Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/322

312 tendency to support museums, libraries, etc., and to undertake functions requiring scientific experts, the great incorporated universities developing special research, the applications of science in industries, transportation, etc.—all these represent an extraordinary activity, and, at the same time, a dispersion of tendencies and interests that require here more than in any country some unifying and centralizing organization. The functions of such a body are only limited by its efficiency. Our government recognizes a division into executive, legislative and judicial functions, but does not recognize the coordinate importance of expert opinion. As the judicatory interprets the laws made by the legislature, so the legislature requires impartial advice and scientific knowledge as the basis of its enactments.

The question now arises as to what body or bodies should perform the functions thus outlined. In the first place, it is evident that we need numerous and partly independent institutions. Each university, museum, survey, observatory, botanical garden, laboratory and the like is a unit, requiring its special organization. Each city should have a local academy, or alliance of societies, which in its field should perform most of the functions that we have been considering. Similar academies, or groups of societies, are needed for a State or region. National societies are required for each science. But what should be the national organization that will bring all the local and special societies together, and accomplish for the nation and for science as a whole what these institutions and societies do for a locality or a single science? We have at present the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, both of which have to a certain extent filled these requirements, but only in a partial and imperfect way. The Academy is legally the adviser of the government, the Association has brought into its organization a majority of the scientific men and many of the scientific societies of the country, but it seems probable that neither a small self-perpetuating body of eminent men nor a plebiscite of all scientific men will perform the duties required. Representative government, in spite of its partial failures, is the kind of government under which we should live and must live. We find this most nearly embodied in the council of the American Association. This council might be made the representative body for science in America.

If it be asked what the American Association and its council should do to assume the position assigned to them, the reply may fortunately be made: let them continue the work that they have already begun. The whole matter is one of attitude and spirit, rather than of constitution and by-laws. Let all scientific men be fellows of the Association, make the members representative of the intelligence of the country, unite all scientific societies and institutions in the