Sir J. Herschel on the Endowment of Research

Abstract

THE following extract from a letter from Sir John Herschel bears so directly on the distinction between the needs of theoretical and practical science insisted on in your recent leading article (vol. xi. p. 301), that I need offer no apology for communicating it. As the present value of the opinions which it expresses is intrinsic, it is unnecessary to particularise the circumstances under which the letter was written more than thirty years ago. But I may remark that it is supported by many passages in other letters in which the distinction in question, and that between research which can and research which cannot be readily effected by private means, is dwelt on (with all the scrupulous care of one than whom no responsible guardian of the public purse was ever more opposed to dependence on State aid as a principle), in a sense emphatically favourable to the demands of science for help in certain clearly indicated directions. I am sorry that I have not the papers at hand to quote from, but One instance in particular occurs to me, in which the extending and perfecting of various Physical Tables in a thoroughly satisfactory manner is declared to be altogether outside of the field of work of the individual investigator, and to be labour to be paid for by the community.