which is very uncertain 

 and which may after several years of work 

 lead to no conclusive result. Such work, if 

 intelligently undertaken and carried out, 

 is by no means a waste of time ; great re- 

 sults are always accompanied by great 

 risks ; and no great discovery has ever been 

 made by a man who was unwilling or un- 

 able to risk a great failure. 



Even if we return to lower ground, to the 

 "business" analogy which was used a 

 moment ago, I believe that university lab- 

 oratories are not at a hopeless disadvan- 

 tage as compared with special institutions 

 for research. For the most successful 

 manufactory is not always the one which 

 adheres most closely to one specialty but 

 the one which most successfully utilizes its 

 bye-products. Now I am a very strong be- 

 liever in Lord Kelvin's opinion that in a 

 university, so far as is humanly possible, 

 every investigator should be a teacher and 

 every teacher an investigator. The reac- 

 tion of the two forms of activity on each 

 other is immensely stimulating and help- 

 ful. To the man whose chief concern is 

 the investigation of special problems on 

 the remote borders of knowledge, it is very 

 wholesome that he should occasionally sur- 

 vey his subject broadly and in simple 

 terms, as he must do if he teaches young 

 men. On the other hand, he conveys to 

 them some part of his own enthusiasm and, 

 in some cases, makes recruits for scientific 



investigation; and when he does this he 

 multiplies his own effectiveness many 

 times in the present and future activities 

 of his pupils. 



In the same way the man who, from 

 natural bent, or from force of circum- 

 stances, finds his chief usefulness as a 

 teacher, is greatly helped in the proper 

 fulfiUment of that most important service, 

 if he can spend some part of his time in 

 research. The teacher who does nothing 

 else, who goes over the same subject year 

 after year with successive classes, is of all 

 men, I think, the most in danger of intel- 

 lectual stagnation. While he is young he 

 may ward off this paralysis by study, by 

 the acquisition of knowledge which other 

 men have discovered. But (with somewhat 

 rare exceptions) the real passion for such 

 acquisition and the pleasure one takes in 

 it are nearly gone by the time middle age is 

 reached. In fact a great deal of the ca- 

 pacity for such study has also vanished by 

 that time. We all know how much easier 

 it is to acquire a new language when one 

 is young, and how much less patient we 

 are of the drill and drudgery of grammar 

 as the years go on. I do not believe I shall 

 ever learn Russian or Swedish ; certainly I 

 should expect no pleasure in the early 

 stages of the study. And I am quite sure 

 that, if I had not learned the multiplica- 

 tion table when I was a boy, I should 

 never learn it now and should be obliged 

 to carry it about on a card in my pocket. 



Now so far as I have been able to ob- 

 serve, the passion for research and the 

 pleasure which it gives do not pall as the 

 years go on. As we read the biographies 

 of men of science we find that the fascina- 

 tion of the game is as strong or stronger to 

 the veteran of seventy-five as to the youth 

 of twenty-five. Unless ill-health or some 

 other circumstance prevents, they usually 

 keep steadily and enthusiastically at their 



