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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 834 



defend such an unprincipled doctrine 

 would but succeed in proving him inca- 

 pable of understanding the relation be- 

 tween university and professor, and in 

 demonstrating his unworthiness to be as- 

 sociated in any capacity with an institu- 

 tion of learning. The professor has surely 

 inherent rights of which the university 

 can not properly deprive him by institu- 

 tionalizing him for teaching purposes, and 

 the greatest of these to my mind is the 

 right to engage in the investigation of 

 truth. 



In Some universities there are now be- 

 ing established research chairs. While 

 much can be said in favor of such endow- 

 ments, some objections can be raised. Far 

 be it from me to deprecate the giving of a 

 large salary to any professor! But what 

 reason is there for attaching relatively 

 lavish remuneration to any position simply 

 because it is called a research chair? 

 Truly the recognition of research is grati- 

 fying; but surely the same reasons can be 

 urged why all who so desire it should be 

 research professors. If abundant means 

 are available for the establishment of more 

 chairs in a department, the desired result 

 will be more certainly attained if all pro- 

 fessors, old as well as new, are given larger 

 salaries and the same privileges. More- 

 over, if some chairs are specifically re- 

 search, others will be looked upon, per- 

 haps looked down upon, as non-research or 

 teaching, with possibly a lowering of the 

 estimation' in which teaching is held — a 

 condition as regrettable as it is unneces- 

 sary. Further, it is a policy of very doubt- 

 ful wisdom to permit any professor to be- 

 come practically inaccessible to students; 

 and the more illustrious the professor, the 

 greater is the folly of such a course. A 

 large part of the duty of professors en- 

 gaged in research must ever be to train and 

 inspire other men for similar pursuits. 



President Schurman quotes the late Lord 

 Kelvin, as saying "that the ideal arrange- 

 ment for the investigator is to combine 

 research with teaching, but with the amount 

 of teaching reduced sufficiently to leave 

 leisure and vigor of faculty for research." 

 To quote further: 



The biographer of Pasteur records that that 

 eminent scientist entertained similar sentiments. 

 " Pasteur did not suggest that a scientist should 

 give up teaching; he recognized on the contrary 

 that public teaching forces him to embrace in suc- 

 cession every branch of the science he teaches. 

 But let him not give too frequent or too varied 

 lectures! They paralyze the faculties," he said, 

 being well aware of the cost of preparing classes. 



Of the conditions that make for success 

 in research, no one could speak more au- 

 thoritatively than Helmholtz. In a cele- 

 brated address given near the close of his 

 long and richly fruitful life, he said: 



There are many narrow-minded people who ad- 

 mire themselves enormously if they have one 

 stroke of luck, or think that they have had one. 

 A pioneer in science or an artist, who has a re- 

 peated run of happy accidents, is indubitably a 

 privileged character, and is recognized as a bene- 

 factor of mankind. But who can count or weigh 

 such lightning flashes of the mind? Who can 

 trace out the secret threads by which our concep- 

 tions are united? ... I must confess that the 

 departments in which one has not to trust to 

 lucky accidents and inspirations have always had 

 the greatest attraction for me. Yet as I have 

 often been in the predicament of having to wait 

 on inspiration, I have had some few experiences 

 as to when it came to me, which may perhaps 

 be of use to others. Often enough it steals 

 quietly into one's thoughts and at first one does 

 not appreciate its significance; it is only some- 

 times that another fortuitous circumstance helps 

 one to recognize when, and under what conditions, 

 it occurred to one; otherwise it is there, one 

 knows not whence. In other cases it comes quite 

 suddenly, without effort, like a flash of thought. 

 So far as my experience goes it never comes to a 

 wearied brain, or at the writing table. I must 

 first have turned my problem over and over in all 

 directions, till I can see its twists and windings 

 in my mind's eye, and run through it freely, with- 

 out writing it down; and it is never possible to 



