12 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
whom no university has made what he is, who has learned 
for himself how knowledge can he advanced, whose main out¬ 
fit is the original genius with which nature has endowed him, 
whose paramount motive is a native impulse,” should have the 
fairest show in a democracy. But Professor fSTewcomb com¬ 
plains that in our failure to estimate and honor the individ¬ 
ual scientific investigator we stand far behind all other enlight¬ 
ened nations. Such honor as England showed to Lord Kel¬ 
vin and Sir George Gabriel Stokes in the impressive jubilees 
held in recent years, the noble tribute paid by all Germany 
to the venerable Helmholtz upon his seventieth birthday and 
the recent tribute of Prance to Berthelot, seem quite impossi¬ 
ble in America. Such honor, suggests Professor Hewcomb, 
is not needed so that each investigator may say “See what may 
be done for me if I am successful” but so that all may say 
“See what a high value my countrymen set upon the best kind 
of intellectual work.” 
The most favorable classification of the rank of modern na¬ 
tions in productive scholarship that I have seen places America 
in the fourth place. This classification attempts to divide the 
countries into groups of approximately equal population, and 
is as follows: 
1. Germany and Austria. 
2. Great Britain and Colonies. 
3. France and Belgium. 
4. The United States. 
5. Italy. 
6. Scandinavia, Holland, and a miscellaneous group of states. 
7. Spain and Spanish Colonies. 
One cannot be satisfied with the position of America in this 
scheme, but it seems impossible to challenge its truth. Yet 
it is true that the difference between class 2, Great Britain 
and Colonies, and class 3, France and Belgium, is exceedingly 
slight: many would probably prefer to put France and Bel¬ 
gium in second place, so that America occupies a sort of third 
place, the second position being nearly evenly divided. But 
after all, it is not so much our actual grade that need concern 
us, as the character of present tendencies and our rate of de- 
