PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. II 



these reflections to be misunderstood. A mere cultivation of 

 science is hopeless.ly inadequate to ensure the best results. If we 

 never realised this before, we should certainly be positive of it 

 now. South Africa, I trust, will have something more than mere 

 organised science. G. K. Chesterton has said that the weakness 

 of Prussian organisation is that it is destitute of all that is or- 

 ganic. An organ is not at best, he says, when it is a barrel organ. 



Precisely what makes the difference between the mechanical and the 

 organic is the presence throughout the system of that invisible vital 

 principle which we call in the lower organisms " life," and in the higher 

 organisms " soul." 



I have spoken about the symptoms of inertia: to a certain 

 extent it has been generally admitted that the diagnosis is correct, 

 and efforts are being made to apply remedies, but it is to be 

 feared that in some cases, even where the heart has been put 

 right, the head is still woefully wrong. Prof. W. J. Pope has 

 wisely insisted that public opinion should be educated to realise 

 that concentration upon scientific progress, urgent in time of war, 

 is also vital in time of peace*. If such be not done, legislators 

 and administrative bodies will be in danger of flying off at a 

 tangent when a crisis occurs, and when a nation thus loses its 

 head, panic legislation sometimes results : measures are adopted 

 which effect more harm than good. We. I trust, are not in such 

 a condition now. Nationally, our heads may be cool enough, but 

 the dawning sensation that our nurture of science has been de- 

 fective and is in urgent need of buttressing has roused in us a 

 zeal which, at times, I fear, is not altogether according to know- 

 ledge, and that blessed word " research " is again brought for- 

 ward, dazzling the uninitiated with the fancy that it is a kind 

 of Kut-el-amara, by the taking of which we may expect to gain 

 control of all Mesopotamia. 



Is it consistent — not to say dignified — on the part of a nation 

 and its rulers to treat science with apathy, and starve scientific 

 investigators in days of ease and plenty, and then to turn to 

 them with wringing hands when smitten by panic? Some years 

 after I was first appointed to a position under the Government 

 of the Cape Colony, a far-seeing permanent head of the Minis- 

 terial Department to which I then belonged, said to me, " If I 

 could have had my way, twelve chemists would have been ap- 

 pointed instead of one." If nothing more than the mere training 

 of men for such posts had then been begun, and appointments 

 made five or six years later, a vast amount of useful work 

 accomplished would now stand to the country's credit. Now 

 turn to another picture. When the South-West African Cam- 

 paign was undertaken, and there were fears of the water supplies 

 being poisoned, and there was a dearth of chemists, a score of 

 men were sent helter-skelter into my laboratory one day, and I 

 gave them an hour's experimental lecture on testing for poisons, 

 after which they were attached to various units, provided with 

 the requisite appliances, and despatched to different parts of the 



* Chetn. News (1917), 202. 



D 



