252 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1025 



couragement and recognition from any one 

 than from President White. He had 

 selected the faculty with care, and although 

 he might not fully understand an investi- 

 gation, he had confidence that the professor 

 would attain creditable results and he gave 

 him and his work most cordial support. 

 Neither did he wait before giving such en- 

 couragement until the work had been pub- 

 lished and favorably received; but not in- 

 frequently a professor received a spoken or 

 written word of encouragement when with- 

 out such encouragement perhaps it would 

 have been abandoned. It is true that in 

 those days the number of instructors in 

 Cornell University was small, and likewise 

 the number of students ; but, after all, there 

 was more of a true university atmosphere 

 in the institution than is to be found in 

 some of the present day which have almost 

 as many thousand students as Cornell had 

 hundreds in those old days. 



In such an environment it was only 

 natural after the organization of a chapter 

 of Phi Beta Kappa in 1881, to which at 

 that time in Cornell only those students 

 who had training in at least one of the 

 classical languages were eligible, that the 

 scientific side of the university, which in 

 every other way was on an equal footing 

 with the literary side, should consider the 

 formation of an honorary scientific society. 

 One of the objects of the Sigma Xi Soci- 

 ety, as they were enumerated in its first 

 published constitution, was: 



To supplement the regular course of instruction 

 in science by original investigation.* 



The speaker regrets that this sentence 

 has been dropped from the constitution, 

 which he believes reflected the spirit of 

 Cornell University during the period of the 

 conception and birth of this Society. 

 Neither is it believed that this spirit has 

 passed away, for in an address last fall by 

 i Sigma Xi [1887], p. 4. 



one of her distinguished linguistic scholars, 

 Professor Schmidt, he said: 



Numbers alone do not make a great university. 

 . . . Three indispensable factors in making a great 

 university are: (1) competent investigators ca- 

 pable of increasing the world's knowledge; (2) 

 distinguished teachers able to impart the most ad- 

 vanced knowledge, and (3) students eager for 

 knowledge and passionately pursuing it.s 



Professor Ward, of the University of 

 Illinois, and corresponding secretary of 

 the Society of the Sigma Xi, has also 

 spoken, in a recent address, very emphatic- 

 ally concerning the importance of investi- 

 gation for teachers. He said: 



Whatever private institutions may do, the state 

 has no choice. The men who are its teachers must 

 also be investigators and must contribute their 

 share to the extension of knowledge.^ 



No less certain, however, were the words 

 of Dr. Mendenhall on this campus last 

 summer — ^the most distinguished living 

 member of this university's early faculty — 

 when he said: 



The university must also recognize, and in a 

 generous way, its obligation to do its share in en- 

 larging the boundaries of human knowledge. . . . 



During the last hundred years the relation of 

 man to his environment has changed more than in 

 all the past centuries of his history considered as 

 one and this almost incredible material revolution 

 is entirely the outcome of applied science. If 

 there is to be no halt in this grand march there 

 must be continued scientific discovery, the abso- 

 lutely indispensable forerunner of the application 

 of science. In original research, therefore, the 

 ' ' discovery of truth, ' ' the university of the state 

 must, in the future, assume leadership, and let us 

 hope that our own institution may always be found 

 in the front rank.T 



The principal object of this society is 

 not, as many suppose, to confer an honor 

 upon students of marked ability. It is an 



5 Cornell Alumni News, Vol. XVI., November 27, 

 1913, p. 106. 



8 Science, N. S., Vol. XXXVIII., December 12, 

 1913, p. 838. 



7 Ohio State University Monthly, November, 

 1913, p. 18. 



