The appointment, and remuneration by salary, of professor of research, would not lessen the independence of scientific men if the office was not placed under the superintendence of active and interfering officials ignorant of science. Although the professors might not be highly paid, the appointment would increase their independence because it would be one of the most honourable to which scientific men could {196} attain, and because they would thereby be put into a sphere in which they could exercise their talents to the fullest extent, and render the greatest service and honour to the nation. If also the salaries offered were not too great, those persons only would become candidates who at present have insufficient means to defray the considerable cost of experiments. It would be necessary to appoint only persons who would undertake to devote their time solely to the discovery of new facts and principles in science, and the determination of purely scientific questions, and not to the making of inventions; because discovery is of far greater national value than invention; and because inventions would immediately on their publication be seized, modified, and patented by individuals for their own personal benefit. Discoveries, on the other hand, would require a large additional amount of labour expended upon them by inventors before they could be converted into saleable commodities. Each professor should be allowed perfect freedom to choose his own special subjects of research in the sciences he had been accustomed to study, because each investigator is usually the best judge of what researches are the most likely to yield him important results. No discoverer of repute would be very likely to trespass on another man's sphere of research, because he would usually have an abundance of good subjects of his own; and every honourable man would purposely avoid doing so; and we find this practically to be the case at the present time. Separate sets of {197} rooms would be necessary for each investigator in order to keep the researches private and distinct.