§22 REPORT—1883. 
his time and energies to teaching, he will cease to do any research, and become, 
pro tanto, an inferior teacher. 
A third objection which is sometimes made to the proposition that: scientific 
research must be supported and paid for as such, is the following: It is believed 
by many persons that a man who occupies his best energies in scientific research 
can always, if he choose, make an income by writing popular books or newspaper 
articles in his spare hours; and, accordingly, it is gravely maintained that there is 
no need to provide stipends and the means of carrying on their work for researchers. 
To do so, according to this view, would be to encourage them in an exclusive reti- 
cence, 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. Anyone 
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 haye 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 sufficiently 
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 inves- 
tigator ; 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 know- 
ledge. The professional ittératew 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 profession—such as the Bar, 
Medicine, or the Church—is more likely to leave one of its followers time and 
means for scientific research than is that of either the popular writer or the 
successful teacher. 
We have, then, seen that there is no escape from the necessity of providing 
stipends and laboratories for the purpose of creating new knowledge, as is done in 
continental States, if we are agreed that more of this new knowledge is needed 
and is among the products which a civilised community is bound to turn out, both 
for its own benefit and for that of the community of States, which give to and take 
from one another in such matters. 
There are some who would finally attack our contention by denying that new 
knowledge is a good thing, and by refusing to recognise any obligation on the part 
of England to contribute her share to that common stock of increasing knowledge 
by which she necessarily profits. Among such persons are those who would pro- 
hibit altogether the pursuit of experimental physiology in England, and yet would 
not and do not hesitate to avail themselves of the services of medical men, whose 
power of rendering those services depends on the fact that they have learnt the 
results obtained by the experiments of physiologists in other countries or m former 
times. In reference to this strange contempt and even hatred of science, which 
undoubtedly has an existence among some persons of consideration, even at the 
present day, I shall have a few words to say before concluding this address. I 
have now to ask you to listen to what seems to me to be the demand which we 
should make, as members of a British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
in respect of adequate provision for the creation of new knowledge in the field of 
biology in England. 
Taking England alone, as distinct from Scotland and Ireland, we require, in 
order to be approximately on a level with Germany, forty new biological 
institutes, distributed among the five branches of physiology, zoology, anatomy, 
pathology, and botany—forty in addition to the fifteen which we may reckon 
(taking one place with anotber) as already existing. The average cost of the 
buildings required would be about 4,000/. for each, giving a total initial expendi- 
ture of 160,000/.; the average cost of stipends for the director, assistants, and 
