It would be altogether a false argument to say that the practical benefits derived from the labour of scientific discoverers by the different classes of the community are uncertain or imaginary, because the discoveries and the practical benefits are not in all cases immediately connected. We know that the consumers of tea in this country derive benefit from the grower of that herb in China through the hands of a series of intervening agents, as certainly as if they received the tea direct from his hands. Cause and effect are inseparable, and the remote effect of a { 39} series of connected causes is not less certain than the immediate ones.
It is a remarkable fact, that of the multitude of rich manufacturers, merchants, capitalists, and land-owners in this country, who have derived such great pecuniary benefits from original scientific research, there is scarcely one who has ever given to a scientific society, institution, or investigator, a single thousand pounds for the aid of pure research in experimental physics or chemistry;[4] the nearest approach to exceptions are a very few wealthy persons who have devoted themselves personally to scientific discovery. Manufacturers have willingly reaped the advantages of the labours of unpaid discoverers, but have not adequately sowed the means of future progress. Many of those manufacturers and others would, however, willingly give money towards such an object if they understood the value and the necessity of scientific research.
Whilst also many millions of pounds are annually expended in this country upon religious, philanthropic and other good objects, there is scarcely a scientific society or institution (with the exception of the Royal Society and the British Association) which expends even the small sum of five hundred pounds a year on pure experimental research in physics or { 40} chemistry. In the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the average annual expenses relating to experimental research, including salaries to assistants for research in the laboratory, from the year 1867 to 1871, did not amount to two hundred and fifty pounds. On the other hand, the "total net receipts" of the British and Foreign Bible Society alone, amount to about £213,000 a year. These circumstances strongly indicate extreme ignorance of the value and necessity of new scientific knowledge, and an equally strong desire to aid any good object which is understood. The money given to charitable and religious objects is largely a result of the unpaid labours of scientific investigators in the manner already described. The fact that verifiable truth is seriously neglected, whilst millions of pounds are annually devoted in this country to the support of dogmas and doctrines, proves that the English nation is even now in a very imperfectly civilized state.