December 30, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



941 



Enthusiasm is cultivated by singleness 

 of purpose, and in our system we make 

 provisions to distract rather than to inten- 

 sify. There is a learned society, to which 

 many of us belong, Sigma Xi. Its value 

 depends on its ability to make good its 

 motto, Spoudon Xynones, "Comrades in 

 Zeal. ' ' We whistle to keep up our courage 

 in the multitude, not of dangers, but of dis- 

 tractions, and if we whistle in unison we 

 may keep step together. This society in a 

 cooperative way, the same spirit in different 

 places, stands for enthusiasm in science. 

 Now enthusiasm comes from straggle, from 

 the continuous effort to do what you want 

 to do, and for the most part in the way you 

 want to do it. Hence, comradery in zeal 

 should make for individuality, for original- 

 ity. 



The most serious indictment of the new 

 school in science is its lack of originality. 

 Even its novelties are not original. They 

 are old fabrications worked over, with a 

 touch of oddity in the working. The re- 

 quirements for the doctor's degree tend to 

 curb originality. But these do not go far. 

 A man may be original and even in a dress 

 coat in the daytime may be rated as sutnma 

 cum lauda. The greatest foe of originality 

 is timeliness. Rather, timeliness is evi- 

 dence of lack of originality, of lack of 

 individual enthusiasm. 



When a discovery is made in botany, the 

 young botanists are drawn to it as her- 

 rings to a search light, as moths to a 

 lantern. In Dr. Coulter's words, "they "all 

 dabble in the same pool." Not long since 

 the pool was located in morphology; then 

 it was in embrj'ology ; then in the fields of 

 mutative variations; now it is filled with 

 unit characters and pedigreed cultures. 



I would not underrate any of these lines 

 of work, nor any other, but I respect a 

 man the less when I sec liim leaving his 



own field to plunge into one which is 

 merely timely, into one in which discovery 

 seems to be easy, and the outlook to a 

 career to be facilitated. 



All honor to the man who holds to his 

 first love in science, whatever that may be, 

 and who records his gains unflinchingly, 

 though not another man on earth may no- 

 tice what he is doing. Sooner or later the 

 world of science returns to every piece of 

 honest work. The revival of the forgotten 

 experiments of the priest Mendel will il- 

 lustrate this in passing. Hundreds of men 

 are Mendelians now, who would never 

 have thought of planting a pea or breeding 

 a guinea pig had not Mendel given the clue 

 to problems connected with these things. 



The man of to-day, busied with many 

 cares, looms up smaller than the man of 

 the old school who walked with Henslow 

 and then walked with nature. In this 

 thought, it is easy to depreciate our edu- 

 cational present. 



Homer, referring to the Greeks of earlier 

 times, assures us, "There are no such men 

 in our degenerate daj^s." I have never 

 verified this quotation — the men of our 

 days are too busy to verify anything — but 

 we may take the sentiment as character- 

 istic. From the days of Homer till our 

 own time, the man of the old school has al- 

 ways found the times out of joint. Per- 

 haps, in getting so elaborately ready, we 

 are preparing for a still more brilliant fu- 

 ture. It may be that books, apparatus, 

 material, administration and ti'aining are 

 all worth their weight in men, and that 

 modern educational opportunities are as 

 much better than old ones as on the sur- 

 face they seem to be. I know that all these 

 misgivings of mine represent no final fail- 

 ure. Each generation has such doubts, 

 and doubts which extend in everj' direc- 

 tion. The new strength of the new genera- 



