shown how this can be done. But I do not think that he has established the superiority of Thucydides and Tacitus over modern historians. Their work may excel in conciseness and proportion, but that of the moderns has a more than compensatory advantage in deeper insight and clearer exposition. Partisans of either may fail to see that the shield is silver on one side and gold on the other; or, seeing this, they may fail to agree as to which is the golden side. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind."
| George P. Garrison. |
| University of Texas. |
THE RETARDATION OF SCIENCE.
We hear a good deal about the advancement of science. There are huge associations which make it the object of their existence; there are universities, colleges, societies, museums, institutes and laboratories which reckon this as at least one of their aims; and the individual scientific workers, even those who look upon science as
"The milch-cow of the field,
Their only care to calculate how much
butter she will yield"—
Even they, we say, profess to regard science as 'the goddess great,' and base their claim to honor on the service they have rendered to her. And, at this turning year of time, as we indulge in self-complaisant retrospect, we boast that, as a result of all this, science really has advanced. Contradictions, inconsistencies, harkings back: these we frankly admit; but the shattered theories line an onward path, and the discovered errors are lamps on the way of truth. We do well to rejoice; but we shall not do ill to look also at the other side of the shield. Might we not be advancing more rapidly, surely and easily? Are there not opposing forces which combine to effect the retardation of science?
Space need not be occupied by insisting on the inertia of governments, composed of ministerialists rather than statesmen on the lethargy and ignorance of the mass of people; on the curse of Babel, or on any such obvious hindrances to progress. But every scientific student knows that many of the difficulties in his way have no necessity in the nature of things, and that many of them are raised by scientific men themselves. We expect to meet with difficulties when we read a foreign language, but we resent having to ferret out an author's meaning when he publishes in our own tongue. This is what one has to do too often, for a vast number, if not the majority, of scientific men write abominably. It is all very well for the chemist in a factory, or the electrician to a lighting company, to be careless about the parts of speech; it hurts no one except himself and his employer. But for the student who makes researches in pure science, the case is altered. The object of the former is to earn his daily bread, and the sooner the better; the object—professed, at least—of the latter is to enlighten the world. A man may be a profound investigator, and may penetrate far into the mystery of the unknown, but if he cannot give an intelligible report to his colleagues, his travels in the undiscovered country will be disregarded. Worse than this, his fellow-workers waste valuable time in trying to read his riddles or very likely are led astray by his bungling presentation of veritable facts, and so science is retarded.
We do not propose to arouse the anger of our scientific friends by quoting elegant extracts from their writings to support our contention. We pass over the phraseology, to consider the general plan and the details of the arrangement. There are, it is true, masters in science who are also masters of method. But they have gained their mastery of the latter, as of the former, in the school of experience. This would be all very well were it not that we others have to suffer during their apprenticeship. Their immature essays, with all the faults of a beginner, have
