478 Encouragement of Scientific Research . [October, 
rals, he may recognise the fertility of the land, but he 
cannot stop to raise the ore, to clear the forests, and to 
plant crops. These tasks he leaves to his successors. But 
is he not all the while to be really credited with the practical 
benefits springing from his exploration ? It is somewhat 
significant that the olive, the symbolical tree of Minerva, is 
of very slow growth : he who plants it benefits posterity. 
Not only do the advantages derived from research often come 
too late to benefit their author ; they are sometimes lost to 
him from their very width. If we serve an individual man 
we have some notion where to look for a reward. If we 
serve a town, a community, or a nation, we may perhaps be 
told that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s. But we 
wish the nation to accept its responsibilities to its benefactors, 
and therefore to endow research. Nor can we presume to 
draw a boundary line between useful research and such as 
seems to be merely curious. The whole history of science 
warrants us in maintaining that the most abstract truths, to 
appearance utterly unconnected with the wants of our daily 
life, may suddenly prove of immense practical importance. 
Every discoverer of a new faCt or a new law has therefore a 
certain claim, which it is our truest wisdom to honour. 
Dismissing, then, this objection, and reminding our friend 
the economist that the value of anything to the world and 
its market value are not necessarily proportional, we en- 
counter another protest. The “ researcher ” — this somewhat 
unclassical college word is after all useful — we are told may 
embody his results in a book, and thus make them remune- 
rative. Now in some branches of investigation this is to a 
certain extent the case. Literary, historical, or especially 
theological, investigation may thus be rendered self-support- 
ing. In a less degree this holds good with geological and 
biological research, especially when, as sometimes happens, 
blended with narratives of adventure, travel, and sport. In 
such cases a book decidedly scientific in its objeCt may cir- 
culate among the outside public and may be “ ready at all 
the libraries,” to the benefit of the author. But in physics 
and chemistry there is no such expedient. A record of dis- 
covery in these departments will not make a “ readable 
book.” The public at large have not the remotest concep- 
tion of the amount of labour expended in attaining apparently 
trifling results. A chemical formula, a mathematical ex- 
pression — apparently trifling, though really of the utmost 
value to science — may often embody the whole result of 
years of anxious, minute, and difficult toil. To give a single 
instance. A friend of ours was engaged for nearly ten years 
