It would be fatal to scientific interests if such a mistake as this were often repeated. Yet we can have no assurance that the Government would not again and again be invited to support science on the strength of unfounded promises, if any wide scheme of endowment were adopted whose administration should be intrusted to non-scientific persons.
If the administration of the funds for scientific endowment were from the beginning intrusted to leading men of science, it is probable that correct scientific principles would be adopted for their guidance. But then a difficulty would arise which might prove even more serious than the mistakes of the unscientific. No one acquainted with the history or present condition of science, and with the relations which have existed and continue to exist among science-workers, can doubt that scientific managers of endowment funds would be repeatedly called upon to decide on the claims of methods or subjects to which they had conceived objections, and to vote respecting the candidature of scientific men against whom they entertained feelings of personal hostility. The first case can be illustrated by example, the other not so conveniently. Suppose Leverrier had been called upon to determine whether any sum from an endowment fund should be given prospectively for researches into the subject of transits of Venus, we may be sure (his actual course in the matter leaves no room for doubt) that his prepossession in favor of that method of measuring the solar system which is based upon the planetary perturbations would have led him to decide against any such grant. Many cases akin to this will occur to those familiar with recent controversies in various branches of scientific research. As to personal animosities, we may follow the convenient example of those writers who trace the faults of persons in high places down to a certain date, and leave the present time to the criticisms of future historians. It will be admitted that both Halley and Flamsteed were faithful servants of science; yet if either had had to decide on any question of awarding to the other some post of influence or emolument, it is to be feared, from what we know of their actual conduct toward each other, that the result would not have depended solely on scientific considerations. It may be hoped that there has been a change for the better since then, and that matters will improve still more hereafter. The advocates of rival theories, the leading teachers of different schools of thought, will one day, perhaps, be constantly on good terms with each other. Dissensions will be unknown in our scientific societies. The older men of science will be well pleased to see younger workers gradually modifying theories which had formerly seemed established forever, and the younger workers will never give unpleasant expression to the feeling that "authority" is not an absolutely certain guide in science. Jealousies and rivalries among those working in the same departments will gradually become
trifling particular on the faith of any special prediction of a warm or a cold, a wet or a dry, a calm or a stormy summer or winter."
