ause, 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 country. His
great contemporary, Euler, was a Swiss, transplanted first to St.
Petersburg, then invited by Frederick the Great to become a member of
the Berlin Academy, then again attracted to St. Petersburg. Huyghens
was transplanted from his native country to Paris. Agassiz was an
exotic, brought among us from Switzerland, whose activity during the
generation he passed among us was as great and effective as at any time
of his life. On the Continent, outside of France, the most eminent
professors in the universities have been and still are brought from
distant points. So numerous are the cases of which these are examples
that it would be more in accord with the facts to claim that it is only
by transplanting a genius that we stimulate him to his best