REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1919. 23 



thus far by the Institution. It is remarkable also for the care 

 taken by the author and by his collaborators to secure precision 

 and correctness, a number of experts having assisted in the ardu- 

 ous labors of verification required during the process of printing. 



It is the object of science primarily to find answers to the 

 question ''How?" rather than to the question ''Why?"; or, to 

 seek to describe phenomena rather than to try to explain them. 

 Words, however, constitute, in general, a rather imperfect 

 medium for the communication of ideas, and as a consequence 

 the intellectual world, like the political world, often finds itself 

 involved in misunderstandings which lead to nothing better 

 than that metaphorical and degenerate form of energy called 

 the heat of controversy. Thus, about a half-century ago there 

 arose, as we now see, a quite needlessly bitter discussion over 

 the question whether and to what extent the phenomena of life 

 may be traced back to the properties of matter with which 

 they are obviously intimately associated. The new science of 

 biology was just then arising and the limitations of its domain 

 and the conditions of its existence and development were widely 

 disputed, as is best shown probably by the lay sermon of Huxley, 

 delivered at Edinburgh, November 8, 1868, "On the Physical 

 Basis of Life." In this remarkable address Huxley defines, with 

 prophetic clearness and completeness, the Hmitations and the 

 conditions in question and these, as he defined them, are now 

 generally admitted as essential to all fruitful inquiry. More- 

 over, the principles expounded by Huxley have been justified in 

 amplest measure by the extraordinary progress since accom- 

 plished, not only in biology, but in all the physical sciences. 



It is a good fortune for a research establishment to have been 

 founded during the course of this progress and to be able to take 

 part in it; and although the publications of the Institution are 

 not restricted to any domain of learning, a considerable number 

 of them bear directly or indirectly on this profoundly interesting 

 and increasingly important problem of "the physical basis of 

 Ufe." The past year has been unusually productive in this 

 line, for no less than a dozen volumes have been added to the 

 Institution's series of contributions to evolution, heredity, and 

 the application of thermodynamics to the interpretation of 



