Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/607

Rh upon its scholarship, its leisure and its devotion to the greatest good of its own people, is the least productive of creative work—in some of the more important sciences even practically sterile.

Here then, in the south, that cause, whatever it is, has its greatest influence, and can therefore the more certainly be determined. Surely though, this mortifying, this deplorable state of affairs does not have to exist, for the south long ago showed her ability in meeting and mastering great political, military, and judicial problems, and she has to-day as splendid a class of people, as earnest, as capable, as sensitive and as self sacrificing as has any country on the face of the earth, the very qualities essential to scientific achievements. Why then do her people accomplish so little of this kind of work, and why have they no voice in the councils of our national scientific societies?

But first to show that these statements are true. In Science for December 18, 1908, is given the names of the presidents and secretaries for the Baltimore meetings of a number of scientific organizations—the American Association for the Advancement of Science, its several sections, and twenty-four other societies—in all, seventy-eight names, and just one is from south of the Potomac and the Ohio. Even the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology was officered by men from north of the Potomac. Surely then the voice of the south is faint in the councils of our scientific organizations; nor has she even a single representative in the whole of the National Academy. But this is not intended in the least as a criticism of any of these societies or of the excellent men they have chosen to represent them. It is a simple statement of the facts, so astonishing, however, that if generally realized they could not help arousing that healthy determination that leads to better things.

During the past twelve years the author has had the pleasure of attending many of the meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, sections A and B, of the American Physical Society and of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America, but in all this time, except for an occasional contribution from one university, rarely ever heard a paper that was written in what are known as the southern states. He has repeatedly heard papers, often excellent ones, written at northern universities by men of southern birth, but seldom, if ever, a paper by a northern man in a southern university.

This great inequality, even when the men are the same, in productive scholarship between the northern and the southern parts of our country can have but one explanation—difference in environment; and it explains too the inferior part we as a nation are taking in preparing the way for any real advance in civilization.

It is the stimulus of his environment, as every creative scholar knows, that is chiefly responsible for the quantity and even in large