Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRIES 347
they have indeed qualified for membership in a small and
insulated class of technicians, composed, in the main,
of spiritually meagre men; and the worst of it is that,
having lost perspective, they are often vain of the distinction; they are apt to fancy themselves investigators,
and some of them will be but most of them will not;
teaching,-teaching, I mean, in the collegiate sense, they
are prone to regard as drudgery with which a cruel fate
hampers their genius, while teaching in the larger sense
of interpreting science in popular terms for the public
enlightenment,-that they have been taught to scorn as
beneath the dignity of a doctor (which means a teacher)
of philosophy. Their estate, I have said, is pitiable; it
is pitiable; it is pitiable that men who hold themselves
specially trained in the arts of scientific "discovery" should
not be able to discover the glaringly patent fact that
research is often far easier than competent exposition;
that every normal child, for example, discovers a world
of facts which it seldom has the power to express fittingly;
and that little doctors of philosophy are far more numerous, because they are easier to produce, than great expounders and interpreters of scientific truth.
When will scientific specialists, especially those who
cherish the hope that the world's human affairs may at
length be scientifically controlled by an enlightened
Democracy, when, I ask, will such men keenly feel their
great obligation to enlighten the public and learn to discipline themselves and their pupils to keep the obligation?
In the address alluded to a moment ago, I expressed the
hope
that here at Columbia or other competent center there
may one day be established a magazine that shall have
for its aim to mediate... between the focal concepts