THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 251 
But what especially lends dignity and strength is the maintenance 
of an ideal. German students in their expansive intimacies discuss 
their ideals quite openly, their “ Lebensphilosophien” as they term 
them. We Anglo-Saxons are not inclined to talk of such matters. But 
a man should keep a noble aim in sight and never let it be hidden by the 
clouds of circumstance. That ideal must be something much grander 
than any detail we have immediately in hand, our several efforts only 
approximations towards it. We are, it seems to me, to consider the in- 
vestigations of science as all directed to one end, though no man 
will see its consummation, the interpretation of that great melody, the 
universe. Here is a subject without end, all human knowledge may be 
employed in its elaboration. Men of the world do not understand why 
we are busying ourselves with fixing the exact date of the first render- 
ing of a play, the number of times that a certain prefix occurs in the 
writings of Pindar, the exact length of a heat wave, or the behavior of a 
particular microscopic particle of one kind of organic cell. And in 
themselves these are not great things; an average man with patience 
and training might deal with them. They are on the whole so gen- 
erally uninteresting that each has the world over only a small group of 
devotees. But when they are seen as steps in a synthesis of explana- 
tions their value is at once apparent. Our business is to weld all these 
separated bits of knowledge together, to make of them a great sustain- 
ing wall. And when the utilitarian inquires what will be gained by 
this giant effort, be ready with the prompt reply: on this knowledge 
depends our control of ourselves and of nature. Scientific inquiries 
are not to be pursued wholly academically, as games to amuse. They 
are attempts to explain the processes of nature, in order that we may 
use this knowledge for the advancement of our kind. And it is as true 
as the night follows the day, that explanation must precede application 
and consequently human progress. 
This is the apology for the investigator. He has to do neither with 
the cataloguing and rearranging of facts, nor with their transmission, 
but with the enlargement of knowledge by discovery and intrepretation. 
Both stand for the development of character, but while the under- 
graduate work is for the transmission of knowledge, the graduate de- 
partment is for a higher aim, its increase. If it is difficult to garner 
and hand over knowledge, it is still harder to add to it, and no faint 
heart need try to be an investigator. 
Our project is to try to decipher the nature of man and of the 
universe, and for this there is full need of every iota of strength and 
determination and talent there may be in us. 
