338 



NATURE 



{Mar. 5, 1874 



than to be smitten with the divine dipsomania of the 

 oritJinal investigator. I am inchncd to thinlc he was not 

 far wrong. And, be it observed, that the question is not, 

 whether such a man shall be able to make as much out 

 of his abilities as his brother, of like ability, who goes 

 into Law, or Engineering, or Commerce ; it is not a 

 question of maintaining a due number of saddle horses,' 

 as George Eliot somewhere puts it — it is a question of 

 living or starving. 



" If a student of my own subject shows power and origi- 

 nality, I dare not advise him to adopt a scientific career ; 

 for, supposing he is able to maintain himself until he has 

 attained distinction, 1 cannot give him the assurance that 

 any amount of proficiency in the Biological Sciences will 

 be convertible into, even the most modest, bread and 

 cheese. And I believe that the case is as bad, or perhaps 

 worse, with other branches of Science. In this respect 

 Britain, whose immense wealth and prosperity hang upon 

 the thread of Applied Science, is far behind France, and 

 infinitely behind Germany. 



" And the worst of it is, that it is very dil'ficult to see 

 one's way to any immediate remedy for this state of 

 affairs which shall be free from a tendency to become 

 worse than the disease. 



" Great schemes for the Endowment of Research have 

 been proposed. It has been suggested, that Laboratories 

 for all branches of Physical Science, provided with every 

 apparatus needed by the investigator, shall be esta- 

 blished by the State ; and shall be accessible, under due 

 conditions and regulations, to all properly qualified 

 persons. I see no objection to the principle of such a 

 proposal. If it be legitimate to spend great sums of 

 money on public Libraries and public Collections of 

 Painting and Sculpture, in aid of the man of letters, or 

 the Artist, or for the mere sake of affording pleasure to 

 the general public, I apprehend that it cannot be illegiti- 

 mate to do as much for the promotion of scientific investi- 

 gation. To take the lowest ground, as a mere investment 

 of money, the latter is likely to be much more immediately 

 profitable. To my mind, the difficulty in the way of such 

 schemes is not theoretical, but practical. Given the 

 laboratories, how are the investigators to be maintained ? 

 What career is open to those who have been thus encou- 

 raged to leave bread-winning pursuits ? If they are to be 

 provided for by endowment, we come back to the College 

 Felloivship system, the results of which, for Literature, 

 have not been so brilliant that one would wish to see it 

 extended to Science ; unless some much better securities 

 than at present exist can be taken that it will foster real 

 work. You know that among the Bees, it depends on the 

 kind of cell in which the egg is deposited, and the quantity 

 and quality of food which is supplied to the grub, whether, 

 it shall turn out a busy little worker or a big idle queen. 

 And, in the human hive, the cells of the endowed larvse 

 are always tending to enlarge, and their food to improve, 

 until we get queens, beautiful to behold, but which gather 

 no honey and build no comb. 



■ " I do not say that these difficulties may not be over- 

 come, but their gravity is not to be lightly estimated." 



It is pointed out that the creation of Faculties of 

 Science will, to a certain extent, remedy the present 

 lamentable condition of things to which we have so 

 often called attention. 



" It is possible to place the scientific inquirer in a 

 position in which he shall have ample leisure and oppor- 

 tunity for original work, and yet shall give a fair and 

 tangible equivalent for those privileges. The establish- 

 ment of a Faculty of Science in every University implies 

 that of a corresponding number of Professorial chairs, 

 the incumbents of which need not be so burdened with 

 teaching as to deprive them of ample leisure for original 

 work. I do not think that it is any impediment to an 

 original investigator to have to devote a moderate portion 



of his time to lecturing, or superintending practical in- 

 struction. On the contrary, I think it may be, and often 

 is, a benefit to be obliged to take a comprehensive survey 

 of your subject ; or to bring your results to a point, and 

 give them, as it were, a tangible objective existence. 

 The besetting sins of the investigator are two : the one 

 is the desire to put aside a subject, the general bearings 

 of which he has mastered himself, and pass on to some- 

 thing which has the attraction of novelty ; and the other, 

 the desire for too much perfection, which leads him to 

 " ' Add and alter many times 

 Till all be ripe and rotten ; ' 



to spend the energies which should be reserved for action, 

 in whitening the decks and polishing the guns. 



" The necessity for producing results for the instruction 

 of others, seems to me to be a more effectual check on 

 these tendencies than even the love of usefulness or the 

 ambition of fame." 



It would indeed be a happy solution of the difficulty if 

 it could be solved in this way, but we confess that on this 

 point we fear that the system advocated by Mr. Huxley 

 will not be all that is needed. 



In the first place, take the present appointments to 

 Chairs ; are they, as a rule, given to the most distin- 

 guished investigators ? If not, why not, and why should 

 the present system be altered? In our opinion the 

 present system of appointing teachers is good so long as 

 large ranges of knowledge have to be professed. Take 

 many of our present professors ; are they as encumbered 

 by teaching as the German professors are for instance ? 

 and yet where are their researches ? do they not figure 

 much more often in the "List of Examiners" than 

 in the "Philosophical Transactions"? If these things 

 are so, no benefit will accrue from a mere increase 

 of numbeis unless the present pay be largely in- 

 creased. 



There is also another most important point, and here 

 again we quote from the Address : — 



" It is commonly supposed that anyone who knows a 

 subject is competent to teach it ; and no one seems to 

 doubt that anyone who knows a subject is competent to 

 examine in it. I believe both these opinions to be serious 

 mistakes : the latter, perhaps, the more serious of the 

 two. In the first place, I do not believe that anyone who 

 is not, or has not been, a teacher is really qualified to ex- 

 amine advanced students. And in the second place, ex- 

 amination is an art, and a difficult one, which has to be 

 learned like all other arts." 



Are then investigators to be made teachers and exami- 

 ners in order that they may live, regardless of the fact that 

 they cannot teach, and though they may be ignorant of 

 the " art " of examining ? 



We believe that powers of teaching and powers of in. 

 vestigation by no means go together, though they are 

 united in some great men like Mr. Huxley ; and we be- 

 lieve, further, that on this ground alone the idea of making 

 a man teach in order that he may carry on researches is 

 bad in principle : it is even worse than this, because it is 

 apt to cause the public to underrate research — to think 

 that the end of all research is to teach, while in point of 

 fact the end and aim of the acquisition and teaching of 

 all old knowledge is the acquirement of new knowledge. 



It is a source of satisfaction to us that Prof Huxley 

 agrees with us on the main point, for we are certain that 

 when once the principle is conceded, practical methods 

 of carrying it out, among which undoubtedly that in- 



