IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 
25 
the label, investigator, upon too much crude material. To 
quote President Coulter: “ Teachers assume a serious respon- 
sibility in urging born hod carriers to become architects.” 
I do not wish to be understood as decrying original research 
or specialization of studies. On the contrary, I believe every 
earnest thinker needs to concentrate his energies now and then 
on special investigation, but every act in specialization should 
rest on a foundation of broad culture. No scientist should be 
content to pass off the field of activity without leaving the store 
of human knowledge richer for his having lived. If we consult 
the life records of those who have done most to put the various 
branches of science on a broad rational basis, we see that they 
have been men who have got at the heart of nature through 
special investigations. Only those who have labored them- 
selves can rightly interpret the labors of others. Knowledge 
is not the goal. Truth for truth’s sake may be good, but not 
best. Unrelated ideas are as valueless as mummies buried 
beyond all discovery. We are making an egregious mistake 
when in our teaching or researches we emphasize a detail here 
and a detail there and utterly fail to find any relatioiiships. 
Yet this is just what is done over and over again by our so-called 
investigators. Year after year they extol their special hobbies 
and lament that the world calls them visionary. 
I believe in the popularization of science. It would be entirely 
out of place for me to assume that any member of this academy 
believed in what is known as popular science, which in fact is 
usually no science at all. I believe that science should be made 
popular, not by prostituting its aims and methods to the pleas- 
ing of public fancy, but by educating the masses in the methods 
and applications of science. Correct thinking is prerequisite 
to correct acting. Yet how often do we labor simply to reform 
the acting! Comparatively speaking, of what lasting good can 
be the triumphs of science of our day if only the purely practi- 
cal results impress themselves on the public mind? If our dis- 
coveries, little and big, are to be applied as so many patent 
nostrums how meager the results! If the rationale of science is 
to be restricted to the sphere of the highly educated classes 
and the wonderful results of research are to be regarded as 
empirical by the masses, how discouraging the prospect to one 
who has at heart the welfare of the whole race! Pasteur and 
others have well nigh succeeded in placing medical science on 
a rational basis, yet how few comprehend the actual state of 
