February, ’20] 
O’KANE: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
47 
implies recognition of circumstance, but it ought never mean sur¬ 
render or subservience. The history of mankind is too crowded with 
the records of victory over difficulty to recognize any doctrine of retreat. 
Hueber, a scientist with sightless eyes, Beethoven, a great composer 
living in a soundless world—these and a multitude of others deny the 
existence of defeat. 
In this problem the scientific worker today shares in marked degree. 
If, for a moment, we may place ourselves at a distance from the typical 
day’s work of the scientist, in order that we may compare it with the 
round of duties of other men, we shall find that it is not set to a certain 
program as is that of a great number of people about us. For others 
the routine of the day is fixed. The procedure to follow is settled. 
The job is standardized. Nothing of that sort is or should be true of 
the scientific worker. His very freedom itself complicates his task. 
The manner of his work he may alter if he desires. Furthermore, his 
life is lived in a world within a world. He has a double adjustment 
to make because of contact with fellow workers in faculty or depart¬ 
ment and a quite different contact with the remaining people of his 
community. The very subject matter that constitutes the basis of 
his life’s task is in a constant state of change and growth. Steel is 
not steel in his day’s task; wood is not wood. The material he works 
with today has changed by tomorrow. Because he is earning his living 
with his brains he is apt to forget about his body. A multitude of his 
daily adjustments must be intangible. Their properties and bounds 
may not be held up before the eye but are invisible, fleeting. Yet, 
just for these reasons it is vital that the scientist should be making 
these adjustments with skill, understanding and foresight. They 
are worth his study. 
With few exceptions scientific workers are employees of some 
institution or bureau whose function it is to bring together men in 
the same or related lines of work. Our daily associates, therefore, are 
for the most part men who are engaged in work similar to our own. 
Their aspirations are brother to ours. Their gifts and failings are 
our own. Whatever tendency to prejudice girdles them about pulls 
equally at us. The circumstance that gets on their nerves gets on 
ours. And so, too close contact of like substances occasionally sets up 
friction, in the heat of which some of our best possibilities are apt to 
boil away in useless vapor. 
Now it is obvious that we all desire the buoyant help that comes 
from the well-founded admiration and respect of our associates. There 
is no stronger incentive to good work than that. We crave and need 
the well-earned approval, confidence and liking of our co-workers. 
