290 HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ : 



can be discriminated. Ask the question if it is the 

 same thing to you whether the results of investigation 

 which you have obtained are recognised as belonging 

 to you or not when there are no considerations of 

 external advantage bound up with the answer to this 

 question. The reply to it is easiest in the case of 

 chiefs of laboratories. The teacher must usually 

 furnish the fundamental idea of the research as well 

 as a number of proposals for overcoming experimental 

 difficulties, in which more or less ingenuity comes into 

 play. All this passes as the work of the student, and 

 ultimately appears in his name when the research is 

 finished. Who can afterwards decide what one or the 

 other has done ? And how many teachers are there 

 not who in this respect are devoid of any jealousy? 



Thus, gentlemen, I have been in the happy position 

 that, in freely following my own inclination, I have been 

 led to researches for which you praise me, as having 

 been useful and instructive. I am extremely fortunate 

 that I am praised and honoured by my contemporaries, 

 in so high a degree, for a course of work which is to 

 me the most interesting I could pursue. But mv 

 contemporaries have afforded me great and essential 

 help. Apart from the care for my own existence and 

 that of my family, of which they have relieved me, 

 and apart from the external means with which they 

 have provided me, I have found in them a standard 



