A PLEA FOR PURE SCIENCE 607 



one must not be overburdened. I suppose that the true solution, in 

 many cases, would be found in the multiplication of assistants, not only 

 for the work of teaching but of research. Some men are gifted with 

 more ideas than they can work out with their own hands, and the world 

 is losing much by not supplying them with extra hands. Life is short: 

 old age comes quickly, and the amount one pair of hands can do is very 

 limited. What sort of shop would that be, or what sort of factory, where 

 one man had to do all the work with his own hands? It is a fact in 

 nature, which no democracy can change, that men are not equal, that 

 some have brains, and some hands; and no idle talk about equality can 

 ever subvert the order of the universe. 



I know of no institution in this country where assistants are supplied 

 to aid directly in research; yet why should it not be so? Even the 

 absence of assistant professors and assistants of all kinds, to aid in 

 teaching, is very noticeable, and must be remedied before we can expect 

 much. 



There are many physical problems, especially those requiring exact 

 measurements, which cannot be carried out by one man, and can only 

 be successfully attacked by the most elaborate apparatus, and with a 

 full corps of assistants. Such are Eegnault's experiments on the funda- 

 mental laws of gases and vapors, made thirty or forty years ago by aid 

 from the French government, and which are the standards to this day. 

 Although these experiments were made with a view to the practical 

 calculation of the steam-engine, yet they were carried out in such a 

 broad spirit that they have been of the greatest theoretical use. Again, 

 what would astronomy have done without the endowment of observa- 

 tories? By their means, that science has become the most perfect of 

 all branches of physics, as it should be from its simplicity. There is no 

 doubt, in my mind, that similar institutions for other branches of 

 physics, or, better, to include the whole of physics, would be equally 

 successful. A large and perfectly equipped physical laboratory with its 

 large revenues, its corps of professors and assistants, and its machine- 

 shop for the construction of new apparatus, would be able to advance 

 our science quite as much as endowed observatories have advanced 

 astronomy. But such a laboratory should not be founded rashly. The 

 value will depend entirely on the physicist at its head, who has to 

 devise the plan, and to start it into practical working. Such a man will 

 always be rare, and cannot always be obtained. After one had been 

 successfully started, others could follow; for imitation requires little 

 brains. 



