June 4, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



561 



had not directly produced that result. Fara- 

 day did not discover the telephone or wireless 

 telegraphy or a practical method of electric 

 lighting; what Faraday did was to make all 

 those things possible, to lay the scientific 

 basis of them. It was not easy to see how the 

 reward was always or even commonly to be 

 got into the right pocket. The amazing 

 progress which medical science had recently 

 made in stamping out certain forms of 

 zymotic disease was, indeed, a wonderful tri- 

 umph; but it was very hard to pick out the 

 individuals to whom that tritunph was due. 

 If he might put himself in the unfortunate 

 position of a Prime Minister, the difficulty of 

 saying that A. should have the money which 

 was available, or that B. should have it, would 

 be very great, even though he took the best 

 advice obtainable. There would be certain 

 dramatic cases in which the whole public 

 would be behind the Prime Minister in appor- 

 tioning a particular reward, and yet when the 

 historian came to look back upon the long 

 labors which had made the triumph possible, 

 might not he have to say that the genius to 

 whose intuition and inspiration the achieve- 

 ment was really due had died unrewarded? 

 Did anybody think that Maxwell, for instance, 

 would ever have come in for any share of this 

 parliamentary grant, seeing that his discov- 

 eries were such as very few were capable of 

 comprehending in the form in which he gave 

 them to the world? Yet his discoveries lay 

 at the root of much of the subsequent prog- 

 ress in physical science. Sir Clifford Allbutt 

 had pointed out that this was not asking very 

 much from the taxpayer, because the nmnber 

 of people who would actually get the reward 

 was so small. But, looked at from the point 

 of view of the encouragement of research, 

 that meant that a young man, going into re- 

 search, and surveying the possibilities of re- 

 ward, would find he had the chance only of 

 one in ten thousand. He might contribute 

 himself as a colloborator to the great dis- 

 covery for which somebody else, quite prop- 

 erly, got the chief credit. The collaborator, 

 on this plan, got nothing, yet without the 

 collaboration of people not in the first rank 



could progress be made? Germany had never 

 excelled this country — he would like to use a 

 8tronger phrase, but he would be nationally 

 modest — in the production of those geniuses 

 who started original discovery; but it had sur- 

 passed this country in the organization of 

 men not of the front rank whom it had 

 brought together in cooperation towards a 

 common end. He did not see how the in- 

 vestigations of a body of cooperative workers 

 could be stimulated by rewarding a few 

 isolated individuals. At any rate, he saw 

 difficulties. Was there not more to be said 

 for some attempt to stimulate research by im- 

 proving the position of the researchers while 

 they were doing their work? He was told the 

 other day that there were people carrying on 

 research work at Cambridge for a smaller 

 remuneration that the town council of Cam- 

 bridge paid to its unskilled employees. This 

 showed that there was still a great deal to be 

 done in the way of aiding research while it 

 was proceeding. He agreed entirely with Sir 

 Eichard Gregory that while the state might 

 aid research it would only destroy research if 

 it were resolved to control it. The best men 

 would not be controlled. The state was in- 

 capable of forming a judgment on the merits 

 of an abstruse physical of physiological in- 

 quiry. That must be left to the genius of the 

 men themselves. But he hoped it did not 

 follow that it was quite impossible to combine 

 with that independence of the worker some 

 better reward for the work he was doing. He 

 was afraid, however, that if the Treasury were 

 represented at that assembly, it would say it 

 preferred the original scheme laid before him 

 by Sir Watson Cheyne. The framing of any 

 such ideal scheme would require a great deal 

 of thought. 



In conclusion, Mr. Balfour said that while 

 he had spoken for himself alone, he was also 

 there in some sense as representing the Prime 

 Minister, and he would like to add that there 

 was no man living who had shown a greater 

 sympathy with scientific development than 

 Mr. Lloyd George, who had been responsible 

 for some of the greatest advances which had 

 been made in the direction of state aid for 



