work.

Having shown that the best results can be expected only by bringing
into contact as many scientific investigators as possible, the next
question which arises is that of their relations to one another. It may
be asked whether we shall aim at individualism or collectivism. Shall
our ideal be an organized system of directors, professors, associates,
assistants, fellows; or shall it be a collection of individual workers,
each pursuing his own task in the way he deems best, untrammelled by
authority?

The reply to this question is that there is in this special case no
antagonism between the two ideas. The most effective organization will
aim both at the promotion of individual effort, and at subordination
and co-operation. It would be a serious error to formulate any general
rule by which all cases should be governed. The experience of the past
should be our guide, so far as it applies to present and future
conditions; but in availing ourselves of it we must remember that
conditions are constantly changing, and must adapt our policy to the
problems of the future. In doing this, we shall find that different
fields of research require very different policies as regards
co-operation and subordination. It will be profitable to point out
those special differences, because we shall thereby gain a more
luminous insight into the problems which now confront the scientific
investigator, and better appreciate their variety, and the necessity of
different methods of dealing with them.

At one extreme, we have the field of normative science, work in which
is of necessity that of the individual mind alone. This embraces pure
mathematics and the methods of science in their widest range. The
common interests of science require that these methods shall be worked
out and formulated for the guidance of investigators generally, and
this work is necessarily that of the individual brain.

At the other extreme, we have the great and growing body of sciences of
observation. Through the whole nineteenth century, to say nothing of
previous centuries, organizations, and even individuals, have been
engaged in recording the innumerable phases of the course of nature,
hoping to accumulate material that posterity shall be able to utilize
for its benefit. We have observations astronomical, meteorological,
magnetic, and social, accumulating in constantly increasing volume, the
mass of which is so unmanageable with our present organizations that