Once again, what can we do?

No small proportion of the population of a modern community are
alumni of some institution of higher learning, and one thing
that these can do is to see to it by every means in their power
that some measure of the spirit of academic freedom is
preserved in their alma mater. That the spirit of inquiry and
research is not merely tolerated therein but fostered and
substantially supported, morally and financially.

As members of the body politic, we can assist the development
of science in two ways. Firstly, by doing each our individual
part towards ensuring that endowment for the university must
provide not only for "teaching adolescents the rudiments of
Greek and Latin" and erecting imposing buildings, but also for
the furtherance of scientific research. The public readily
appreciates a great educational mill for the manufacture of
mediocre learning, and it always appreciates a showy building,
but it is slow to realize that that which urgently and at all
times needs endowment is experimental research.

Secondly, it is vital that public sentiment should be educated
to the point of providing the legal machinery whereby some
proportion, no matter how small, of the wealth which science
pours into the lap of the community, shall return automatically
to the support and expansion of scientific research. The
collection of a tax upon the profits accruing from inventions
(which are all ultimately if indirectly results of scientific
advances) and the devotion of the proceeds from this tax to the
furtherance of research would not only be a policy of wisdom in