92 BIOLOGY AND THE STATE II 



view, would be to encourage them in an exclusive 

 reticence, and to remove from them the inducement to 

 address the public on the subject of their researches, 

 by which the public would lose valuable instruction. 



This view has been seriously urged, or I should 

 not here notice it. Any one who is acquainted with 

 the sale of scientific books, and the profits which either 

 author or publisher makes by them, knows that the 

 suggestion which I have quoted is ludicrous. The 

 writing of a good book is not a thing to be done 

 in leisure moments, and such as have been the result 

 of original research have cost their authors often years 

 of labour apart from the mere writing. Mr. Darwin's 

 books, no doubt, have had a large sale ; but that 

 is due to the fact, apart from the exceptional genius of 

 the man who wrote them, that they represent some 

 thirty or more years of hard work, during which he 

 was silent. There is not a sufticiently large public 

 interested in the progress of science to enable a 

 researcher to gain an income by writing books, 

 however great his literary facility. A school-book or 

 class-book may now and then add more or less to the 

 income of a scientific investigator ; but he who 

 becomes the popular exponent of scientific ideas, 

 except in a very moderate and limited degree, must 

 abandon the work of creating new knowledge. The 

 professional litterateur of science is as much removed 

 by his occupation from all opportunity of serious 

 investigation as is the professional teacher who has to 

 consume all his time in teaching. Any other pro- 

 fession — such as the Bar, Medicine, or the Church — 



