LITERARY NOTICES. 



8 47 



the sole reason of any scientific under- 

 taking by the state. 



How the immense system of official 

 science at Washington, which Govern- 

 ment neither called for nor is compe- 

 tent to supervise, has gradually grown 

 up under outside management, is easily 

 explained. Alliance with politics has 

 been very sedulously and skillfully cul- 

 tivated by our leading scientific men. 

 The most decisive step in this direction 

 was taken a few years ago, in the or- 

 ganization of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, an institution copied after an 

 old French model. Through its act of 

 incorporation a limited and select num- 

 ber of men became scientific leaders by 

 national authorization. It was a spe- 

 cious and insinuating project, offering 

 itself as a kind of bureau of advice 

 to Congress on all scientific matters. 

 Money was not solicited: the savants 

 were to serve the state for nothing. 

 It was to be a Washington institution, 

 pledged to hold meetings at the capital 

 permanently. The headquarters of the 

 Coast Survey were already established 

 there. The United States Government 

 had accepted the magnificent bequest 

 of Smithson, and established a national 

 institution " for the increase and diffu- 

 sion of knowledge among men"; and 

 the newly instituted Academy of Sci- 

 ences became the agency for combining 

 the elements to secure the extension of 

 Government patronage to all kinds of 

 scientific undertakings. The tendency 

 to centralization and the enlargement 

 of Government powers, after the war, 

 greatly favored the accomplishment of 

 the work. The great extensions of state 

 education also favored it. A splendid 

 national university, with a twenty-mill- 

 ion endowment by the General Govern- 

 ment, was strenuously advocated. Ev- 

 erything was thus propitious to the mul- 

 tiplication and consolidation of scientific 

 departments, and to the general plan of 

 employing scientific men to carry on 

 their inquiries at the expense of the state, 

 and under the direction of Government. 



For many and urgent reasons we 

 hold that our overgrown Government 

 science ought to be arrested and re- 

 trenched. That administrative officers 

 are bad judges of it is one of them. 

 But, even if this were not so, the 

 policy would still be thoroughly objec- 

 tionable. The promotion of science is 

 not an object for which Government 

 exists. The civil authority has its le- 

 gitimate duties, and can only perform 

 them by being confined to them. It is 

 the business of Government to maintain 

 the order of society and the rights and 

 liberties of individual citizens by the 

 establishment and enforcement of wise 

 laws ; and the sole condition on which 

 this can be accomplished is that the law- 

 makers and law-executors shall allow 

 nothing to interfere with this supreme 

 duty. By attempting to do everything 

 else this is neglected, and the multipli- 

 cation of government functions ends in 

 the defeat of the objects for which Gov- 

 ernment exists. We do not say that 

 Government denies the rights of for- 

 eign authors and leaves them a prey 

 to American plunderers because it has 

 gone into the promotion of science; 

 but we do say that its absorption in 

 business interests and enterprises has 

 deadened its moral sense so that it has 

 little care about a gross delinquency 

 which is a scandal to the American name 

 throughout the world. Justice between 

 man and man, the first condition of all 

 sound prosperity in communities, can 

 only be enforced by the civil authority; 

 but science can be advanced by private 

 enterprise, individual interest and effort, 

 and voluntary association, better than by 

 state regulation, and there it is better 

 that the Government should leave it. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Collected Essays on Political and Social 

 Science. By William Graham Sumner, 

 Professor of Political and Social Science 

 in Yale College. New York : Henry Holt 

 & Co. Pp. 173. Price, $1.50. 

 This volume consists of discussions upon 



the following subjects : " Bimetallism " ; 



