Makch 17, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



403 



Not only does teaching tend to stimulate 

 research, it also gives it balance by pre- 

 venting the too exclusive attention to the 

 comparatively narrow field under intensive 

 cultivation ; the necessity of presenting 

 well-ordered information covering the 

 broader subject, and the oral statement of 

 original theories and conclusions, must 

 have a broadening and clarifying influence 

 on the intellectual activity of the investi- 

 gator. 



As teaching is a help to research, still 

 more is research a vitalizer of teaching, 

 particularly of the teaching appropriate 

 for graduate students; indeed, the work of 

 research is at least as important as that 

 of instruction where advanced students are 

 concerned, and the university should be a 

 source of new knowledge, where those de- 

 siring to devote themselves to the same 

 high quest may be stimulated by the ex- 

 ample and companionship of productive 

 scholars. 



The leading European nations have ap- 

 parently realized more clearly than we the 

 value of scientific research, and have pro- 

 vided more adequate rewards and more 

 favorable environment for the investigator, 

 with the result that the ratio of intellectual 

 to material prosperity is higher there than 

 here. Within the past generation, how- 

 ever, we have become more awake to these 

 matters, and have determined in our stren- 

 uous way to make research "hum." The 

 awakening has unquestionably been bene- 

 ficial on the whole, but we have, it seems 

 to me, failed to grasp certain fundamental 

 distinctions between the needs of graduate 

 and of undergraduate students; the hum 

 of research has been allowed to drown the 

 cries of the injured in many an under- 

 graduate school, where teaching is sacri- 

 ficed to research, and where too early 

 specialization is encouraged and even 

 forced upon the student. 



We are not as yet in this country pro- 

 ducing our proper share of scholars of the 

 first rank. The reasons for this are many, 

 including hasty preparation, premature 

 specialization, insufficient rewards, and un- 

 favorable environment. 



As to preparation, those of us who con- 

 template academic careers are usually un- 

 willing to invest sufficient capital of time 

 and money; we expect to complete our 

 scholastic education, if uninterrupted, at 

 about twenty-five years of age and then 

 enter upon an active career in which there 

 is little time or opportunity for research 

 or even very serious or intensive study, for 

 the sake of the immediate pecuniary re- 

 ward; in Europe, several more years are 

 spent in subordinate positions as investiga- 

 tors, on a semi-independent basis both 

 scholastically and financially. The Euro- 

 pean makes a larger investment and reaps 

 a larger ultimate reward, not only in 

 money, but still more in the consideration 

 accorded to intellectual eminence. 



Concerning too early specialization and 

 its shallow results, I shall speak later ; let 

 it suffice here to say that, for example, he 

 is a poor chemist who is only a chemist. 



The rewards at present offered for pure 

 scientific work in this country are insuffi- 

 cient to attract the most vigorous, capable 

 and ambitious men; not only, nor chiefly, 

 are the financial returns here less than in 

 Europe in spite of our higher cost of liv- 

 ing, but the public respect for intellectual 

 distinction is far inferior in this country, 

 on account of our commercialism and our 

 acceptance of wealth as our standard evi- 

 dence of merit. 



The environment, too, is less favorable 

 to the highest scientific work in that the 

 numbers of those engaged therein are so> 

 few, and the national characteristic of 

 haste rather than thoroughness pervades 

 our activity. The value of real scientific 



