Attgust 14, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



219 



classes, and out of the hopes and the fears 

 of a small minority of contemplative and 

 constructive minds will come the advances 

 to which a healthy optimism bids us look 

 forward. But these advances may be ra- 

 tionally expected to come only slowly and 

 falteringly, with many setbacks, and with 

 direct beneiits chiefly for our successors 

 rather than for us; for biological science 

 has taught us that the social organism 

 works in general with extreme deliberation 

 and works for the individual only as a rela- 

 tively insignificant unit in his race. 



And in keeping with this broader view of 

 our relations to the larger part of the uni- 

 verse, the event we celebrate is especially 

 noteworthy not so much by reason of its 

 individuality as by reason of the type it 

 represents and the trend of current 

 thought it helps to express. For important 

 as this center of research undoubtedly has 

 been, and should long continue to be, to 

 biological science in America, it is only one 

 of numerous agencies for research now 

 undergoing rejuvenation or now springing 

 up in various parts of the world. The spirit 

 of stolid conservatism and the spirit of 

 reckless enquiry, alike inimical to the pub- 

 lic welfare and to the progress of science, 

 are being replaced in larger and larger de- 

 gree by a spirit of patient investigation 

 which seeks to substitute constructive for 

 destructive work and to discover how the 

 best interests of mankind may be secured 

 under the inexorable restrictions imposed 

 by that vastly larger part of the universe 

 which we have hitherto so commonly and so 

 blindly ignored. In this conscious effort 

 to discover our relations to the environment 

 in which we find ourselves and in this con- 

 scious recognition of the limitations of hu- 

 man existence and endeavor are to be found 

 the most encouraging evidences of progress. 

 We should guard carefully, however, 

 against our instinctive tendencies to accept 

 the widely popular fallacy that what we 



call research is either novel or of recent 

 origin. Eesearch, as we now understand 

 the word, means simply a systematic appli- 

 cation of the methods of science. These 

 methods are as old, certainly, as written 

 history, and they have undergone a tedious 

 and painful development. We may no 

 longer think rationally of the achieve- 

 ments of men as appearing suddenly any 

 more than we may think rationally of other 

 phenomena occurring in violation of the 

 principle of continuity. All such vagaries, 

 though still too common, belong to the 

 Homeric childhood of our race. Neither 

 are these methods the exclusive property 

 or tools of any class or classes of men. 

 What is new with regard to them is an in- 

 creasing assurance in their validity as a 

 means of truthfully interpreting and hence 

 controlling within determinable limits the 

 conditions of existence on our planet. 



But in addition to these generally favor- 

 able circumstances for the appreciation 

 and for the promotion of research, circum- 

 stances far more propitious, probably, than 

 at any earlier epoch in history, there are 

 many collateral considerations which ob- 

 viously demand our attention if we are to 

 make good use of the enlarged opportuni- 

 ties now becoming available to us in in- 

 creasing measure. Along with the extraor- 

 dinary advances of science and its benefi- 

 cent applications in the nineteenth century 

 there has come also an equally extraordi- 

 nary development of private and public 

 confidence in those advances and hence a 

 desire for liberal endowment of research by 

 individuals and by governments. This has 

 been the case in our country especially. 

 Captains of industry, philanthropists and 

 legislators have manifested a spirit of al- 

 truism and a degree of foresight quite with- 

 out parallel in previous experience. An 

 unprecedented amount of funds has re- 

 cently become available for research, and 



