196 Conditions of Research in State Laboratories. 



attain, and because they would thereby be put into a 

 sphere in which they could exercise their talents to 

 the fullest extent, and render the greatest service and 

 honour to the nation. If also the salaries offered were 

 not too great, those persons only would become candi- 

 dates who at present have insufficient means to defray 

 the considerable cost of experiments. 



It would be necessary to appoint only persons who 

 would undertake to devote their time solely to the 

 discovery of new facts and principles in science, and 

 the determination of purely scientific questions, and 

 not to the making of inventions ; because discovery 

 is of far greater national value than invention ; and 

 because inventions would immediately on their publi- 

 cation be seized, modified, and patented by individuals 

 for their own personal benefit. Discoveries, on the 

 other hand, would require a large additional amount 

 of labour expended upon them by inventors before 

 they could be converted into saleable commodities. 



Each professor should be allowed perfect freedom 

 to choose his own special subjects of research in the 

 sciences he had been accustomed to study, because 

 each investigator is usually the best judge of what 

 researches are the most likely to yield him important 

 results. No discoverer of repute would be very likely 

 to trespass on another man's sphere of research, be- 

 cause he would usually have an abundance of good 

 subjects of his own ; and every honourable man would 

 purposely avoid doing so ; and we find this practically 

 to be the case at the present time. Separate sets of 



