58 MY LIFE [Chap. 



any Government institution have produced results so much 

 superior to those of our Royal Institution, with its Davy, 

 Faraday, and Tyndall, as to justify the infringement of a 

 great principle ? Would the grand series of scientific and 

 mechanical inventions of this century have been more 

 thoroughly or more fruitfully worked out if Government had 

 taken science and invention under its special patronage in 

 the year 1800, and had subjected them to a process of forcing 

 (in a kind of Laputa College) from that day to this ? No 

 one can really believe we should have got on any better 

 under such a regime, while it is certain that much power 

 would have been wasted in the attempt to develop inventions 

 and discoveries before the age was ripe for them, and which 

 would therefore have inevitably languished and been laid 

 aside without producing any great results. Experience shows 

 that free competition ensures a greater supply of the materials 

 and a greater demand for the products of science and art, 

 and is thus a greater stimulus to true and healthy progress 

 than any Government patronage. Let it but become an 

 established rule that all institutions solely for the advance- 

 ment of science and art must be supported by private 

 munificence, and we may be sure that such institutions would 

 be quite as well kept up as they are now, and I believe much 

 better. If they were not, it would only prove more clearly 

 how unjust it is to take money from the public purse to pay 

 for that which science and art lovers would very much like 

 to have, but are not willing themselves to pay for. 



"The very common line of argument, which attempts to 

 prove the widespread uses and high educating influence of 

 art and of science, is entirely beside the question. Every 

 product of the human intellect is more or less valuable ; but 

 it does not therefore follow that it is just to provide any 

 special product for those who want it at the expense of those 

 who either do not want or are not in a condition to make 

 use of it. Good architecture, for instance, is a very good 

 thing, and one we are much in want of ; but it will hardly 

 be maintained that architects should be taught their profes- 

 sion at the public expense. The history of old china, of old 



