440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It would be fatal to scientific interests if such a mistake as this were 

 often repeated. Yet we can have no assurance that the Government 

 would not again and again be invited to support science on the strength 

 of unfounded promises, if any wide scheme of endowment were adopted 

 whose administration should be intrusted to non-scientific persons. 



If the administration of the funds for scientific endowment were 

 from the beginning intrusted to leading men of science, it is probable 

 that correct scientific principles would be adopted for their guidance. 

 But then a difficulty would arise which might prove even more serious 

 than the mistakes of the unscientific. No one acquainted with the 

 history or present condition of science, and with the relations which 

 have existed and continue to exist among science-workers, can doubt 

 that scientific managers of endowment funds would be repeatedly 

 called upon to decide on the claims of methods or subjects to which 

 they had conceived objections, and to vote respecting the candidature 

 of scientific men against whom they entertained feelings of personal 

 hostility. The first case can be illustrated by example, the other not 

 so conveniently. Suppose Leverrier had been called upon to deter- 

 mine whether any sum from an endowment fund should be given pros- 

 pectively for researches into the subject of transits of Venus, we may be 

 sure (his actual course in the matter leaves no room for doubt) that his 

 prepossession in favor of that method of measuring the solar system 

 which is based upon the planetary perturbations would have led him 

 to decide against any such grant. Many cases akin to this will occur 

 to those familiar with recent controversies in various branches of sci- 

 entific research. As to personal animosities, we may follow the con- 

 venient example of those writers who trace the faults of persons in high 

 places down to a certain date, and leave the present time to the criti- 

 cisms of future historians. It will be admitted that both Halley and 

 Flamsteed were faithful servants of science; yet if either had had to 

 decide on any question of awarding to the other some post of influence 

 or emolument, it is to be feared, from what we know of their actual 

 conduct toward each other, that the result would not have depended 

 solely on scientific considerations. It may be hoped that there has 

 been a change for the better since then, and that matters will improve 

 still more hereafter. The advocates of rival theories, the leading 

 teachers of different schools of thought, will one day, perhaps, be con- 

 stantly on good terms with each other. Dissensions will be unknown 

 in our scientific societies. The older men of science will be well 

 pleased to see younger workers gradually modifying theories which 

 had formerly seemed established forever, and the younger workers 

 will never give unpleasant expression to the feeling that "authority" 

 is not an absolutely certain guide in science. Jealousies and rivalries 

 among those working in the same departments will gradually become 



trifling particular on the faith of any special prediction of a warm or a cold, a wei or a 

 iry, a calm or a stormy summer or winter." 



