The men who are rewarded highly in this country are not always those who yield the greatest service to the nation, but frequently those who render the most immediate or most apparent benefit; to stop short at this cannot produce the greatest degree of success. The national services of a great discoverer are probably not equalled by those of any man. Who can estimate the value of the commercial, social, moral, political, and other great advantages to the world, of Oersted's discovery of the principle of electro-magnetism, which enabled the invention of the electric telegraph to be made? The men we reward the highest are not those who discover knowledge, but those who use or apply it; physicians, judges, bishops, lawyers, railway managers, military and naval officers, and head masters of schools, all of them gentlemen who render great services to the nation, by using, diffusing, and applying knowledge already possessed. It requires less rare ability to apply knowledge to new purposes by means of invention, than to discover it; it is still less difficult to diffuse it by means of tuition and lectures, because the labours of a teacher consist largely of a repitition of other men's discoveries and inventions; and to use scientific knowledge in the ordinary business of every-day life, requires a still more common degree of ability. A chief reason why ordinary business capacity is paid for whilst original research is not, is the fact that research is not considered a necessity; many {58} persons do not perceive its immense future value. Men perform those duties first which they feel they must: they are also willing to pay for the performance of those duties which press most urgently upon them, and defer all other kinds of labour that they consider will bear postponement. Most men act upon this rule, until they acquire a habit of sacrificing the future to the present, of neglecting more important matters in order to attend to less, and of living too much for money, without sufficient regard for the more valuable condition, viz., individual and national improvement. These circumstances also largely explain the fact that it requires more pressure to induce individuals or governing bodies to aid original research than to assist any other good object. Other chief reasons why persons in general cannot perceive the great practical value of new scientific truth are, because the perception of it requires a scientifically trained mind. The greatest truths are frequently the least obvious, and are therefore valued the least.