Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/529

Rh which is properly extolled as the highest form of science. It seems to define a third stage in the advance of consciously organized knowledge: the first was the subjective stage, marked chiefly by deduction from ill-generalized and often subconscious experiences; the second was the objective or Baconian stage, marked by induction from clearly realized experiences; and the third is the directive (or panurgic) stage, marked by the combined investigation and control of phenomena. The three orders of thought are emotion, cognition, conation; the phases of faculty pass into invention, and are maturing in creation. Knowledge in the first stage was largely accidental; in the second chiefly incidental; in the third it is a means to ends. The progress was and is normal; just as objective science arose largely as applications of subjective principles, so directive science has arisen largely as applications of both subjective and objective knowledge whereby nature is rendered subservient to the power and prosperity of men and nations. The trend does not mean that science is enfeebled or degraded, but only that definite knowledge has been made common knowledge.

In the light of this trend, the rôle of the federal department is clear: Jointly with the strictly scientific associations, it is the custodian of established principles, not merely as the sum of knowledge concerning the natural elements, but as a means of control over these elements. So viewed, the entire department is in proper sense a scientific institution, and both in size and advanced position the foremost in existence. Viewed in the same light, indeed, America is par excellence a nation of science, and this all the more truly because of the general application of definite knowledge to every-day affairs. It may not be denied that the very abundance of knowledge conduces to an ease of life opposing that always rigorous and often unprofitable research required as a basis for continued progress; herein lies the chief need for a national institution of science too firmly founded on established principles to be swayed by passing opinion or popular pressure, yet too near the actualities of national welfare to drift into the realm of unreality; and here has lain the function of the department during a dozen years of wise administration.

In the department the division of the work is both logical and practical, and the methods combine investigation and direction of phenomena: they deal with the substantial basis of individual and national existence—the earth as vitalized and fecundated by the powers of air and water and sun. The primary line of work in logical order pertains to the productive surface as affected by climate and by its own life and growth; the correlative branch of the department is the Bureau of Soils. The second in order pertains to climate; its correlative is the Weather Bureau. The third pertains to the flora, native and