Febeuaet 24, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



285 



It is safe to say that most of you are do- 

 ing your work in the atmosphere of acad- 

 emic vales and cloisters where the prose- 

 cution of pure science is an elemental 

 virtue. The very air you breathe is an in- 

 spiration to pursue any esoteric cult to any 

 limit, howsoever far it may shape its course 

 away from any apparent direct bearing on 

 human happiness. An enlargement of 

 human knowledge, even though already en- 

 larged beyond human power to grasp, and 

 the possibility of enlarging the comfort 

 and hopes of maiLkind are justification for 

 this pursuit, if justification be called for. 

 Happily it is not needed, for the very next 

 step, the scientific fact that lies unturned 

 at our feet or the discovery just round the 

 corner, may be as essential to philosophy 

 and to progress as all that have passed by 

 in their countless array. At your com- 

 mand is all that is best in the sciences and 

 among your academic fellows in towns well 

 oxygenated by the very air you exhale, 

 you attain to the full measure of useful 

 citizens. It might be trite for me to say 

 that glorified with a splendid growth in 

 the conservatory atmosphere of the uni- 

 versity, the professor of science strays 

 abroad from penetralia of his divinities 

 with an acquired confidence of superiority, 

 into a hardier air and a coarser grained 

 world which declines to take him at his 

 own valuation. I am disposed to think the 

 sheltered aisles of great federal bureaus 

 afford a very like protection from the as- 

 saults of the so-called practical commun- 

 ity. 



But take a man of pure science, and 

 stand him out in the open where he must 

 come into daily contact with men of affairs, 

 men who are. making a noise and doing' 

 that part of the world's work which feeds 

 upon publicity, with the pulverizing 

 wheels of political machinery and with 

 the commercial sentiment which domi- 



nates to-day more than ever before nearly 

 every phase of government and nearly 

 every aspect of society, and if he fails to 

 take his own measure of so-called "prac- 

 tical" usefulness to his community of city 

 or state, it is taken for him. If he can 

 stand the shadowless glare of such an atti- 

 tude he realizes at length that he is not 

 indeed as other people are. By devotion 

 to the duty his science imposes he may 

 merit the confidence of his sponsors, but he 

 is not likely to become the director of a 

 bank or be invited to sit as a member of 

 important fiduciary or social trusts. He 

 is, in plain truth, quite generally regarded 

 in the community as a rather unproductive 

 if not visionary member of society with a 

 large supply of useless knowledge but with 

 a very limited capacity for making dollars, 

 not always immaculate in his attire or 

 particularly well groomed in person; 

 somewhat terrifying socially, though 

 harmless, perhaps, in his honest effort to 

 turn a rather unintelligible hobby into the 

 means of a livelihood. This expression is 

 not, I think, an unfair phrasing of the gen- 

 eral public attitude in our communities 

 toward, not the man of pure science alone, 

 but all high scholastic attainment. Not- 

 withstanding the intellectual regeneration 

 beginning with the last half of the last 

 century which has tended to place all lines 

 of human thought on a scientific basis, our 

 best communities are still largely thinking 

 deductively, and the rest entirely so when- 

 ever their thoughts have time to reach be- 

 yond their income ; and we too may indeed 

 confess freely and without shame even in 

 this presence that something more of the 

 prophet's vision, of the philosopher's 

 method and of the poet's inspiration is 

 stealing back into our own intellectual 

 modes. You and I, men who are giving 

 our best years and skilled energies to the 

 elucidation of the organic law, the higher 



