XOVEMBER 27, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



and them. Regardless of its cost to his 

 chei-i.shed fancies, man strives for .scientific 

 truth. And, as the old Greeks said, this 

 purpose puts him further from the l)rutes 

 and nearer to the gods. 



In nurturing science I would urge that 

 a community cultivates more than mere 

 iitility. And even with regard to mere 

 iitility, as the fields of knowledge fall 

 ripe under the ceaseless husbandry of the 

 world's thought, those who would join in 

 the great reaping, and not onlj' glean where 

 othei-s reaped before them, must cultivate 

 for themselves. To do this requires more 

 than the devotion of individuals. It re- 

 quires the intelligent cooperation of whole 

 groups of individuals. Organized scientific 

 inquiry becomes in advanced countries a 

 conscious aim of the community as a com- 

 munity. 



That society may draw due benefit from 

 wells of natural knowledge, three kinds of 

 workers have to stand side by side. First, 

 the investigator, who, pursuing truth, ex- 

 tends discovery, with little or no reference 

 to practical ends. He constitutes the foun- 

 tain-head of the knowledge that is for dis- 

 tribution. Other hands may reap the har- 

 vest, but his set and rear the seed. 



After the investigator comes the teacher. 

 To him it belongs to diffuse the knowledge 

 won. This honorable and difficult taSk 

 receives its best reward in seeing the 

 small spiritual beginnings of a pupil widen 

 into the spiritual beginnings of a master. 

 Thirdly, there is the applier of natural 

 knowledge. His part consists in making 

 scientific knowledge directly serve practical 

 needs. It is this work which to the pop- 

 ular idea often represents the whole of sci- 

 ence, or all of it that is commonly termed 

 'useful.' The practical results of this work 

 are often astounding to those ignorant of 

 the steps by which they have been reached. 

 The greatest of these steps, however, is 



usually the first one, made in the labora- 

 tory of the investigator. These three co- 

 workers are coequal in the priesthood. Sci- 

 ence and the applications of science are 

 one growth, united together even as the 

 fruit and the tree. The proper hearth- 

 stone round which the community should 

 group these laborers, laboring for a com- 

 mon end, is the university. There the sa- 

 cred flame of learning is fed from many 

 sides by many hands. 



It is sometimes said that pursuit of sci- 

 ence renders a man deaf to the appeals of 

 practical life. That it tends to withdraw 

 him from the everj^day interests of the 

 people. That I do not believe of any sci- 

 ence, certainlj' not of biology and the med- 

 ical sciences. From their very outset these 

 subjects draw the mind toward study of an 

 organization the most complex and the most 

 perfect it can examine. The ancient simile 

 that our school classic, Livy, drew between 

 the human body and the body politic, the 

 state, has not lost but won significance as 

 the centuries have run. The achievement 

 of the microscope has been the discovery 

 that living things, whether plant or animal 

 —all living things of more than minutest 

 size— are commonwealths of individually 

 living units. These cells, as they are called, 

 are living stones that build the house of life. 

 In that house each stone is a self-centered 

 individually living microcosm individually 

 born, breathing for itself, feeding itself, 

 consuming its own substance in its living, 

 and capable of and destined for an indi- 

 vidual death. Each cell lives by exchang- 

 ing material with the world surrounding 

 it. In other words, its bulk depends on its 

 surface. Hence, surface increasing as the 

 square and volume as the cube, cell-size 

 is circumscribed by tiny limits— micros- 

 copic limits. Had ihe dependence been 

 greater than it is, and the average size of 

 the cell less, and too small for resolution 



