;i ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM 287 



e courage de ses enfants, il faut 1'attribuer, j'en ai la convic- 

 ion, a ce que la France s'est desinteressee, depuis uu demi-sii-dr, 

 les grands travaux de la pensee, particulierement dans Ics 

 iciences exaotes." 



Individually, I have no love for academies on 

 ;he continental model, and still less for the system 

 3f decorating men of distinction in science, letters, 

 or art, with orders and titles, or enriching them 

 with sinecures. WhHJLm^n n f science want is only 

 a, fair day jjwages for more than a fair_dayj3 work ; 

 md most of us, I suspect, would be well content if, 

 for our days and nights of unremitting toil, we 

 could secure the pay which a first-class Treasury 

 clerk earns without any obviously trying strain 

 upon his faculties. The sole order of nobility 

 which, in my judgment, becomes a philosopher, is 

 that rank*which he holds in the estimation of his 

 fellow- workers, who are the only competent judges 

 in such matters. Newton and Cuvier lowered 

 themselves when the one accepted an idle knight- 

 hood, and the other became a baron of the empire. 

 The great men who went to their graves as 

 Michael Faraday and George Grote seem to 

 me to have understood the dignity of knowledge 

 better when they declined all such meretricious 

 trappings. 



But it is one thing for the State to appeal to 

 the vanity and ambition which are to be found in 

 philosophical as in other breasts, and another to 

 offer men who desire to do the hardest of work for 



