442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



taxed, should be paid like any other honest account, in a simple and 

 business-like manner. The toiler in the workshop of science who re- 

 veals a new truth is a benefactor to the whole of mankind, has a fair 

 and honest claim against the whole human race, and is entitled to 

 draw a bill accordingly, which should be accepted and honored by his 

 own country at least. Decent gratitude and common honesty demand 

 so much from the nation. It should be done, and may be done, with- 

 out opening a door to jobbery or any multiplication of corrupt and 

 idle pensioners." I fear that though this might, perhaps, be managed 

 in Utopia or the New Atlantis, it could scarcely be effected in Eng- 

 land or any otlier country at present existing. The accounts that 

 would be handed in to the minister of science under any such system 

 would present a strange medley of real and false discoveries. His 

 time would be chiefly occupied in objecting to undue estimates of re- 

 sults, and in endeavoring (hopelessly) to settle rival claims of con- 

 tending discoverers. Besides, it is absolutely impossible to devise any 

 scale of valuation for scientific discoveries. Conceive the state of 

 mind of the minister of science, who, after disposing of claims for the 

 quadrature of the circle, the discovery of perpetual motion, new cos- 

 mogonies, schemes of weather prediction, and the like, should suddenly 

 find liimself called upon to decide the money value of some great 

 achievement in science, such as Newton's discovery of universal gravi- 

 tation, or Kirchhoff's interpretation of the solar spectrum. 



Whether tlie intrinsic value of any result, or the time and labor it 

 had cost, were considered, the difiiculty of determining how much 

 should be paid for it would be alike insuperable. If the former were 

 the test, who should determine the intrinsic value ? The discoverer 

 might perhaps overrate it, or, if he were really an earnest student of 

 science, he would either underrate it, or be unwilling to make any 

 claim at all. Others would, for the most part, be unable to estimate 

 the result at its true worth, if it were really a discover}^ of importance. 

 For the discoverer must commonly be in advance of his fellow-workers 

 in the department of research to which his discovery belongs. He 

 alone knows the relation of his discovery to work already accom- 

 plished in the same direction. Let any specialist, who has just ob- 

 tained some notable result, be asked to name half a dozen experts in 

 his own subject to whose opinion he would be willing to submit his 

 discovery, and it will be found that he will with difficulty name half 

 as many, and those not specially eminent in that subject. 



As" to the amount of time and labor devoted to any subject of sci- 

 entific researcli, it is tolerably certain that the nation would object to 

 any system of retrospective endowment based on that criterion. The 

 ardent student of science gives many more hours of his time to his 

 favorite subject of research than any government would be willing to 

 pay for, at the present day, or for many years to come. 



Past experience, not in scientific matters alone or chiefly, but gen- 



