ADDRESS. Ixxxiii 



science ; they ought to strengthen and extend that hold, by acquiring a more 

 complete and accurate knowledge of its doctrines and methods ; in a word, 

 they ought to be more thorough students than during their state of preli- 

 minary training. 



They must bo able to live by their work, without diverting any of their 

 energies to other pursuits ; and they must feel security against want, in the 

 event of illness or in their old age. 



They must be supplied with intelligent and trained assistants to aid in 

 the conduct of their researches, and whatever buildings, apparatus, and ma- 

 terials may be required for conducting those researches effectively. 



The desired system must therefore provide arrangements favourable to the 

 maintenance and development of the true student-spirit in investigators, 

 while providing them with permanent means of subsistence, sufficient to 

 enable them to feel secure and tranquil in working at science alone, yet not 

 sufficient to neutralize their motives for exertion ; and at the same time it 

 must give them all external aids, in proportion to their wants and powers of 

 making good use of them. 



Now I propose to describe the outline of such a system, framed for the 

 sole purpose of promoting research, and then to consider what other results 

 would follow from its working. 



If it should appear possible to establish a system for the efficient advance- 

 ment of science, which would be productive of direct good to the community 

 in other important ways, I think you will agree with me that we ought to do 

 all that we can to promote its adoption. 



Let the most intelligent and studious children from every primary school 

 be sent, free of expense, to the most accessible secondary school for one year ; 

 let the best of these be selected and allowed to continue for a second year, 

 and so oji, until the elite of them have learnt all that is to be there learnt to 

 advantage. Let the best pupils from the secondary schools be sent to a col- 

 lege of their own selection, and there subjected to a similar process of annual 

 weeding ; and, finally, let those who get satisfactorily to the end of a college 

 curriculum be supplied with an allowance sufficient for their maintenance for 

 a year, on condition of their devoting their undivided energies to research, 

 under the inspection of competent college authorities, while allowed such aids 

 and facilities as the college can supply, with the addition of money-grants for 

 special purposes. Let aU who do well during this first year be allowed similar 

 advantages for a second, and even a third year. 



Each young investigator thus trained must exert himself to obtain some 

 apjM)intment, which may enable him to do the most useful and creditable work 

 of which he is capable, while combining the conditions most favourable to his 

 own improvement. 



Let there be in every college as manj' Professorships and Assistantships in 

 each branch of science as are needed for the efficient conduct of the work 

 there going on, and let every Professor and Assistant have such salary and 

 such funds for apparatus &c. as may enable him to devote all his powers to 

 the duties of his post, under conditions favourable to the success of those 

 duties ; but let each Professor receive also a proportion of the fees paid by his 

 pupils, so that it may be his direct interest to do his work with the utmost 

 attainable efficiency, and attract more pupils. 



Let every college and school be governed by an independent body of men, 

 striving to increase its usefulness and reputation, by sympathy with the 

 labours of the working staff, by material aid to them when needed, and by 

 getting the very best man they can, from their own or any other college, to 

 supply each vacancy as it arises. 



