professoriate

A satirical work, published in 1721, speaks of the chairs which were allowed to exist as habitually filled by persons utterly incompetent; and though we cannot tell how far to believe its details, something of the kind must be supposed to have taken place in order to account for the discredit into which the Professoriate fell, and from which it can scarcely be said to have recovered.

A generation that has been reared on the ideas involved in the conservation of energy can hardly understand the position of science when Lord Kelvin began his professoriate.