568 



AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



or earns his living by some profession, and 

 incidentally does what he can to advance sci- 

 ence for love of the work. This has its good 

 side in producing a small group of men who 

 are not subject to purely commercial stand- 

 ards. But this is after all a minor factor, 

 and the scientific man is likely to look for 

 fame, which is scarcely more ideal tTmn money 

 and can be supplied to but few. Satisfaction 

 in the work itself is the best reward for work; 

 but no one can know that his work is of value 

 except by the reflected appreciation of others, 

 and in the existing social order the simplest 

 and probably the most adequate expression 

 of this appreciation is direct payment for the 

 service rendered. 



The methods that society has devised to 

 meet this situation, apart from the conferring 

 of honors and fame, are recent and inadequate. 

 Copyrights and patents are the most direct 

 acknowledgment of property in ideas. They 

 have accomplished a good deal, and their scope 

 should be extended. At present only a small 

 part of discovery is covered by the patent 

 office, and this perhaps not the part requiring 

 the greatest genius. It is, however, leading, 

 especially in Germany, to the development of 

 discovery on a sound commercial basis. It is 

 said that one chemical firm employs three 

 hundred doctors of philosophy to carry on sci- 

 entific investigations. Research has hitherto 

 been forwarded mainly by the universities, 

 where again Germany has led the way. The 

 professorship is given as a reward for success- 

 ful investigations, and the holder of a chair 

 is expected to devote himself to investigation 

 as well as to teaching. There is a tendency 

 to permit certain professors to engage almost 

 exclusively in research. Thus the astronom- 

 ical observatories of Harvard, Chicago and 

 California universities are purely research in- 

 stitutions. A further step has been taken in 

 the endowment of institutions, such as the 

 Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller In- 

 stitute, explicitly for research. The moat log- 

 ical and important advance, however, consists 

 in the direct conduct of research by the gov- 

 ernment. As the government should control 

 monopolies, so it should conduct the work 

 which is not for the benefit of a single indi- 



TABIX n. DISTRIBUTION IK DtTTEKOT PLACES 



