Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/317

Rh something in the market, something to serve at the show-down to show to the advantage of the writer or of his university.

On the other hand, the pressure of university duties often gradually extinguishes the investigator in developing the teacher. The college professor has many students to look after, many committee meetings to attend, many papers to read, many lectures to give, many whist parties to go through—many mouths to feed, while the apparatus rusts, the specimens gather mold or go to feed the Dermestes, while the half-begun manuscript is laid away for the season which never comes. Too often the young investigator, transplanted from the German hot-bed, with the easy success of the easy thesis, finds no adequate impulse to continue his work. Nobody cares for his conclusions, nothing depends on them. His place is secure and becomes more so from year to year, and at last instead of fanaticism for veracity, we find a mild form of approval of truth.

Besides all this there are many counterfeit presentments of investigation. Some years ago I had occasion to say:

"I am well aware that there is a cant of investigation, as of religion and all other good things. Germany, for example, is full of young men who set forth to investigate, not because they 'are called to explore truth,' but because research is the popular fad, and inroads into new fields the prerequisite to promotion. And so they burrow into every corner in science, philology, philosophy and history, and produce their petty results in as automatic a fashion as if they were so many excavating machines. Real investigators are born, not made, and this uninspired digging into old roots and 'Urquellen' bears the same relation to the work of the real investigators that the Latin verses of Rugby and Eton bear to Virgil and Horace. Nevertheless, it is true that no second-hand man was ever a great teacher. I very much doubt if any really great investigator was ever a poor teacher. How could he be? The very presence of Asa Gray was an inspiration to students of botany for years after he had left the class-room. Such a man leaves the stamp of his greatness on every student who comes within the range of his influence."

Besides all this, the work of research itself has its difficulties and its limitations. Too often fanaticism for veracity is subtly transformed into fanaticism for an idea—just plain fanaticism—the farthest removed from the open-mindedness which is the sole condition of knowing the proclaiming truth. To proclaim an error in good faith and then to discard it when the real truth appears, is a great strain on human nature. Hence research gives place to partisanship, and there are not many times when a man of science should be a partisan. When such times come, when we have the whole truth lined against all error, there is not much question as to the outcome of the struggle, and the investigator is not needed in the fight. He can afford to let