THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 249 
won in our researches, and its bearings seem misty and uncertain, we 
gain nothing by filling the ink pot and knotting a cold towel around 
our heads in full determination to settle matters. Dogged does not 
always do it. Put the idea away in some corner of the mind to give it 
time to germinate, then bring it out at intervals for consideration. 
This mental chewing of the cud is wholesome because natural. When 
the way seems darkest and most beset with stumbling blocks we may be 
nearest the door, and it is best to go slowly in the dark. We attain our 
conclusions at unexpected moments and have generally to wait until 
they appear subconsciously, the time varying with the individual mind. 
It is often an aid to reflection to drop for a while the subject that 
has begun to worry us, to take up a different and fresh problem. This 
alternation of subject is a necessary mental recreation and frequently 
accomplishes more than long hammering. For any change of thought 
is stimulating. 
Yet the investigator need not be like Heine’s “ gray friend between 
two bundles of hay,” slowly starving to death because he can not decide ; 
it is better that he choose unwisely than not choose at all, else he can 
not maintain himself in the arena of thought. After all, if he eats one 
of the bales of hay and learns later that the other was larger and 
sweeter, he has not gone hungry. 
It would seem to be on the average best for the general man to take 
rather a middle stand in his judgments, which means to see the good in 
both sides of any question. One should be neither too critical nor too 
tolerant. New ideas are constantly emerging, many of them contradic- 
tory to our own, and we have to cultivate a mode of meeting them, 
not to be bristling like the fretful porcupine, nor yet to embrace them 
eagerly because they are new. Also it is not safe to say an idea is 
wrong because it is new. We should react towards views as towards our 
fellow men, hunt for the best in them. Nothing is easier than to criti- 
cize, nothing less constructive. Life is too short for full achievement, 
unless Metchnikoff’s prophecies may come true, and “ Like as the waves 
move on the pebbling beach, so do our minutes hasten to their end.” 
Then why misuse the moments in picking flaws? In the orchard before 
us we may readily find the insect-bitten fruit if we look for it, but what 
pays is to gather the good. Whether it be right or wrong from the 
philosophical aspect, the optimistic standpoint is the most wholesome, 
and that man is happy who sees only the good in others—in their per- 
sonalities as well as in their opinions. We all shun him who has the 
squinting mind of noting only mistakes. Let us be fair to other men 
even though we can not be impartial, if only for the reason that it is 
the best policy, as Franklin would have said. For if we are not so, the 
retort courteous will be harder than the blow we struck, and then will 
be our time to wince. 
