lyo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Q. You will no doubt perceive, with regard to your own works, 

 that un,der the present system a time will come when your executors, 

 or those who come after you, will be debarred from protection in the 

 publication of all your works, although they will be protected in the 

 publication of <i part ? 



A. Certainly'. 



Q. Does not that appear to you to be inconvenient ? 



A. I think so, very. 



Mk. Jexkins. You say that you think that a book, being the invest- 

 ment of a man's capacity and knowledge and time, is as much his prop- 

 erty as any other property, and that the right of an author extends as 

 far as the right of any person to any property whatever. I only want 

 to ask you to point out what, of course, must have occurred to you, 

 that there is a distinction between a book which conveys ideas and a 

 machine which embodies them in a form which cannot be carried away 

 or altered ; and I would ask, considering the fact that supposing you 

 write a book, another man, without stealing your book can steal all 

 your ideas, and adapt and use them, whether there is not, therefore, a 

 distinction between the property in a book and the property in any 

 other thing ? 



A. No ; I do not think that the property in a man's book consists 

 in the ideas. I should limit his property entirely to the particular form 

 in which he chooses to clothe those ideas. If you come to look into 

 the matter carefully, it would be very hard to say how far the ideas 

 contained in a man's book are his own ; he owes them very largely to 

 his ancestors and his surroundings, and to other people, and I do not 

 think thafit is at all clear that you would be justified in laying an em- 

 bargo upon a particular set of ideas because they happened to be con- 

 tained in a particular book. My contention for the protection of prop- 

 erty in books is entirely with regard to the particular form in which 

 the author chooses to put his ideas. 



Q. Supposing that, instead of writing a book, a man gives a series 

 of lectures, for instance, as you do — fortunately for England — and that 

 those lectures are reported, or that persons carry away in their memory 

 the words and the essence of them, you admit that then, a man having 

 chosen to disperse them to the world, neither on principle nor upon the 

 grounds of expediency ought it to be held that those lectures are to 

 be reserved for the man himself ? 



A. Certainly not the ideas or the facts ; but I take it that a man 

 has no right to publish a report of what he shall call my lecture ; that 

 is quite another thing : then he asserts that the form is mine as well 

 as the substance. If he chooses to appropriate my ideas and himself 

 publish them in any other form, and say, " This is what I think," I do 

 not think that he should be prevented from doing so, and in my opinion 

 he has a right to do it; but it is quite another matter if he calls anything 

 which he chooses to publish my lecture. 



