Let me say, then, at the start, that I regard specialization as absolutely essential to scholarship. There is no scholarship without it, for it is involved in the very process of knowing. When I look at this desk I am specializing; that is, I am detaching this piece of furniture from all else in the room. I am limiting myself, and I cannot see without it. I can gaze without specialization, but I cannot see without specialization. If I am to know anything by sight, that knowledge must come through the limitation of sight. I seize this object, cast away all others, and thus fix my attention. Or if I am carefully to observe, I even put my eye on a single point of the desk. There is no other way. Clear knowledge becomes possible only through precise observation. Now specialization is nothing but this necessary limitation of attention; and we, as specialists, are merely carrying out on a large scale what every human being must practise in some degree whenever he knows. We employ the process persistently, and for the sake of science are willing to hold ourselves steadily to a single line of observation. And we cannot do otherwise. The principles involved in the specialization of the senses run throughout all science. If we would know, we must hold the attention long on a given subject. But there is an unfortunate side to specialization. It obliges us to discard other important interests. To discard merely unimportant ones is easy. But every evening when I sit down to devote myself to my ethics I am aware that there are persons starving in Boston who might be saved if I should drop my work and go to them. Yet I sit calmly there and say, "Let them starve; I am going to study ethics." I do not see how I could be a suitable professor of ethics unless I were willing thus to limit myself. That is the hard part, as I understand it, of specialization,--the cutting off of things that are worth while. I am sure you have already found it out. Many of you have come from places of narrow opportunity and here find a welcome abundance. Remembering how you have longed to obtain such privileges, you will be tempted to scatter yourselves over a wide field, gathering a little here and a little there. At the end of the year you will have nothing, if you do that. The only possibility of gain is to choose your field, devote serious time to it, count yourself a specialist, and propose to live like one. Goethe admirably announces the principle: "Wer grosses will muss sich beschränken können." You must accept limitations if you will go on to power, for in limitation the very process of knowledge is rooted.