Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/47

Rh sedentary clergy, whose ecclesiastical duties were light. The number of clergy of this class has been greatly reduced since the French Revolution; and the bishops and parish priests of to-day have no time for science. The increasing specialization of scientific work is also seen in the separation, in natural history, between collectors and describers, and between those who make applications of science and those who work at original research; and a separation is growing up between teaching and purely scientific work. Dividing society into three classes—the aristocratic, the middle class, and the workers—the former appears to be most fruitful in proportion to its numbers in the development of scientific excellence; but the list of Frenchmen in the present century appears to show an inclination in favor of the middle and working classes. By the force of circumstances a life of research is one of abnegation, which can hardly be recommended to those who have no worldly goods; and the conferring of scholarships and fellowships upon poor students can hardly change the conditions to any great extent. It may result in making well-informed men and teachers, but many other circumstances and influences than a university education must concur to induce a young man to devote himself to investigation, to the discovery of truths, and the publication of his results. These come next under review.

The appearance on the Academy lists in several instances of the names of father and son or of members of the same family, and in numerous instances of persons whose fathers had made a good record in professional or scholastic life, suggests heredity; but it is not safe to build too much on the suggestion—at least not in its application to the specific talent. There are other factors than heredity in the family life of professional and scientific men to direct the attention of the children toward kindred pursuits to those of the father. Heredity has a considerable effect, but it consists chiefly in the transmission of tastes and faculties that are useful in such pursuits, rather than of superior aptitudes for particular branches. Further than this, it does not operate directly, except perhaps in the case of the mathematical sciences. The power of family influences under the direction of scholarly fathers to cultivate such tastes in youth is shown in the large proportion of the names of sons of Protestant pastors on the scientific rolls. The occupations of physicians and pharmacists are more directly scientific than that of the pastor, but the number of sons of members of those professions on the lists is much inferior to that of sons of pastors. The difference is ascribed to the more quiet and intimate life of the pastoral home, and to the direct and constant supervision which is exercised by the pastor over the training of his sons. Switzerland furnishes more instances than any other country of members of the same family on the academical lists. This is because Swiss youth, particularly the sons of pastors, pursue their studies at home, living in their own families, while in France and Italy they are taken away from