May 31, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



849 



Unfortunately, the very cause of this 

 new tendency has carried us so far as to 

 seriously threaten us with the pitfalls of 

 the other extreme. 



Furthermore, the fact that scientific 

 learning has found unceasing applications 

 in the production of wealth has fostered 

 the constantly increasing tendency for find- 

 ing in scientific education or scientific pur- 

 suits a mere means of earning a living or 

 making money. This has led into scien- 

 tific vocations a large number of persons 

 who in their profession expected to find a 

 quick and easier means for making a liv- 

 ing, but outside of this stimulant possessed 

 few if any of the qualifications of the 

 true scientist. Impractical in their selec- 

 tion, they deceived themselves by choosing 

 an occupation which less than any other 

 leads to wealth or power. But once hav- 

 ing decided to enter a scientific profession, 

 they soon became aware that the call is for 

 specialists, and they were forced to spe- 

 cialize one thing or another by their em- 

 ployers, whether the latter were manufac- 

 turers, merchants or even some educational 

 institutions whom they served as teachers. 



In accordance with this same tendency 

 we find manufacturers who, themselves 

 without other training excepting what long 

 experience has taught them, blame our 

 colleges, universities or technical schools 

 because they do not turn out graduate 

 chemists who can jump right away into 

 their manufacturing works fully ac- 

 quainted with all the intricacies of the 

 processes ; of course, all this with the pros- 

 pect of a small salary so as to act in com- 

 petition with a few able and better paid 

 men who had to sacrifice a lifetime in order 

 to acquire experience. 



That greed or ignorance should make 

 such claims is quite natural; but that we 

 should find teachers or students who are 

 willing to admit such abnormal educa- 

 tional methods, and change them into a 



kind of apprenticeship, is a matter of re- 

 gret for anybody who believes in educa- 

 tion as a means for the healthy mental 

 development of his country. 



What is worse, our own way of living 

 shows beyond doubt that we all have 

 undergone, more or less, the effects of 

 overspecialization against which I have 

 come to protest. Too much have we 

 learned to look upon our usefulness in life 

 as depending almost exclusively on the 

 concentration of most of our energies, most 

 of our thoughts, upon a narrow line of 

 specialized action. Without knowing it 

 we drift into a mere routine occupation 

 that makes automatic machines out of us. 

 For all generalities of life which do not 

 fall immediately into our own specialties, 

 we are willing to assume respectable con- 

 ventionality: We are willing to join the 

 herd of docile and unthinking sheep who 

 are following a leader. In science as well 

 as in politics, we are ready to follow this 

 leader, for better or for worse, as long as 

 we can shift upon him our oij^n respon- 

 sibilities of thought or action. 



Busily burrowing along like moles, in 

 the pursuit of our own little specialties, we 

 are dizzily preoccupied with our specialized 

 routine work. We lose the desire of com- 

 ing once in a while upon the surface of the 

 earth to take a stimulating look at the 

 grand view of nature and its inspiring 

 entity. Once upon a while, we are rather 

 disturbed in our narrow scientific beliefs 

 when some Curie announces radium or 

 radioactivity, or when some Ramsay up- 

 sets our orthodoxy by pronouncing the 

 words: evolution of elements. We get 

 fairly shocked when a Crookes speaks of 

 death of matter. 



Just in the same way, after admitting 

 as holy faith that weight and matter are 

 constant or indestructible, some day, some- 

 body may have to rouse the most timid of 

 us and force us into the belief that gravita- 



