24 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
Fellow laborers, we are not doiDg our duty. We are too 
often content with quantity instead of quality. We cover too 
much ground and look for premature results. We fail to keep 
in mind the great idea, that method is more than matter, that 
the result we seek is not accumulation but power, not acquisi- 
tion but capacity, not bulk but strength. And we also forget 
that every scientist is a teacher, whether officially so or not. 
I believe that science and scientific study have a direct bearing 
on human existence. I believe that the sciences are not merely 
interesting, disciplinary as studies, practical when applied in 
the industrial arts, but that the more scientific people are the 
happier they are, not that they are warmer, or less hungry, or 
more intellectual, but that they are better adapted to their sur- 
roundings. In other words life ought to mean more than strug- 
gle, acquisition and success, it should mean better relation- 
ships. I do not believe that the chief end of scientific training 
is skill in invention. I do not think the chief business of the 
scientist is to produce something practical. This age is pre- 
eminently practical, and in so far as it is so it depends largely 
on scientific methods in vogue. But the satisfaction of bodily 
wants and natural ambitions is not the goal of scientific research. 
We need not less but more theory with our practice. The man 
without a theory is as imbalanced as one with nothing but a 
theory. The aim of scientific research is to find, the ideal 
adjustment of man to his environment, and that relation will 
never be attained by purely practical means. 
We see to-day an immense number of so-called investigators 
engaged in original research. Probably one-half of these know 
little or nothing beyond their specialties. Many of them are 
engaged in matters of little general import, and see only a very 
circumscribed horizon. Many of them are unable to see the 
relations of their special studies to anything else. So they 
drift into empiricism, narrowness, and dogmatic assertions. 
We are teaching men to specialize before they can generalize, 
and the results must be unfortunate. A large part of these 
investigators are entirely out of place. To become a specialist 
in science one must be m.ore than merely able to manipulate a 
microscope, or to set up a dynamo, or to mix chemicals without 
a disastrous explosion. Whatever may be said pro and con 
regarding the old system of industrial apprenticeship, this is 
certain, that no one can becom.e a reliable investigator without 
a long and laborious service of preparation. We are putting 
