Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/360

356

Men of proved capacity who are willing to devote themselves to research will enter upon it with no selfish motives. They should be classed among the benefactors of mankind, engaged in a useful service. They should be encouraged by men of wealth, by state legislatures and by the establishment of endowments to provide the means of carrying on their researches. There are men of this kind in the State University of Iowa; to the citizens of the state I would say: "These men are a valuable asset to the state," and to the university authorities I would say: "Honor these men and encourage the pursuit of graduate studies under their direction." To any in the rising generation of students who have the internal leading to follow a career devoted to scientific investigation, if they are gifted and energetic, let them without hesitation enter upon this career. The compensations will be chiefly internal. Those who enter upon scientific investigation as a life work must forego certain material prizes in the world that await equally well-directed efforts in other lines of activity, but they will have other kinds of compensations—in living close to great truths, and realizing in their discoveries that thrill of the searcher when he has found, and after long years feeling the uplift of their occupation. Nevertheless, they must learn to renounce and not be embittered as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in that little gem of composition on the attributes of men.

The Doctrine of Organic Evolution.—The crowning service of zoology in extending the boundaries of human understanding is found, perhaps, in the doctrine of evolution. The great sweep of this doctrine