Government Aid to Science

Abstract

I CANNOT but feel flattered that my letter on this subject should have been thought so dangerous as to require a leading article in the same number by way of immediate antidote, but I must beg you to allow me to correct one or two errors into which you have fallen as to the views I really hold, and which it seems I failed clearly to express. You say, you “understand Mr. Wallace to mean that the main result of cultivating science is merely the gratification of those directly engaged in the pursuit, and that they who do not take this personal interest in it derive little or no benefit from it.”