176 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. VI., No. 134. 



either dwarfed or killed. But even slovenly diagrams 

 are preferable to purchased ones; for vv^hatever di- 

 minishes the dead-work of a teacher, enervates his 

 investigating, and thereby his demonstrating, powers, 

 and lowers him toward the level of his scholars. 



Were I dictator, I should drive all teachers of sci- 

 ence out into the great field of dead-work; force them 

 to go through all the gymnastics of original research 

 and its description; and not permit them to return 

 to their libraries until their note-books were full of 

 their own measurements and calculations, sketch- 

 maps and form-drawings, severely accurate and logi- 

 cally classified, to be then compared with those 

 recorded in the books. What teachers fail to keep 

 in mind is this: that learning is not knowledge; but 

 as Lessing says: Learning is only our knowledge 

 of the experience of others; knowledge is our own. 

 No man really comprehends what he himself has not 

 created. Therefore we know nothing of the uni- 

 verse until we take it to pieces for inspection, and 

 rebuild it for our understanding. Nor can one man 

 do this for another; each must do it for himself; and 

 all that one can do to help another is to show him 

 how he himself has morsellated and recomposed his 

 small particular share of concrete nature, and in- 

 spire him with those vague but hopeful suggestions 

 of ideas which we call learning, but which are not 

 science. 



My third proposition was, that an expert in practi- 

 cal science can command the respect and confidence 

 of his professional fellows, and, through their free 

 suffrages, build up his own reputation in the learned 

 and business worlds, only in exact proportion to the 

 amount of good dead-work to which he voluntarily 

 subjects himself. For, although the most of it is 

 necessarily done in secrecy and silence, enough of it 

 leaks out to testify to his honest and diligent self-cul- 

 tivation ; and enough of it must show in the shape of 

 scientific wisdom, to make self-evident the fact that 

 he is neither a tyro nor a cliarlatan. More than once 

 I have heard the merry jest of the Australasian judge 

 quoted with sinister application to experts in science. 

 When a young colleague, just arrived from England, 

 asked him for advice, he answered: Pronounce your 

 decisions, but beware of staling your reasons for 

 them. Many an ephemeral leputation for science 

 has been begot by this shrewd policy; but the best 

 policy to wear well is honesty; and honesty in trade 

 means selling what is genuine, well-made, and dura- 

 ble; and honesty in science means, first, facts well 

 proved, and then, conclusions slowly and painfully 

 deduced from facts well proved, in sufficient number 

 and order of arrangement to exhaust alike the sub- 

 ject and the observer. Keap your field so thoroughly 

 that gleaners must despair. Fortify your position, 

 that your most experienced rival can find no point of 

 attack. Lay your plans with such a superfluity of 

 patient carefulness that fate itself can invent no seri- 

 ous emergency. Demonstrate your theory so utterly 

 and evidently that it shall require no defender but 

 itself. Die for your work, that your work may live 

 forever. Forget youiself, and your work will make 

 you famous. Enslave yourself to if, and it will plant 



your feet upon the necks of kings, and your mere Yes 

 or No will become a law to multitudes. This is what 

 the dead-work of science, when well done, does for 

 the expert in science. 



My fourth proposition — that only the habitual 

 performance of dead-work can preserve the scientific 

 intellect in pristine vigor, and prevent it from becom- 

 ing stiffened with prejudices, inapt to receive fresh 

 truth, and forgetful of knowledge already won — 

 hardly needs discussion. Human muscles become 

 atrophied by disuse. Men's fortunes shrink and 

 evaporate by mere investment. I pray you to ima- 

 gine what I wish to say; for it all amounts to this — 

 that the grass will surely grow over a deserted foot- 

 path. Let me hurry to the close of this address, 

 which I have found too serious a duty for my liking, 

 and perhaps you also have found it too personal a 

 preachment for yours. One more suggestion, then, 

 and I have done. 



My fifth proposition was, that the wearied and 

 exhausted intellect will wisely seek refreshment in 

 dead-work. 



The physiology of the brain is now sufficiently well 

 understood to permit physicians to prescribe with 

 some assurance for its many ills, and to regulate its 

 restoration to a normal state of health. Its tissues 

 reproduce themselves throughout life if no extraor- 

 dinary overbalance of decay takes place, if there be no 

 excessive and too long continued waste. For the 

 majority of mankind, nature provides for the adjust- 

 ment between consumption and reproduction of brain- 

 matter, by the alternations of day and night, noise and 

 silence, society and solitude; and also by the substi- 

 tution of the play of fancy in dreams, for the work of 

 the judgment and the will in waking hours. We 

 follow the lead of nature when we seek amusement 

 as a remedy for care. We bring into activity a rested 

 portion of the brain, to permit the wearied parts of it 

 to restore themselves unhindered. 



This is the rationale of the pathological treatment 

 of the brain. Tell an over-worked president of a 

 railway company, who falls asleep at the director's 

 meeting, that he must rest, or die of softening of the 

 brain, and he will smile a sad reply, that he cannot 

 rest. He is right, thus far: he cannot rest his whole 

 brain; but he can rest the cerebellum, — the seat of 

 the Avill power, — by bringing into higher activity, 

 and more frequent exercise, the upper and frontal 

 lobes. Let him stop thinking of leasing rival lines, 

 and read novels, and play billiards. Let him ride 

 some youthful hobby, revive his practise on the vio- 

 lin, cultivate flow^ers, keep a stud and kennel, bury 

 himself in Gieek and Latin literature, collect pic- 

 tiu-es, minerals, do any thing which will really inter- 

 est him, and keep him out of the way of railroad men 

 and railroading; and do it with his might, with en- 

 thusiasm, even to fatigue; and do it for at least four 

 years, and by that time his cerebellum will be all 

 right again. 



Now what the unintermitting responsibilities of 

 the railroad official do for the destruction of the 

 constitution of his cerebellum, just that the over- 

 strained exercise of the creative imagination does 



