viii PREFACE 



time-serving compromise. It may be recalled that 

 scientific men have, for nearly a century, pointed out 

 the dangers to the nation of the traditional school 

 and university training, disastrous especially in that 

 it embraces even those who are to be its rulers and 

 statesmen. 



Naturally, radioactivity and its conclusions as 

 to the immanence and illimitableness of natural 

 energy, still confused in orthodox religions with the 

 Deity, enter largely into the subject-matter, and I 

 have included two articles, giving some more con- 

 nected account of these advances. The first, "The 

 Evolution of Matter," is intended for the general 

 reader, and the second, "The Conception of the 

 Chemical Element as enlarged by the Study of 

 Radioactive Change," for students of chemistry, who 

 may desire to acquaint themselves further with these 

 developments. 



In a collection of separate and self-contained 

 articles such as this, some repetition is unavoidable, 

 but I have attempted to minimise it. I trust, in so 

 far as I have not been successful, that it may be 

 pardoned in view of the hitherto almost complete 

 neglect by the intellectual world of the theme, for 

 philosophies "of lighter and less solid wood." 



I have included, as an appendix, some articles and 

 reports bearing on certain definite charges which I 

 have made, and which have remained unanswered, of 

 the financial treatment of science by the Carnegie 

 Trustees for the Universities of Scotland, and the 

 University of Aberdeen. These are specific instances 

 of what it would be possible to multiply no doubt 

 indefinitely, and I include them, in the first place, to 

 justify the complaint that something more than mere 

 neglect of science by the British nation is involved, 

 and that, in the educational institutions and govern- 

 ment of this country, science has not received, nor is 



