Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/193

Rh hands, and the world is losing much by not supplying them with extra hands. Life is short: old age comes quickly, and the amount one pair of hands can do is very limited. What sort of shop would that he, or what sort of factory, where one man had to do all the work.with his own hands? It is a fact in nature, which no democracy can change, that men are not equal—that some have brains and some hands. And no idle talk about equality can ever subvert the order of the universe.

I know of no institution in this country where assistants are supplied to aid directly in research. Yet why should it not be so? And even the absence of assistant professors and assistants of all kinds, to aid in teaching, is very noticeable, and must be remedied before we can expect much.

There are many physical problems, especially those requiring exact measurements, which cannot be carried out by one man, and can only be successfully attacked by the most elaborate apparatus, and with a full corps of assistants. Such are Regnault's experiments on the fundamental laws of gases and vapors, made thirty or forty years ago by aid from the French Government, and which are the standards to this day. Although these experiments were made with a view to the practical calculation of the steam engine, yet they were carried out in such a broad spirit that they have been of the greatest theoretical use. Again, what would astronomy have done without the endowments of observatories? By their means, that science has become the most perfect of all branches of physics, as it should be from its simplicity. There is no doubt, in my mind, that similar institutions for other branches of physics, or, better, to include the whole of physics, would be equally successful. A large and perfectly equipped physical laboratory with its large revenues, its corps of professors and assistants, and its machine shop for the construction of new apparatus, would be able to advance our science quite as much as endowed observatories have astronomy. But such a laboratory should not be founded rashly. The value will depend entirely on the physicist at its head, who has to devise the plan, and to start it into practical working. Such a man will always be rare, and cannot always be obtained. After one had been successfully started, others could follow; for imitation requires little brains.

One could not be certain of getting the proper man every time, but the means of appointment should be most carefully studied so as to secure a good average. There can be no doubt that the appointment should rest with a scientific body capable of judging the highest work of each candidate.

Should any popular element enter, the person chosen would be either of the literary-scientific order, or the dabbler on the outskirts who presents his small discoveries in the most theatrical manner. What