It is reasonable to suppose that Universities should be fountains of new theoretical scientific knowledge, as well as be the disseminators of it, and that they (especially the old ones with their rich endowments) would be certain to promote scientific research, as being especially a part of their functions; but such is not the case. Our old Universities have not established any professorships of original research; they make no payment for such labour, nor reimburse any expenditure incurred in such occupation, and afford but little facility for the prosecution of pure scientific inquiry. Further, they discourage scientific discovery by giving the greatest emoluments, and the {45} highest honours in science they have to bestow, to young men who have never made a single original research, or discovered a new fact in science. The money paid in the form of comparatively sinecure fellowships, or retiring pensions to young men in Oxford alone, "now amounts to about eighty or ninety thousand pounds a year." It may be objected that young men are not capable of doing original research, but as they do it in German Universities, they can also do it in England, if they are properly disciplined, and are not decoyed from industry by the possession or expectation of wealth. A man who has never made a scientific research is not the most worthy recipient of the highest scientific honours, and in Germany it would not be given to him; he is not properly disciplined in the detection of error or the discernment of truth in matters of science; he is deficient in accuracy of scientific judgment, and in the true spirit of scientific inquiry. It is unnecessary to speak of what has been done during the last few years at our old Universities and great public schools, in the erection of laboratories, and in other ways for the promotion of science, because it has been for the purposes of instruction, and not of original research. No amount of ordinary instruction in science will remedy the evils caused by want of original inquiry, because such instruction does not produce new knowledge, but only disseminates that already possessed. {46} Many persons in this country think that all scientific men are investigators, and that a portion of the funds of scientific institutions generally are expended upon investigation, but such is rarely the case. Many also consider that those scientific men who are applying new knowledge are discovering new truths. And nearly all persons look upon inventors as the only really practical scientific men, and upon discoverers as unpractical enthusiasts who spend their lives in pursuit of vague theories. But whilst the inventor is a great and useful agent of civilization, there is one behind him who is greater than he, viz., the man who provides him with the new knowledge upon which all his inventions must be based.