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wealth. They were usually men, who, like the two 
Lubbocks, were actively engaged in the engrossing pursuits 
of the office or of the counting-house, but who still found 
time to labour in the scientific field and established their 
claim to stand abreast of the foremost in the army of work- 
ers. The fact is that too much leisure tends to enervate 
the mind, whilst the busy commercial or professional life 
stimulates the brain into ceaseless activity. This habitual 
vigour is restless for action, even in what with most men 
would be idle hours, and expends its surplus energy upon 
literary labours or scientific research. Such facts make me ' 
very dubious as to the advantages which would arise from 
the special endowment of men whose sole occupation in life 
should be scientific enquiry. 
Except in some special departments of science accidental 
circumstances rather than a pre-arranged plan have much 
to do with determining the direction in which original 
investigations are carried on. Some small incident primarily 
directs an observer’s attention to a special field of labour, 
and as he follows its leads the area expands before him and 
he ultimately finds himself deeply engaged in a career of 
important research. Of course I presume that early training 
has prepared him for the work. Now these facts appear to 
me to suggest the real remedy for the present scarcity of a 
high class of workers, and I think the times shew signs, 
however faint, of prospective improvement in this matter. 
We want a larger supply of sufficiently well endowed pro- 
fessorial chairs in which the obligatory duty of teaching 
shall stimulate a man to keep himself abreast of his age, but 
in which that duty shall not be so all-engrossing as to occupy 
the whole of his time. By such arrangements many needful 
things would be provided. We should have an enlarged 
body of men who would be competent to pursue original 
researches, because the previous training which their official 
position would involve would prepare them to recognise 
