NO^fEMBER 24, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



717 



profound significance for the academic life of 

 the nation and of such great potentiality for 

 intellectual interests — an institution founded 

 purely and simply for the benefit of one of 

 the learned professions, and unhampered by 

 fund-eating buildings, or the clamor of stu- 

 dents, or the demands of the public, or the 

 contentions of rivals — might well serve as an 

 exemplar by determining its measures in the 

 larger spirit of academic welfare? In be- 

 nighted Germany professors are actually 

 summoned to councils of state; in enlightened 

 America they are not granted a single repre- 

 sentative on the council of an institution 

 founded exclusively for their own inter- 

 ests. . . . 



We have said more of the Carnegie Founda- 

 tion and less of the value of pensions for the 

 learned professions than was our intention. 

 But the concrete ever engages the attention; 

 and it is often the more urgent and useful 

 measure to set right the faulty steering in the 

 short tack of the moment on the skiff upon 

 which we are embarked, than to chart the fu- 

 ture course of the great ship of state that must 

 eventually carry our ventures. Human high- 

 ways, moreover, are not like the broad open 

 sea; they get clogged with tradition, and lit- 

 tered with the debris of precedent, and the re- 

 tracing of steps is often peculiarly trouble- 

 some. But the two phases of the theme are of 

 one nature. It is an underlying distrust of 

 the man of learning, the hesitant recognition 

 of his value for the intellectual resources of 

 the nation, that makes public interests dila- 

 tory in providing such honorable recognition 

 as the pension stands for, and as well leads to 

 weak and floundering consideration and opera- 

 tion of the measures adopted. Born of the 

 same feeble confidence is the emphasis placed 

 upon administrative restrictions and the exal- 

 tation of near-sighted business prudence. All 

 this makes for an exaggerated intolerance of 

 the minor disadvantages or even abuses inher- 

 ent in every good movement, and for a tragic 

 disregard of the great lost opportunities. We 

 believe in higher education, in the value of the 

 learned professions; we should like a goodly 

 share of the great contributions to science 



and invention, to art and literature, to noble 

 thoughts and human endeavors, to emanate 

 from Americans; but we are chary or stupid 

 in providing the free and effective play of 

 forces, the favoring environment which gives 

 these blossoms their nurture. We see no rea- 

 son why roses should not be grown like cab- 

 bages, and orchids like peas — and we want the 

 roses thornless. We insist that the business 

 methods that make the one crop flourish must 

 be elficacious for the other. Foreign example 

 is unconvincing, too heavily laden with con- 

 ditions condemned by a triumphant democ- 

 racy as out-of-date. And so our statesman- 

 ship in politics carries the flavor of the mar- 

 ket-place and the outlook and insight of the 

 " boss " ; and the guidance of cultural inter- 

 ests, reflecting a kindred narrowness of per- 

 spective, fails or imperfectly succeeds by rea- 

 son of the absence of just that superadded but 

 indispensable touch of intellectual integrity 

 and spiritual vision, that at that level divides 

 the worthy from the unworthy results. Such 

 is the law of the upper ranges of human 

 quality and human standards. Defections 

 wholly pardonable and not over-serious in 

 their consequences for the ordinary interests 

 of life, become fatal for the extraordinary 

 ones. When we shall have learned this lesson 

 and rendered to each of the learned classes the 

 tribute that is its due, and shall entrust their 

 interests to those imbued with the spirit 

 thereof, we shall institute more liberal pro- 

 visions for their welfare and administer more 

 liberally those that favoring circumstances 

 permit us to establish. Meanwhile the learned 

 classes may accept the imposed or self-im- 

 posed burden of appreciatively though crit- 

 ically proclaiming the merit of good measures, 

 while maintaining the struggle and the hope 

 for the advent and survival of the best. — The 

 Dial. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Leonhardi Euleri, Opera Omnia. Sub au- 



spiciis Societatis Scientiarum Naturalium 



Helveticae edenda curaverunt Ferdinand 



EuDio, Adolf Krazee, Paul Stackel. 



