426 



NA TURE 



[September 22, 1923 



have he-en better than others. Sir I^nthal Cheatlc 

 realises that a man can l>c a good Minister of Health 

 and a had political tul)-thumjH'r, or a great doctor and 

 a l)ad Minister of Health. He realises that the member^ 

 (if the medical profession actually in the House of 

 Commons, and availalile for so great a post, are very 

 limited in number, and that occasions may arise when 

 the kind of man wanted would have no seat. Mo.st of 

 the medical meiiil>ers of the present Parliament are 

 there because, first or last, they are politicians, and 

 between them they represent every party opinion in 

 the House. They are not there because politics is 

 the high road to professional advancement. It is not. 

 It is a hobby for medical men who are also men of 

 leisure, the politically minded representatives of 

 politically minded constituencies, who, happily, bring 

 into the deliberations of Parliament, nevertheless, a 

 wealth of special knowledge valuable to the com- 

 munity. 



We fail to see in any one of these circumstances an 

 irremediable defect in medical representation or an 

 insuperable barrier to the appointment of a Minister 

 aljle to direct the first steps of the nation along the 

 pathway to a socially organised health and fitness. 

 But that path is not one of forensic argument. It is 

 one of vision and discovery, possible only to him whose 

 mind is well prepared for the germination of the creative 

 idea by long and close familiarity with the discipline 

 of his science at first hand. Nor must he be sunk 

 beneath the weight of problems of policy and adminis- 

 tration foreign to his office, or deprived of jurisdiction 

 essential to its unity. Sir Lenthal Cheatle is right 

 in asserting that the truth, dignity, and force of the 

 public utterances of such an office would themselves 

 advance the cause of health and instruct and benefit 

 mankind. The requisite ability is one that is typically 

 British, exemplified in ever)^ department of our Colonial 

 administration, and particularly in the rise of the 

 science of tropical medicine, which is state medicine, 

 under the guidance of British workers. 



Possibly it is true that the medical profession itself, 

 having arrived at a clear perception of its functions 

 in modern social life, has not realised how it can make 

 them properly effective. But this opens up questions 

 of great complexity concerning professional and public 

 psychology, both separately and in relation to each 

 other. The pendulum of popular opinion concerning 

 medical men swings from excess to excess through 

 ignorance. In moments of personal thankfulness a 

 doctor is a saint ; in moments of collective contempla- 

 tion he is sometimes worse, but never better than a 

 wordy fool. The people have invented proverbs 

 about doctors, as they have invented proverbs about 

 everything they distrust : proverbs about their dififer- 



NO. 2812, VOL. I 12] 



ing and about their mistakes. But let a man go to 

 his doctor, or his doctor come to him — a sort of re- 

 conciliation occurs. It Ls a wider thing than it looks, 

 for at heart it i^ i reconciliation betv asd 



science. The burden of achieving that ^arnc r< . < n 

 ciliation in politics must fall mainly on the shouki- r^ 

 of the medical profe.ssion. Its members we should 

 describe at present as inarticulate rather than dumb, 

 for the medical profession is, after all, a thing of vast 

 subdivisions. Medical science and the profession are 

 not interchangeable terms, and the battle is not the 

 doctors' alone, but theirs for science and the advance- 

 ment of social life. 



Time lived and Time represented. 



Durie et simulianHU : a propos de la thiorie d' Einstein. 

 Par Henri Bergson. (Biblioth^que de Philosophie 

 contemporaine.) Deuxi^me edition, augment''. 

 Pp. x + 289. (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1923.) 8 fraii.s 

 net. 



WHEN M. Bergson published the original edition 

 of this book last year, he refused to allow its 

 translation because he regarded the work as tenta- 

 tive. It was the result of a special study, which had 

 required a setting aside of purely philosophical research 

 in order to concentrate on mathematical problems. 

 The effect of his intervention in the relativist contro- 

 versy, which he recognised to be vital in its bearing 

 on the future of mathematics and metaphysics, could 

 not be foreseen. He has now published a second 

 edition, and while he has not found it necessar>' to 

 revise or alter or modify the first, he has added three 

 appendices, which not only greatly enhance the value, 

 but also enable him in a most striking way to reconcile, 

 and bring into harmony, his theory of time as funda- 

 mental reality, I'etoffe meme de I'univers (" il n'y a 

 pas d'etoffe plus resistante ni plus substantielle "), 

 with the principle of relativity, according to which 

 time is a variable coefficient, entering with variable 

 spatial coefficients into infinite systems of reference. . 



The first edition of the book was reviewed in Nature 

 of October 14, 1922. The review led to a correspond- 

 ence which is interesting in the fact that it concerned 

 the problem which has called for the new matter in 

 the second edition. This new matter is contained, 

 as we have said, in three appendices, which, though 

 each is complete with its own separate topic, are 

 sequential in the argument and cumulati\e in force. 

 The first deals with the interesting paradox, "Le 

 voyage en boulet." A very striking mathematical 

 demonstration of it is furnished in a letter addressed 

 to M. Bergson, " par un physicien des plus distingues," 

 which he quotes in full. Two obser\'ers, Peter and 



