362 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XII. 



the workers of Science. We are too apt to suppose that we 

 are congregated here merely to be within reach of certain 

 appliances of study, such as museums and laboratories, 

 libraries and lectures, so that each of us may study what he 

 prefers. I suppose that when the bees crowd round the 

 flowers it is for the sake of the honey that they do so, 

 never thinking that it is the dust which they are carrying 

 from flower to flower which is to render possible a more 

 splendid array of flowers and a busier crowd of bees in the 

 years to come. 



We cannot therefore do better than improve the shin- 

 ing hour in helping forward the cross-fertilisation of the 

 Sciences. 



One great beauty of Professor Bell's invention is that 

 the instruments at the two ends of the line are precisely 

 alike. . . . The perfect symmetry of the whole apparatus 

 the wire in the middle, the two telephones at the ends of 

 the wire, and the two gossips at the ends of the telephones, 

 may be very fascinating to a mere mathematician, but it 

 would not satisfy the evolutionist of the Spenserian 

 type, who would consider anything with both ends alike, 

 such as the Amphisbsena, or Mr. Bright's terrier, or Mr. 

 Bell's telephone, to be an organism of a very low type, which 

 must have its functions differentiated before any satisfactory 

 integration can take place. 



Accordingly many attempts have been made, by differ- 

 entiating the function of the transmitter from that of the 

 receiver, to overcome the principal limitation of the power 

 of the telephone. As long as the human voice is the sole 

 motive power of the apparatus, it is manifest that what is 

 heard at one end must be fainter than what is spoken at the 

 other. But if the vibration set up at one end is used no 

 longer as the source of energy, but merely as a means of 

 modulating the strength of a current supplied by a voltaic 

 battery, then there will be no necessary limitation of the 

 intensity of the resulting sound, so that what is whispered 

 to the transmitter may be proclaimed ore rotundo by the 

 receiver. 



