Reward not always proportioned to skill. 57 



The men who are rewarded highly in this 

 country are not always those who yield the greatest 

 service to the nation, but frequently those who 

 render the most immediate or most apparent benefit; 

 to stop short at this cannot produce the greatest 

 degree of success. The national services of a great 

 discoverer are probably not equalled by those of any 

 man. Who can estimate the value of the commercial, 

 social, moral, political, and other great advantages 

 to the world, of Oersted's discovery of the principle 

 of electro-magnetism, which enabled the invention 

 of the electric telegraph to be made ? The men we 

 reward the highest are not those who discover know- 

 ledge, but those who use or apply it; physicians, 

 judges/ bishops, lawyers, railway managers, military 

 and naval officers, and head masters of schools, all a 

 of them gentlemen who render great services to the 

 nation,' by using, diffusing, and applying knowledge 

 already possessed. 



It requires less rare ability to apply knowledge to 

 new purposes by means of invention, than to dis- 

 cover it ; it is still less difficult to diffuse it by means 

 of tuition and lectures, because the labours of a 

 teacher consist largely of a repetition of other men's 

 discoveries and inventions; and to use scientific 

 knowledge in the ordinary business of every-day life, 

 requires a still more common degree of ability. 



A chief reason why ordinary business capacity is 

 paid for whilst original research is not, is the fact 

 that research is not considered a necessity ; many 



