Another cause of want of encouragement of research, is the natural selfishness which exists, {43} though in very different degrees, in all men. Many wealthy persons wish things to remain as they are. Some manufacturers would not aid research unless they could monopolize its advantages. Students also generally prefer those subjects which are best rewarded, and do not sufficiently consider their intrinsic value. The love of truth for truth's sake alone is very weak in most men, and but few men make the greatest good their chief object in life. The extreme ignorance in this country of the value of scientific research, is also largely due to the narrowness of the "practical" character of the English mind; men cannot perceive the deep-seated and universal sources of their wealth, and they prefer those occupations which yield the most obviously remunerative results. It is also partly due to scientific investigators themselves not having pleaded their own cause; such men have been so absorbed in the more important occupation of discovery, that they have, probably more than any other class of persons, neglected to enforce the just claims of their own subject. It is, however, chiefly caused by the influence of misapplied wealth, operating through the old Universities and large public schools. The sons of the wealthy are most of them educated at those institutions, and according to evidence supplied by University authorities to Royal Commissioners, many persons send their sons to those places for other purposes than to acquire learning, and allow them too much money. The considerable wealth of {44} these young men supplies them with attractions which decoy them from industrious study, and the wishes of the parents and students have been largely acquiesced in by the tutors and college authorities. At our old Universities also, physical and chemical knowledge is very much less rewarded than some other subjects, though latterly a considerable improvement has been made in this respect, but even now there is not a University in the kingdom in which a knowledge in scientific research is necessary in order to obtain the highest scientific honour.[8] In these various ways physical and chemical science has been kept very low in our chief seats of learning; and scientific research is greatly neglected by the governing authorities.