president's address. II 



onlv have justified complaint in the latter case would have been 

 conclusive proof that public money was being put to a worse 

 purpose otherwise. A manifest danger, however, besets the 

 discriminators between rival schemes, it being far from easy to 

 foresee what particular research will prove frttitful of practical 

 applications and what will not. How often has one seen the 

 pure mathematics of to-day change into the applied mathe- 

 matics of to-morrow, and the previously despised insect-collec- 

 tor be hailed shortly afterwards as a benefactor of mankind ! 

 All that one can hope for is that those with whom such deci- 

 sions rest will always take the best advice available. Of recent 

 years European Governments have tended more and more in 

 such cases to consult their great leading scientific corporations : 

 the Government of the Union may in like manner find our own 

 Royal Society a willing and useful guide. I would merely add 

 as a fact worth ruminating on that the States wdiich have dif- 

 ferentiated least between pure and applied science are the 

 States which lead the world to-day. 



While thus whole-heartedly urging the great importance of 

 science on those who may be called to administer the affairs 

 of state, it would be unfair to ignore the difficulties and 

 troubles which w-ell-disposed administrators have experienced 

 in their dealings with scientific men. or " experts," as they 

 prefer to call them. The complaint of the most moderate of 

 these critics is that the man of science is normally unpractical, 

 and that his value to the State is marred by eccentricities due 

 to over-study or excessive specialization; and those critics who 

 are not moderate and who love a biting phrase better than 

 strict accuracy, say that when he is not an astute self-seeker he 

 is either a mooning pedant or a pernicious crank. Now, in 

 regard to this I should first wish to ask whether it be not the 

 case that the failure of the scientific expert is often due to 

 causes wholly outside himself. Time and again one has seen 

 a man chosen for his high qualifications in a special branch of 

 knowledge, and then set. not to the work of extending this 

 knowledge by investigation, but to the absolutely diverse work 

 of " running " a Government office or carrying on a purely 

 business undertaking. Failure, nine times out of ten, is thus 

 inevitable : so rare is it to find the successful student and the 

 capable administrator combined in one. Surely it is the merest 

 commonsense to urge that if both sets of qualifications be wanted 

 reasonable care should be taken either that they are possessed 

 by the same individual, or that a practicable arrangement in- 

 volving their separation has been previously devised. In the 

 next place, one naturally asks whethe it be not the case that the 

 scientist's faults are no more conspicuous than those discernible 

 in men of other walks of life; whether the eccentricities of his 

 critics are one whit more innocent than his own; and whether, 

 generally, there be not at least as much truth in the companion 

 picture of that most unfortunate product of modern public 

 life, the pushful, noisome sciolist, who has to acquire merit 

 with his party by fair means or foul, and who in pursuit of this 

 will get up the technical glossary of a science in a night, and 



