Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/78

74 breakdown somewhere. We who are commonplace and undistinguished are not offered a competency for the rest of our lives as the price of a single crooked deal; or if our tastes are cheap and vulgar, they are not enshrined in sculpture or music to go down the ages to our disgrace and the corruption of others. We keep most of our cheapness, our stupidity, our dishonesty, for ourselves and our immediate circle, and much of it is never revealed at all. In the lottery which human inheritance at present is, good qualities will commonly, when they appear, lack the support we could wish for them; but when this is true, there can be no doubt that much of the evil resulting from this can often be remedied by good social conditions. That is to say, we can help the individual to leave unstimulated the bad and to make the most of what is good. Thus, in a sense, he may actually choose his ancestors. Instead of doing this, however, I fear we often do the reverse, and especially is this true when men have to appeal to the multitude rather than to their peers. The eccentricities of modern art and literature, so foreign to the mood of the great masters of the past, may have their root in the want of adequate balance in the make-up of the workers, but they are unquestionably stimulated by a public which, as a newspaper editor once put it, must have the "gewhiz sensation" every morning. Science workers must be sheltered from such demands, and this alone is enough reason for not hastening their public fame until such time as they are too old to learn new tricks.

The much-debated question whether training in one subject increases ability in other quite diverse ones may have some bearing on the peak of efficiency. If it is possible to increase the general ability to deal with problems, without unduly prejudicing the mind in respect to the particular problems to be solved, it seems that the altitude of the peak of efficiency will be increased. The indications are that when one has reached his peak in respect to his particular line of work he may yet find another peak ahead of him by shifting his base to a limited extent. How much, as a rule, it is profitable to shift it might be determined more or less by careful enquiry. I think, however, that from this point of view there is a good deal to be said for taking up a new subject every five or ten years. Even if the altitude of the successive peaks is not increased, it is worth something to have these successive maxima of ability in a life time.