Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/202

196 theory, your electric fluid, your caloric, perceptible and latent, and fifty other conventional fictions, which you know to be not the truth but which serve your purpose until the truth shall be revealed."

I felt he was utterly and decidedly wrong, but not being conversant with scientific matters, I could not contradict him, so was content to leave him master of the field. On another occasion when I remarked on the different manners in which the Academy treated useful discoveries and inventions proceeding from outsiders, and the useless discoveries those of their own guild were perpetually making; the former being treated by the Academy with contemptuous silence or pooh-poohed as if of utterly insignificant importance, the latter being lauded to the skies and represented as of the greatest importance to science and humanity; he defended this action of the Academy warmly and said:—

"The Academy acts perfectly right in this. Useful discoveries will soon obtain their due reward from the public who profit by them, but a useless discovery may be, as a discovery, a much more brilliant scintillation of genius than a useful one, but what would the public care for it? The author would live and die unknown and neglected were it not for the Academy, whose main object is to award praise and reward for discoveries in the inverse ratio of their utility. The inventors of electric illumination, of tidal machines, and of all the mechanical works whereby the community profits, have been slighted by the Academy; but look how they have been rewarded by the public, they obtained substantial pensions during their lives and their statues grace our public