Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/253

Rh a valuable member of society, and society takes pains publicly to indicate its appreciation of his value. When we say that in this country one may devote his life to science, and may gratuitously give to scientific investigation an amount of labor and talent which would secure him both wealth and distinction in any other profession, without receiving therefor a solitary public mark or expression of appreciation from any source whatever, or the slightest additional consideration from the public, hardly any thing more is necessary to show that there is here comparatively little incentive to such work."

The backwardness of science in this country is thus attributed to the lack of those incentives to its cultivation which come from public appreciation. There is talent enough, there are facilities enough, there is interest enough in research, but there is no sufficient external spur to scientific exertion. Men will not toil where their labors are unappreciated, and the general esteem of science is too low to arouse and sustain the necessary ambition in its original cultivators. Assuming this to be a correct view of the case, the question arises, What is to be done? Are we to try to repeat the experience of Europe? In European countries there has been the slow and gradual differentiation of a scientific class which has its wealthy, powerful, and venerated organizations that form a kind of scientific world, the approbation and rewards of which are sufficient to stimulate men to give their lives to research. No such class has been developed here. Our investigators are too few and widely scattered, and their associations are too weak to give inspiration and support to original work. It is a case of immaturity, and Europe has the start of us by centuries. We have tried to imitate the foreign academies and associations, but the effort is futile, for the lack is of scientific feeling—motive power to work—and that cannot be created by acts of corporation. Obviously, therefore, from the nature of our circumstances, scientific development in this country must take a different course, and connect itself with general education and public opinion. As long as we rely upon imported methods of nurture, science must languish in this country, and fall further and further behind; but when the policy of the advancement of science is made to conform to the character of our institutions, when science takes the place to which it is entitled in our system of popular education, then may we expect such an increasing appreciation of it as will give much stronger incitement to the work of original investigation. But in this matter of the popular diffusion of science it seems there has been even less interest here than abroad. Prof. Newcomb says:

"Our instrumentalities for communicating to the educated public a knowledge of the doings of the scientific world have, until very lately, been nearly as defective as our means of scientific publication, and, notwithstanding certain recent improvements, are still far behind those of other nations. In England, France, and Germany, weekly, monthly, and quarterly journals of popular science are too numerous to be recounted; while, previous to the establishment of by the Appletons, we had not in this country a single journal designed to diffuse the knowledge either of general or exact science. The American Naturalist, as its name implies, is devoted entirely to biology. One of our principal scientific wants has been a publication which should serve as a medium of communication between, scientific men and the educated public, as well as between the various classes of scientific workers."

And again: "Within the past three or four years there has been a large increase in the amount of popular scientific publication in this country, which