The brief statement to be here made about the policy of this institution will be facilitated and possibly rendered more interesting by putting it in the form of a trenchant comparison between the two exclusively research stations of the Pacific coast; the Herzstein laboratory at Pacific Grove and the Scripps Institution.
For full two thousand years there have been among the inquiring two conceptions or faiths about the nature of the world, particularly the living part of it, that stand over against each other with a sharpness and apparently irreconcilable antagonism which, seen in their fullness, are highly poetic as well as profoundly scientific. These two conceptions flow from the university experience of the unity, on the one hand, and the diversity, on the other, of nature. Because of the first some men have conceived that at its core nature is One and Simple; and with an irresistible faith they have sought to penetrate to the single essence or substance held by this philosopher to be Spirit, by that Matter, the grasping of which should constitute the discovery of the great mystery of existence.
This kind of faith has found no finer expression in the modern era of all-pervading scientific analysis than in Tennyson's
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;—
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all
I should know what God and man is.
The distinguished scientist whose investigations the Herzstein laboratory was built primarily to further would probably agree that were his ultimate biological ideas and aims to be expressed in the poet's way, these lines would need as little alteration as any that could be found. He might wish to have the first line so altered as to give the flower's place to the sea urchin; and would probably want "God" replaced by "Mechanism" or some term which disguises its anthropomorphism as effectually. But the great basal idea ". . . if I could understand what you are. . . all in all, I should know what God and man is," would presumably need no alteration.
And why should not devout chemico-physical biologist and devout theist alike have each his unfaltering faith in substance. One or at most very few, All-pervasive, All-potent, Eternal? For has not each in his own sphere and his own way discovered to the deepest depths of his nature a few mighty realities underneath the vast, bewildering maze of phenomena?
No one can look upon the simple laboratory under the pine trees at Pacific Grove and contemplate the idea for which it stands without seeing true grandeur in its simplicity.
