Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/72

62 upon the medical student, I am not, for a moment, suggesting their exclusion from the university. I think that sound and practical instruction in the elementary facts and broad principles of biology should form part of the arts curriculum: and here, happily, my theory is in entire accordance with your practice. Moreover, as I have already said, I have no sort of doubt that, in view of the relation of physical science to the practical life of the present day, it has the same right as theology, law, and medicine, to a faculty of its own in which men shall be trained to be professional men of science. It may be doubted whether universities are the places for technical schools of engineering, or applied chemistry, or agriculture. But there can surely be little question, that instruction in the branches of science which lie at the foundation of these arts, of a far more advanced and special character than could, with any propriety, be included in the ordinary arts curriculum, ought to be obtainable by means of a duly-organized faculty of science in every university.

The establishment of such a faculty would have the additional advantage of providing, in some measure, for one of the greatest wants of our time and country. I mean the proper support and encouragement of original research.

The other day, an emphatic friend of mine committed himself to the opinion that, in England, it is better for a man's worldly prospects to be a drunkard, than to be smitten with the divine dipsomania of the original investigator. I am inclined to think he was not far wrong. And, be it observed, that the question is not, whether such a man shall be able to make as much out of his abilities as his brother, of like ability, who goes into law, or engineering, or commerce; it is not a question of "maintaining a due number of saddle-horses," as George Eliot somewhere puts it—it is a question of living or starving.

If a student of my own subject shows power and originality, I dare not advise him to adopt a scientific career; for, supposing he is able to maintain himself until he has attained distinction, I cannot give him the assurance that any amount of proficiency in the biological sciences will be convertible into, even the most modest, bread-and-cheese. And I believe that the case is as bad, or perhaps worse, with other branches of science. In this respect Britain, whose immense wealth and prosperity hang upon the thread of applied science, is far behind France, and infinitely behind Germany.

And the worst of it is, that it is very difficult to see one's way to any immediate remedy for this state of affairs which shall be free from a tendency to become worse than the disease.

Great schemes for the endowment of research have been proposed. It has been suggested that laboratories for all branches of physical science, provided with every apparatus needed by the investigator, shall be established by the state; and shall be accessible, under due conditions and regulations, to all properly-qualified persons. I see no