OCTOHKR 12, 1S8;^.) 



SCIENCE. 



511 



but no student is compelled to attend those lectures 

 as a condition of obtaining liis degree. Accordingly, 

 independent teachers can and do compete with the 

 professor in providing for the students' requirements 

 in the matter of instruction. As a consequence, the 

 fees charged for te.iching are exceedingly small, and 

 the student can feel assured that he is obtaining his 

 money's worth for his money. lie is not compelled 

 to pay any fee to any teacher as a condition of his 

 promotion to the university degree. In a German 

 univei-sity, if the professor in a given subject is in- 

 competent, or the class overcrowded, the student can 

 take his fee to a private teacher, and get better teach- 

 ing. All that is re(|uired of the candidate, as a con- 

 dition of his promotion to the doctor's degree, is that 

 he shall satisfy the examination-tests imposed by the 

 faculty, and produce an original thesis. 



Unless there be some such conipelling influence as 

 that obtaining in the Scotch universities, enabling 

 the would-be researcher to gather to him pupils and 

 fees without fear of competition, it seems impossible 

 that he should gain an income by teaching, whilst re- 

 serving to himself time and energy for the pursuit of 

 scientific inquiry. It is thus seen that the necessity 

 of endowment, in some form or another, to make 

 provision for scientific research, is a reality, in spile 

 of the suggestion that teaching affords a means 

 whereby the researcher may re.adily provide for him- 

 self. The simple fact is, that a teacher can only 

 make a sufficient income by teaching, on the con- 

 dition that he devotes his whole time and energy to 

 that occupation. 



Wliilst I feel called upon to emphatically distin- 

 guish the two functions, — viz., that of creating new 

 knoicledae, and that of distrihuUnrj existing knowledge. 

 — and to maintain that it is only by arbitrary and 

 undesirable arrangements not likely to be tolerated, 

 or, at any rate, extended, at the present day, that the 

 latter can be made to serve as the support of the 

 former, I must be careful to point out that I agree 

 most cordially with those who hold that it is an ex- 

 cellent thing for a man who is engaged in the one to 

 give a certain amount of time to the other. It is a 

 matter of experience, that the best teachers of a sub- 

 ject are, ceteris J)arj6us, those who are actually en- 

 gaged in the advancement of that subject, and who 

 have .shown such a thorough understanding of that 

 subject as is necessary for making new knowledge in 

 connection with it. It is also, in most cases, a good 

 thing for the man engaged in research to have a cer- 

 tain small amount of change of occupation, and to be 

 called upon to take such a survey of the subject in 

 connection with which his researches are made, as is 

 involved in the delivery of a course of lectures, and 

 other details of teaching. Though it is not a thing 

 to be contemplated, that the researcher shall soil his 

 instruction at a price suflicienfly high to enable him 

 to live by teaching, yet it is a good thing to m.ake 

 teaching an additional and subsidiary part of his 

 life's work. This end is effected in Germany by 

 making it a duty of the professor (already supported 

 by a stipend! to give some live or six lectures a week 

 during the academical session, for which he is paid 



by the fees of his hearers. The fees are low, but are 

 sufficient to be an inducement; and, inasmuch as the 

 attendance of the students is not compulsory, the 

 professor is stimulated to produce good and effective 

 lectures at a reasonable charge, so as to attract pupils 

 who would seek instruction from some one else, if 

 the lectures were not good, or the fees too high. In- 

 deed, in Germany this system works so much to the 

 advantage of the students, that the private teachers 

 of the universities .at one time obtained the creation 

 of a regulation forbidding the professors to reduce 

 their fees below a certain minimum; since, with so 

 low a fee as some professors were charging, it was 

 impossible for a private teacher to compete. This 

 state of things may be compared with much advan- 

 tage with the condition of British universities. In 

 these we hear, from one direction, complaints of the 

 high fees charged, and of the ineffective teaching 

 given by the professoriate; and in other universities, 

 where no adequate fees are allowed to the professors 

 as a stimulus to them to otfer useful and efficient 

 teaching, we find that the teaching has passed entire- 

 ly out of their hands into those of college tutors and 

 lecturers. The fact is, that a satisfactory relation 

 between teaching and research is one which will not 

 naturally and spontaneously arrange itself. It can 

 hardly be said to exist in any British university or 

 college, but the method has been thought out and 

 carried into practice in Germany. It consists in giv- 

 ing a competent researcher a stipend, and a laboratory 

 for his research work, and then requiring him to do 

 a small amount of teaching, remunerated by fees 

 proportionate to his ability and the pains which he 

 may take in his teaching. If you pay him a fixed 

 sum as a teacher, or artificially insure the attendance 

 of his class, instead of letting this part of his income 

 vary simply and directly with the attractiveness of 

 his teaching, you will find as the result that (with 

 rare exceptions) ho will not give effective and useful 

 teaching. He will naturally tend to do the minimum 

 required of him in a perfunctory way. On the other 

 hand, if you leave him without stipend as a research- 

 er, dependent on the fees of pupils for an income, he 

 will give all his time and energies to teaching: he will 

 cease to do any research, and become, pro lanto, 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 news- 

 paper 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 thom in an exclusive reticence, 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. Any one who is acquainted with the 

 sale of scientific books, and the profits which either 



