Januaey 27, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



125 



habitually avoids them. They are useful, 

 perhaps, at the moment of publication, but 

 the back volumes encumber rather than en- 

 rich our libraries. Fortunately the last 

 decade of the nineteenth century brought 

 us a new and very valuable form of report, 

 the avowed purpose of which is the sys- 

 tematic collation of results. I refer to 

 the "Ergebnisse." The earliest of them 

 known to me was founded in 1892 by 

 Merkel and Bonnet to cover anatomy and 

 embryology. The annual volumes contain 

 essays on various topics which really col- 

 late recent discoveries; they differ funda- 

 mentally and advantageously in method 

 from the Jahresberichte and Centralblat- 

 ter, by presenting a combined picture 

 rather than abstracts of single papers. 

 They are substantial contributions to sci- 

 ence because they systematize and coordi- 

 nate the new information. The enterprise 

 of Merkel and Bonnet deserves our most 

 grateful appreciation. Its value is wit- 

 nessed to by the foundation of similar 

 "Ergebnisse" for other sciences. The 

 series for pathology began in 1896, for 

 physiology in 1902, for zoology in 1909. 

 In the admirable Revue d'Histologie 

 (1906) they found a French follower. 

 The "Ergebnisse" are likely to prove of 

 increasing importance and as the niamber 

 of new investigations mounts higher and 

 higher their comprehensive essays will be- 

 come even more indispensable than at 

 present. 



Although logically more remote from the 

 original sources than the annual and spe- 

 cial collations just reviewed, yet hand- 

 books are historically older. Formerly one 

 man could master completely his whole sci- 

 ence and keep up with all the new discov- 

 eries. In 1834 Johannes Miiller wrote the 

 whole annual report upon anatomy, com- 

 parative anatomy and physiology, and did 

 it well. A hundred years ago a single 



author could write a thorough manual. 

 To-day such a feat is impossible. The 

 difficulty has been met with commendable 

 success by cooperation. A science is di- 

 vided into chapters ; each chapter is under- 

 taken by a specialist, and so the task is 

 done, but with consequences easily antici- 

 pated, for every one of us knows some of 

 these huge modern composite hand-books. 



We recognize in the present methods of 

 recording and collating scientific discov- 

 eries many adaptations which are due, it 

 seems to me, essentially to the mere in- 

 crease in the number of workers. But 

 though the methods are modified the essen- 

 tial steps are the same: first, the record of 

 the individual personal knowledge ; second, 

 the conversion of the personal knowledge 

 by verification and collation into valid im- 

 personal knowledge; third, the systematic 

 coordination and condensation of the con- 

 clusions. 



A defect — perhaps the most serious de- 

 fect of our education — arises from our 

 failure to make our students appreciate 

 vividly the fundamental fact that science 

 is based on personal knowledge. Our stu- 

 dents are allowed to graduate from college, 

 for the most part without any comprehen- 

 sion of this great truth. The best of them 

 start forth with a high reverence for the 

 library, the place of records, but quite un- 

 aware that a still higher reverence is due 

 to those who, by being the first to observe 

 unknown things, have founded the knowl- 

 edge, the records of which the library 

 keeps. 



The divergence between philosophy and 

 science shows itself most conspicuously in 

 the personal mental attitude, which philos- 

 ophy cherishes and science seeks to over- 

 come. Philosophers still discuss philos- 

 ophers and their systems, scientific men 

 pursue impersonal knowledge with such 



