874 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 701 



odical estimates that fewer than five thou- 

 sand persons in the United States are pro- 

 fessionally engaged in science investigation 

 or in the teaching of science up to the 

 research point. Of these it reckons that 

 fewer than one thousand should be counted 

 real contributors. What are one thousand 

 among eighty million? We must accept 

 the fact that several European nations 

 excel us in this respect. 



It comes to mind that our inferiority 

 herein may be due as much to absence in 

 the minds of the educated public of the 

 aims and actual work in science progress 

 as to anything else. Herein is, perhaps, 

 the best reason for such a symposium and 

 for such an organization as has just been 

 perfected. These words of Matthew 

 Arnold seem appropriate: 



The great men of culture are those who have 

 had a passion for dififusing, for making prevail, 

 for carrying from one end of society to the other, 

 the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; 

 who have labored to divest knowledge of all that 

 was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, profes- 

 sional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it effi- 

 cient outside the clique oi the cultivated and 

 learned. 



The point is, then, that our real science 

 workers are both too few and too remote 

 from the general public. They work very 

 largely in another world than the one of 

 common conception. From the world of 

 common knowledge they must, perhaps 

 always, remain aloof. But may not the 

 real value of their work be at least ade- 

 quately conceived? 



In Europe the magazines and even the 

 shop windows furnish evidence of the pop- 

 ular interest in science progress. Wherever 

 the forward movement is most active you 

 catch a quick reflection of it in the popular 

 press. There the public is said to be really 

 much concerned of late with what is some- 

 times called the "passing of Darwinism." 

 What does the American public know or 

 seriously care about Darwinism being on 



its "deathbed"? Here our editors shun 

 the rather dry and obscure authorities in 

 favor of picturesquely-worded and sensa- 

 tion-charged celebrities; and, reciprocally, 

 the authorities shun the editors. 



Yet are we not ready to admit that the 

 modern aspect of "national progress" de- 

 pends very largely upon the number of 

 properly qualified persons who are engaged 

 in science research, and, perhaps as much, 

 upon the extent to which the general public 

 follows their advance? 



Does not the fault for this large Amer- 

 ican gap between science workers and the 

 general public lie much with the scientists 

 who have held aloof ; who have rarely taken 

 it as part of their task properly to popu- 

 larize the problems on which they are at 

 work; who have let misrepresentation go 

 almost unchecked; who have done much to 

 form a sort of aristocracy of their own 

 kind? 



But, wherever the fault lies, we must 

 lessen the gap. The constitution we have 

 just adopted explicitly commits us to this. 

 Unless there develops more popular interest 

 in the great truth search, in this and its 

 many other aspects ; unless there develops 

 more feeling of personal responsibility in 

 finding out for one's own self, and less of 

 being easily satisfied with the first plausible 

 explanation, then the national peril for 

 lack of "clean truth" to which Dr. Cham- 

 berlin made reference this morning is 

 surely not very difficult to perceive ; a ref- 

 erence which, by the way, has some re- 

 sponsibilty for this digression from my 

 topic. 



Specifically, of the opportunities in bot- 

 any, we can say that the demand for 

 trained botanists continues to exceed the 

 supply. Such demand is, of course, espe- 

 cially for young men ready to begin their 

 service at compensation less than the theo- 

 retical value of the service rendered. Fur- 



