THE ENDOWMENT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 361 



is just this something which the student of one science learns from a 

 sound exposition of another science by a proficient therein. Every 

 true popularizer of science knows that among his readers, if not even 

 forming the greater number of his readers, there will be men of 

 science, working in other branches, but still bringing to the study of 

 his treatise their scientific training. Writing for them, he will write 

 in the manner best suited to popularize without vulgarizing science : 

 " the coarser developments of sensationalism " will be avoided, even 

 if the good sense of the scientific worker were not normally opposed 

 to all such faults of style. The literature of science owes much to the 

 recognition of this circumstance. 



Some may question, however, whether scientific literature can be 

 sufficiently remunerative to support science-workers, even though they 

 should turn altogether from original research, and devote their whole 

 time to writing about science. I do not think, however, that much 

 anxiety need be felt on this score. Of course, scientific literature is 

 not at present, and perhaps may never be, so remunerative as novel- 

 writing, historical literature, biography, travels, and so on. Very few 

 writers on science, however general the interest attached to their 

 researches, have earned an income of (let us say) five thousand pounds 

 annually for many successive years; and I suppose the successful nov- 

 elist would regard such an income as contemptible. Probably, in the 

 majority of instances, it would be only by an almost entire with- 

 drawal from oi-iginal work, that the writer on science could earn a 

 steady income of half that amount ; while that earnestness in the 

 cause of science which can alone render scientific writinos attractive 

 would compel the scientific author to devote a large share of his time 

 to unremunerative work. Yet there can be no doubt that many of 

 our most successful workers in science have been able, without for- 

 saking original research, to gain very snflScient incomes by scientific 

 literature, or by the associated work of pojiular scientific lecturing. 

 The chief objection, perhaps, to this way of rendering scientific re- 

 search self-supporting consists in the fact that every hour devoted to 



I don't want to be a coral insect myself. I had rather be a voyagei* that visits all the 

 reefs and islands the creatures build, and sails over the seas where they have as yet built 

 up nothing. I am a little afraid that science is breeding us down too fast into coral 

 insects. A man like Newton, or Leibnitz, or Haller, used to paint a picture of outward 

 or inward Nature with a free hand, and stand bacii and look at it as a whole, and feel 

 like an archangel; but nowadays you have a society, and they come together and make 

 a great mosaic, each man bringing his little bit and sticking it in its place, but so taken 

 up with his pretty fragment that he never thinks of looking at the picture the little bits 

 make when they are put together." This is true of specialists who are only specialists. 

 But there can be no reason why the student of science should limit his attention to his 

 specialty, though there is abundant reason why he should avoid any attempt to make 

 researches over too wide a range of ground. His researches in his own special corner of 

 science will lose nothing in value, but gain greatly, by an occasional survey of the work 

 of others ; only let him not pretend to take part in actual work in many parts of the field 

 he thus surveys. 



