328 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Association brings together representatives of all the sciences 

 and some of the arts, it invites the public to attend ; it ought 

 then to speak of science in its broad and general aspects where 

 all interests meet. If we accept this point of view there are two 

 directions in which reform is called for. 



Let us begin with the Presidential Address, because here the 

 question of duty to the public comes to a head. At the outset the 

 reader must bear in mind that no person is being criticised, only 

 a system. Now every one of us wants to see science of more 

 account in the affairs of the nation ; we believe that its results 

 would be valuable, we believe still more that its method would 

 be fruitful in the governing class just as its discipline is necessary 

 to the members of a democratic state. Once in each year Science 

 is put in the chair and given a chance of addressing the whole 

 English-speaking people. Every newspaper of any standing, at 

 home or in the Colonies, reports the President's Address to the 

 British Association, and every newspaper will give it a leader 

 if it possibly can make one up on the text supplied. It is an 

 unrivalled opportunity; yet some unwritten tradition has 

 impelled President after President to a minute and technical 

 discourse on his own special branch of science. We know our 

 President of this year has interests in other camps and has 

 achieved distinction in very different fields than that of pure 

 science, yet led by precedent he ignored the public and de- 

 liberately spoke to some score of geologists in the room and 

 a few hundreds outside. No one wants mere popularising from 

 our President, still less flap-doodle about science and religion 

 and the Empire ; there is, however, a plane on which all modes 

 of thought meet and we may respectfully ask our presidents to 

 set out to show us in some way how their subject merges in the 

 general stream of opinion and how it bears upon life. If it 

 cannot do this, science is either a tool for the service of some 

 mechanic art or an intellectual blind alley, like learning Basque 

 or constructing Greek verses, fascinating to its devotees but 

 having no place in the history of the mind. Indeed the result 

 of giving such prominence to purely technical addresses is 

 disastrous ; the man in the street may be impressed by the 

 revelation of his own ignorance but those people whose opinions 

 do count, who in this country be it remembered have received 

 a literary training, are confirmed in their contemptuous belief 

 that men of science are mere grammarians, useful perhaps in 



