Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/554

 548 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

It has been but rarely^ and then wholly fortuitously^ that the inves- tigator has been valued as a potent factor in society. In those rare instances it has been the individual who was valued, not the type, and the value has generally been that which the collector places upon a unique item in his collection, or which the vaudeville artist places upon his performing panther, or that vague and fruitless veneration with which the sage, the hermit or the dear old impractical sweetly^ disposed rector of an English village is not unfrequently regarded — veneration which arouses no desire of emulation, but which finds its source in the incomprehensibility of the inspiring motive or its remote- ness from the conmionplace.

It has not inf requentiy been recognized by rulers that the patron- age of learning has occasionally been rewarded by unexpected benefits, and from Hiero relying upon Archimedes for the defence of Syracuse to Christina of Sweden summoning Descartes to read to her before breakfast, rulers have sporadically contributed to the service of inves- tigation. In modern times likewise it is officially recognized that the investigator may be an ornament to the state, but, save in the times of stress aforesaid, no hint of consciousness is betrayed that the labors of the investigator may constitute the very framework of civilization.

" Old women for old women," says Walpole, referring to the Boyal Society, ^'I would trust to the analysis of the matrons in preference to that of the philosophers.''^ When the master-investigator of all time, Michael Faraday, ventured, in response to the ill-advised persua- sion of his friends, to apply to government for a minute fraction of the recognition to which his incalculable services had entitled him, he was received by Lord Melbourne with the epithet "humbug.'' In 1914 when one of the greatest medical investigators of our day preferred a similar request to government his plea was received by the official overlords with the silent contempt of utter indifference.*

The mental attitude of the general public towards the investigator is similar to, but less financially profitable than, the attitude of tolerant and half -contemptuous admiration which is displayed towards the artist and the virtuoso, and it would be alike endurable were it not fraught with the very gravest dangers. What confidence would we possess in the lawyer unaware of the sources of common law or in the doctor who was professedly ignorant of the anatomy and physiology of the human body? What confidence shall we then display in the statesmen who remain oblivious and blind to the nature of the formative forces which under their very eyes are continually refashioning civilization? A momentary recognition of the danger of ignoring the investigator is,

1 "An Account of the Giants Lately Discovered," 1766; Works of Horatio Walpole, 1798, Vol. 2.

2 Cf. correspondence in the Morning Post and other London newspapers in the spring of 1914.

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