PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION D. 95' 



tion. The causes for these deplorable conditions are perfectly 

 obvious, but we have not time now nor would it be our province 

 to discuss them. Nevertheless, our social and educational prob- 

 lems*"have suffered too long already at the hands of the biologically 

 untrained, while surely in the whole matter of human heredity 

 or eugenics the biologist is clearly the one to lead the way. 



A League of Nations has been launched by learned and 

 earnest men as a means of settling disputes and ending wars. 

 Unfortunately these learned and earnest men who launched this 

 beautiful idea — for it is beautiful — were not too well acquainted 

 with biology. They forgot the environment, they proceeded too 

 quickly and too idealistically, they forgot human nature, they 

 forgot the protoplasm or living substance in their eagerness to* 

 mould an ideal environment. Man is an animal and he is subject 

 to the same laws as other animals. Nations and peoples must be 

 educated slowly and carefully, yet naturally, to respond to such 

 an ideal conception. A mere committee, comfortably seated in 

 armchairs, with a capable secretariat and careful agendas for meet- 

 ings, realises little or nothing of the action and reaction of living 

 substance and environment. Lawyers and politicians, unfor- 

 tunately, scarcely realise this, almost the fundamental basis of 

 life. Why do not the Supreme Council, or the League of Nations, 

 or whatever other Council is really concerned — unfortunately there 

 are too many of these exalted bodies — realise that in the matter 

 of, say, Upper Silesia, they should give a decision and avoid delay 

 and so not allow this irritant to remain in Europe. One of the 

 characteristics of living matter is response to stimuli, and it is 

 ealled irritability. The simple characteristics of living matter 

 need to be studied by rulers, ambassadors, administrators, lawyers. 

 I venture to think that had all the representatives on the Council 

 of the League of Nations a knowledge of the reactions of a speck 

 of living matter like an Amoeba, inhabiting pond water, to stimuli, 

 such as a drop of weak acetic acid, it would probably do more good 

 to the world than all the notes and pious resolutions ever com- 

 posed. Whitehead has already written of the likelihood of men of 

 science being called, from their laboratories to regenerate the State. 

 We hear much of how Science won the war. We may possibly 

 hear of how science is making the world a better place to live in, 

 but do we clearly understand that in scarcely any part of the 

 British Empire are scientists present in the Cabinet ? 



Again, man is said to differ from the so-called brute creation 

 by the possession of consciousness as opposed to instinct, in other 

 words, by being capable of conscious intelligent action leading to 

 higher aspirations or ideals. In the past these higher ideals have 

 often been called religion. To-day we hear insistently about the 

 workers needing to obtain a higher standard of living. In prac- 

 tice this higher standard of living for many is merely undisciplined 

 amusement, indulgence in luxuries and excitement, with the 

 higher mental faculties starved. After a time the excitement tires 

 the poor living substance, and dissatisfaction ensues with all its 

 attendant ills and misfortunes. It cannot be doubted that religion 



