48 Nationul Institutions for [Jan., 



in their construction the four prime essentials of rigid stability, 

 free command of light, provision for the maintenance of any re- 

 quired temperature, and quietude, so that they could be used by all 

 who could show that they had really work to do in them, the cost 

 of theu* establishment would most certainly very soon be returned 

 manifold to the community. 



For the thinkers and social philosophers of England should 

 never lose sight of one great fact that underlies this question, and 

 certainly will contmue so to do under all circumstances and events; 

 — namely, that scientific work richly pays the community, but does 

 not j)ay the man. Upon the whole it may he said that the chief 

 discoveries in human knowledge are made by in(h\'iduals who labour 

 hard at some daily di'udgery for a livelihood, and then spend their 

 savings and, as innumerable dark pages of human history show, too 

 often something beyond their savings, to benefit their kind, carry- 

 ing, as their own reward for the work, privation and impoverishment 

 to the brink of early graves. It certainly is no very rash or bold 

 step to assume that something is wanting in social arrangements 

 where this has to be said of a nation that is at the present time 

 adding millions of pounds sterling every year to its accumulated 

 wealth, in the main drawn from improvements in science. 



The large world of scientific men, properly so called, are upon 

 the whole ripe for the recognition of the need for some kind of 

 increased facility for carrying on severe research. This is at once 

 apparent whenever the topic is introduced in general conversation. 

 The main point of difiiculty, so far as scientific men are concerned, 

 is the question of the best means of doing what is admitted to be 

 so imperatively called for. Many in the ranks of science believe 

 that the work would be most surely and most satisfactorily per- 

 formed by the Government, and that it even could be efficiently 

 performed by no other agency. Others, on the contrary, conceive 

 that scientific men can manage theii' own affairs best, without any 

 extraneous interference, and that any meddling of the state would 

 tend to cripple and lethargize, rather than to quicken and strengthen. 

 There is obviously much to be said on both sides in this particular 

 bearing ; and it is therefore well that the issue should be fairly 

 joined, and that much should be said, as now certainly will be the 

 case. 



The objection of scientific men to state action seems, however, 

 principally to rest on a threefold ground. There seems to be a sort 

 of general notion that statesmen do not know much about science. 

 Added to this there is the strong fear that if the state subsidized 

 and directed scientific investigation, science would work in leading- 

 strings, instead of in the absolute freedom which is the first condition 

 of her own being, the very breath of her life. And then again 

 there is the notion that where the state has a fincrer there will be 



