46 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 13 
ever seek the same combination of ultimate ends or propose to arrive 
at them by precisely the same means. 
Yet, we may safely assert that for everyone life is a constant striving 
toward some goal. No one may escape this effort. It persists through 
every conscious hour, through every month and every year, so long as 
life lasts. The particular end for which the individual spends his 
effort may be noble or base, generous or selfish, physical or mental, 
fleeting or permanent. It may involve the sweet or the bitter in its 
attainment. But a striving for it exists always. 
We may rightly say, too, that for each individual the day’s work 
holds out some measure of attainment of the object of his effort. 
This measure may be little or great. Its sum at the end may be 
tragically small; it may sometimes be unfortunately large. Happily 
it may be such measure of attainment as to fulfill a well-balanced ideal 
of a well-rounded life. 
Since we do strive, inevitably, and since we do attain, inexorably, 
may we not define success for the scientist, as for any other thinking 
being, as a reasonable attainment of worth-while objects of effort. 
In reaching this attainment the course of life follows no broad high¬ 
way. For each individual it is a devious path, winding its way amid 
constantly varying surroundings, crossing and re-crossing a thousand 
other paths. He who travels the path must find himself always in 
varying contact with the physical world about him and with the other 
human beings who people that world. In his course he must reckon 
also on the physical, mental and moral makeup that constitute his own 
person and personality. 
It is true of all living things that daily life is a succession of con¬ 
tacts. Its orderly program is a series of adjustments to these con¬ 
tacts and to the conditions and circumstances that they carry with 
them. For all animals except man the nature of the adjustment is 
fixed. It involves a problem only in a wide and general sense, not in 
an individual and specific way. The reaction to a given situation 
must be speedy, automatic and effective. If it were not, it would not 
have persisted. 
Some such simple arrangement must have prevailed for human beings 
also in the ages long ago. But with the ability to think and to plan, to 
alter and control our physical surroundings, and in doing so to unite 
with others in common effort, there has come to us, as a part of our 
heritage, a vast and increasing complexity of adjustment. Condi¬ 
tions that were simple have become many-sided problems involving 
infinite mental and moral checks and balances. Daily life, which was 
once a well-charted course, has become an intricate study. 
In speaking of adjustment the word must not be misconstrued. It 
