164 



Just here I wish to turn aside for a moment to consider a bit 

 more this matter of training in the collation and exposition of 

 knowledge. The expansion of science in our day has been so 

 vast, the literature has become so voluminous, the specialization 

 of method and thought are so extreme, that it is becoming a 

 serious question how the results of new research, when not of a 

 sensational nature, can be quickly, accurately and adequately 

 incorporated into the general mass of our knowledge and made 

 available to the intellectual or economic uses of our race. Every 

 scientific man has witnessed the ignoring of new truth long after 

 its announcement, and the repetition of old error long after its 

 disproval, not alone in popular information and literature, but 

 even in the best scientific text-books; and this mal-adjustment 

 between scientific research and general knowledge waxes con- 

 stantly greater. The trouble is plain; we have no recognized 

 collators of knowledge, scholars whose business it is to stand 

 between the investigator and the general user of knowledge and 

 to interpret correctly the results of the one to the other. The 

 need for such service was pointed out long ago by Francis Bacon. 

 In his prophecy of the future development of scientific knowledge, 

 veiled under his story of "The New Atlantis," he describes the 

 division of duty among the scholars of Salomon's House. He 

 says : 



"Then after divers meetings and consults of our whole number, 

 to consider of the former labours and collections [an obvious 

 prophesy of our scientific meetings], we have three that take care, 

 out of them, to direct new experiments, of a higher light, more 

 penetrating into nature than the former. These we call Lamps. 

 . . . Lastly, we have three that raise the former discoveries 

 by experiments into graeter observations, axioms, and aphorisms. 

 These we call Interpreters of Nature." 



To-day we have our lamps, and their light shines steadily and 

 benignantly forth. We call them universities. But where are 

 our interpreters of nature? Though we need them, we have 

 them not. They should be our colleges. In all of the great body 

 of intellectual endeavor there is no greater weakness and no 

 greater opportunity for service, than in the interpretation to all 



