May 5, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



633 



preliminaries are. The hospital surgeon 

 well knows how much more willing the 

 young interne is to actually handle cases, 

 if it is only to administer the ether or the 

 iodine, which any nurse can do, than he is 

 to study the theory of ether as an anes- 

 thetic, or of iodine as an antiseptic, which 

 perhaps no nurse could understand. The 

 young student of mechanics thinks he could 

 have devised the steam turbine if it had 

 not been done before his day, but when he 

 comes to study the problem as it has actu- 

 ally been developed, he finds the same old 

 kinetic theories, differentials and integra- 

 tions which he spurned as too theoretical 

 when he sought a short road to engineering. 



I want you to realize that in America we 

 are going ahead in future at a rate depend- 

 ent entirely upon our preparation. Labo- 

 ratories are a relatively modern thing. In 

 most of the sciences they are a development 

 within the lives of men now living. I want 

 you to see that we must be foremost in sys- 

 tematic, organized research, or we will be 

 distanced by other countries which already 

 well recognize the value of new knowledge. 



When so much of our material welfare, 

 the condition and extent of our manufac- 

 tures, the quality of our agricultural ef- 

 forts, and the health of our people, depend 

 upon the rate of our acquirement of new 

 knowledge, there ought to be much greater 

 effort made along the lines of research than 

 is at present the case. 



"We call knowledge power, but we need 

 to see that new knowledge is like a second 

 power to power. 



I'd rather be a little Moses than a big 

 Jeremiah. I'd rather point a way to a 

 promised land, however remote, than talk 

 about our lamentable conditions. But we 

 Americans are not entirely imbued with the 

 spirit of active and efficient service. "We 

 are a preliminary experiment on the pos- 

 sibility of operating a competitive nation 



in a democratic manner, but we don't care 

 much about it. "We have about as little 

 interest in the wonder and elasticity of 

 nature, the laws of materials (except where 

 they affect our stomachs and our health) as 

 had Darwin's starving Patagonians. "With 

 us the spirit of the hive is confined to the 

 bees. Germans and Japs make better 

 scholars than we do, and a Chinese laundry- 

 man sticks longer to his daily job and 

 talks less about it. "We are living in the 

 Garden of the Gods, but we are still eating 

 grass. 



Is there no significance in the fact that 

 many of our colleges are better known 

 through their foot work than their head 

 work? Is it not significant that the T. M. 

 C. A.'s dotting our land are as strong in 

 bowling-alleys as in education, and that 

 most of our religious training goes to the 

 heathen? Is it a sign of health that so 

 large a portion of our newspapers are paid 

 to feed us with results of useless experi- 

 ments between prize-fighters? I think the 

 stadium should be the accessory of the labo- 

 ratory, not the temple of the oracle; and 

 that in reality a research laboratory is more 

 compatible with the object of a university 

 than is the more common training-table. I 

 do not mean to be too insistent as a critic 

 or too pressing as an advocate, but I hate 

 to see my own country such a trailer as it 

 now is. I hope the conditions are chang- 

 ing, but I know they are not changing fast 

 enough. 



All service is based on knowledge, and 

 knowledge is an ever augmenting thing 

 which almost any one may increase. If the 

 stock is eternally useful as it is, how great 

 must be the value of the indestructible in- 

 crements which any one may produce. I 

 do not think due reverence is given to new 

 knowledge. I want to illustrate. 



Some time, somewhere, centuries ago, the 

 slag of a fireside appeared transparent, 



