150 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1022 



who with the growth of the work was ob- 

 liged to surrender it for completion to a 

 group of men. It is true that during the 

 second half of his life Berzelius prepared 

 the Jahresberieht ; but in his later years 

 it was clearly seen how impossible it was 

 for a single investigator to retain the 

 power of passing appropriate and unpreju- 

 diced judgment on all contemporary works. 

 The Jahresberieht in so far as it still ex- 

 ists has long been the product of the co- 

 operation of a specially trained group of 

 men. 



In precisely the same way the Index of 

 Organic Chemistry was created by the in- 

 defatigable Beilstein, but to-day there is 

 no scientist of equal caliber who can carry 

 on this enormous work in the same spirit 

 and with the same reliability. Here it has 

 been necessary to intrust the continuation 

 of the work of a single man to a whole 

 staff. 



All these instances show most clearly the 

 need of an international general organiza- 

 tion of chemic undertakings of this kind. 

 The work done, for example, by the com- 

 mission in preparing the supplement to the 

 Beilstein Index is of benefit not only to the 

 German chemists but to the chemists of the 

 whole world, and should therefore be done 

 not by a German, but by an international 

 institute. The same holds true of all other 

 general undertakings in chemistry; for 

 chemistry, like every other science, is en- 

 tirely independent of national peculiarities. 



NEW FUNCTIONS AND OKGANS 



It must not be forgotten, either, that the 

 capacities which enable a man to prepare 

 an ideal abstract or an ideal review are not 

 those which distinguish the investigator 

 and discoverer. The maturity of an or- 

 ganism is shown most clearly by its differ- 

 entiation of function. This differentiation 

 of function has no other purpose than the 



bringing about of greater efficiency through 

 specially adapted organs. So too in the 

 future International Institute of Chemis- 

 try, a special technique of collecting and 

 abstracting will be evolved which will 

 bring about far greater speed, complete- 

 ness and reliability than appears possible 

 with our hitherto somewhat haphazard 

 methods. 



We appreciate too, that this wearing and 

 severe work of abstracting is almost always 

 done by young men, who work only a few 

 years, not with any idea of making it a 

 profession — merely for the sake of eking 

 out their incomes. As soon as the young 

 man obtains a better position he renounces 

 this work. Therefore proficiency in this 

 work must continually be attained anew, 

 so that no high degree of excellence is ever 

 reached. But so soon as this kind of worli 

 is undertaken by specially fitted people as 

 a life work, it will not only be incompar- 

 ably better done, but there will be an ever 

 higher standard of excellence in the indi- 

 vidual production. Present-day abstracts, 

 for example, leave a great deal to be de- 

 sired, as every one knows who has been ob- 

 liged to use them, because a scientific 

 treatment of the question of what belongs 

 in an abstract and what can be left out has 

 actually never yet appeared. The individ- 

 ual abstractor is thrown on his own sense 

 of fitness and such instructions as are 

 vouchsafed him by the director when his 

 errors are too flagrant. In the case of life- 

 long occupation with such problems, the 

 technique of abstracting will be developed 

 to a real science, and the workers whose 

 scientific ambition is concentrated on this 

 problem will be able to write abstracts 

 which could actually supplant the original, 

 because one could find in them with cer- 

 tainty the essential points of the original 

 article. Such a technique is the more neces- 

 sary because it has long been impossible 



