PRODUCTIVE SCHOLARSHIP 597 



ENVIKONMENT AND PEODUCTIVE SCHOLAKSHIP 



By De. W. J. HUMPHREYS 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



f I ^ say that ours is the best age the world has ever known is to state 

 -*- a simple truth. Even though we can claim for literature no living 

 Homer, nor Dante, nor Shakespeare; for art no Phidias, nor Michel 

 Angelo, nor Eubens ; for moral suasion no Confucius, nor Zoroaster, nor 

 Mahomet, still the statement is true. True because for the west as well 

 as for the far east this is the age of Meiji — the age of enlightenment. 

 True because man to-day has more knowledge than ever before of the 

 laws of the universe in which he is placed, and because this knowledge 

 is power ; the power by which he brings inanimate nature to his aid ; the 

 power that determines his efficiency and fixes his place on the scale of 

 civilization. It is this knowledge, slowly gained through the ages, and 

 his ability to use it, that raises man above the plane of the mere animal 

 and gives him dominion over all the earth and its creatures. 



He alone has discovered even so simple a thing as how, by putting 

 the half burned logs closer together and by adding fresh fuel, to keep 

 burning the fire that, like himself, many an animal enjoys but knows 

 not how to obtain; a discovery that has been of incalculable benefit to 

 him and will be. And so too each additional discovery, by the fuller 

 knowledge and wider control of nature it brings, marks a gain in the 

 struggle for life and for happiness. It lays broader and deeper the 

 foundation upon which our arts and our civilization are based, and 

 stamps, therefore, the discoverer as a benefactor of the human race. 



There is no intention here to imply that people without originality 

 are necessarily useless. In fact, they are very far from being so, for the 

 practise of the arts is the end of science, and for this one does not need 

 in the least to be original. Nevertheless, all material progress does de- 

 pend absolutely upon the investigator and the inventor ; upon that rare 

 man, the genius that discovers the secrets of nature, and upon that host 

 of skillful men who cleverly use these discoveries in devising mechanical 

 and other means of meeting every-day needs. 



Science, as just implied, is not an end within itself, at least not an 

 important one, for it is the bringing of nature's forces to our service, 

 the application of her laws to the development of useful arts, and not 

 the abstract knowledge of the laws themselves, that chiefly concerns 

 mankind; and, therefore, being cognizant of only its mediate benefac- 

 tors, the public gives its laurels and its material rewards to the inventor 

 and the manufacturer, rather than to the investigator and the scholar. 

 But in this, as in so many other things, the decision of the majority is 



