Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/195

Rh mediocre, when third-class men are held up as examples, and when trifling inventions are magnified into scientific discoveries, then the influence of such societies is prejudicial. A young scientist attending the meetings of such a society soon gets perverted ideas. To his mind, a molehill is a mountain, and the mountain a molehill. The small inventor or the local celebrity rises to a greater height, in his mind, than the great leader of science in some foreign land. lie gauges himself by the molehill, and is satisfied with his stature; not knowing that he is but an atom in comparison with the mountain, until, perhaps, in old age, when it is too late. But, if the size of the mountain had been seen at first, the young scientist would at least have been stimulated in his endeavor to grow.

We cannot all be men of genius; but we can, at least, point them out to those around us. We may not be able to benefit science much ourselves; but we can have high ideals on the subject, and instilinstill [sic] them into those with whom we come in contact. For the good of ourselves, for the good of our country, for the good to the world, it is incumbent on us to form a true estimate of the worth and standing of persons and things, and to set before our own minds all that is great and good and noble, all that is most important for scientific advance, above the mean and low and unimportant.

Tt is very often said that a man has a right to his opinion. This might be true for a man on a desert island, whose error would influence only himself. Jut when he opens his lips to instruct others, or even when he signifies his opinions by his daily life, then he is directly responsible for all his errors of judgment or fact. He has no right to think a molehill as big as a mountain, nor to teach it, any more than he has to think the world flat, and teach that it is so. The facts and laws of our science have not equal importance, neither have the men who cultivate the science achieved equal results. One thing is greater than another, and we have no right to neglect the order. Thus shall our minds be guided aright, and our efforts be toward that which is the highest.

Then shall we see that no physicist of the first class has ever existed in this country, that we must look to other countries for our leaders in that subject, and that the few excellent workers in our country must receive many accessions from without before they can constitute an American science, or do their share in the world's work.

But let me return to the subject of scientific societies. Here American science has its hardest problem to contend with. There are very many local societies dignified by high-sounding names, each having its local celebrity, to whom the privilege of describing some crab with an extra claw, which he found in his morning ramble, is inestimable. And there are some academies of science, situated at our seats of