Research encouraged in German Universities. 45 



highest honours in science they have to bestow, to 

 young men who have never made a single original 

 research, or discovered a new fact in science. The 

 money paid in the form of comparatively sinecure 

 fellowships, or retiring pensions to young men in 

 Oxford alone, " now amounts to about eighty or 

 ninety thousand pounds a year." It may be objected 

 that young men are not capable of doing original 

 research, but as they do it in German Universities, 

 they can also do it in England, if they are properly 

 disciplined, and are not decoyed from industry by 

 the possession or expectation of wealth. A man 

 who has never made a scientific research is not the 

 most worthy recipient of the highest scientific 

 honours, and in Germany it would not be given to 

 him ; he is not properly disciplined in the detection 

 of error or the discernment of truth in matters of 

 science ; he is deficient in accuracy of scientific 

 judgment, and in the true spirit of scientific inquiry. 

 It is unnecessary to speak of what has been done 

 during the last few years at our old Universities and 

 great public schools, in the erection of laboratories, 

 and in other ways for the promotion of science, because 

 it has been for the purposes of instruction, and not 

 of original research. No amount of ordinary in- 

 struction in science will remedy the evils caused by 

 want of original inquiry, because such instruction 

 does not produce new knowledge, but only 

 disseminates that already possessed. 



