increase of knowledge. So far as the interests of any community or
of the world at large are concerned, it is quite indifferent where
knowledge may be acquired, because, when once acquired and made
public, it is free to the world. The drawbacks suffered by other
centres would be no greater than those suffered by our Western
cities, because all the great departments of the government are
situated at a single distant point. Strong arguments could
doubtless be made for locating some of these departments in the
Far West, in the Mississippi Valley, or in various cities of the
Atlantic coast; but every one knows that any local advantages thus
gained would be of no importance compared with the loss of that
administrative efficiency which is essential to the whole country.

There is, therefore, no real danger from centralization. The
actual danger is rather in the opposite direction; that the
sentiment against concentrating research will prove to operate too
strongly. There is a feeling that it is rather better to leave
every investigator where he chances to be at the moment, a feeling
which sometimes finds expression in the apothegm that we cannot
transplant a genius. That such a proposition should find
acceptance affords a striking example of the readiness of men to
accept a euphonious phrase without inquiring whether the facts
support the doctrine which it enunciates. The fact is that many,
perhaps the majority, of the great scientific investigators of
this and of former times have done their best work through being
transplanted. As soon as the enlightened monarchs of Europe felt
the importance of making their capitals great centres of learning,
they began to invite eminent men of other countries to their own.
Lagrange was an Italian transplanted to Paris, as a member of the
Academy of Sciences, after he had shown his powers in his native