5o6 



NATURE 



[June i6, 192 i 



solution was not always easy, but at any rate it was 

 made much easier. Education was the great hope of 

 the future, and in that education science must play a 

 prominent part. 



The annual report of the executive committee 

 having been adopted, on the proposition of Lord 

 Avebury, seconded by Sir John Cockburn, Dean Inge 

 delivered a striking address entitled "The Road to 

 Ruin and the Way Out." It was obvious, he said, 

 that the first half of the subject was easier than the 

 second. The road to ruin was the road along which 

 we were travelling ; the way out was not easy to 

 find, and possibly difficult to follow. It was useless 

 to utter mere jeremiads, and it took a great deal to 

 destroy a powerful nation. Medical science taught 

 that the more acute and violent the disease, the 

 more vigorous was the production of anti-toxins, and 

 it added the comforting assurance that if the con- 

 stitution survived an invasion of poisonous microbes 

 the patient would probably have acquired immunity 

 for a considerable time to come against that particular 

 disease. Perhaps it might be so in our social and 

 political life. Very few politicians and sociologists 

 allowed nearly enough for the swing of the pendulum. 

 The false doctrine of continuous progress had led 

 most of us to treat the flowing tide as a permanent 

 encroachment of the sea. The direction in which the 

 tide was flowing was called "progress," the opposite 

 direction "reaction." History should have taught us 

 better. Political experiments were welcomed en- 

 thusiastically until they had been tried ; when they 

 were in operation disillusionment began at once. The 

 more revolutionary the change, the quicker was the 

 process of conversion, so that it was almost a 

 commonplace that the young firebrands of a revolu- 

 tionary age — men like Wordsworth, Coleridge, 

 Southey, Carlyle, and Ruskin — often ended as un- 

 compromising Tories. We had not by any means 

 done with aristocracy and monarch}^ in Europe. 

 Human nature remained the same, and it tried one 

 way after another to misgovern itself and mismanage 

 its affairs. The first thing necessai:y was diagnosis. 

 It was obvious that the most ruinous feature of 

 modern society was the strike. This country de- 

 pended for its very existence on being able to export 

 manufactures to pay for imported food, and our 

 power of exporting manufactures was rapidly dis- 

 appearing. No scheme of "redistributing" property, 

 however drastic and iniquitous, could have the 

 slightest effect in preventing the starvation of a 

 country which could not feed itself and would not 

 work under economic conditions. There were two 

 forces available which could bring a country out of 

 <the worst of holes. These were science and religion. 

 Thev in that Guild were chiefly concerned in the 

 application of scientific knowledge and scientific 

 method to British industry. We were always abusing 

 ourselves for being behind the time — so unlike the 

 Germans, for example. That was the British lion's 

 little way ; he was always lashing himself with his 

 tail and calling himself a fool and a slacker, until 

 foreign nations came to believe him. W^hen they 

 tried conclusions with him they found that he was- 

 bv no means such a fool as he looked, and they com- 

 plained that it was very unfair. Still, he had no 

 doubt that this Guild would continue to find plenty 

 to do. But behind scientific method there was some- 

 thing deeper — scientific faith and the scientific temper. 

 They must not shut their eyes to the fact that science 

 had many enemies ; science as such was disliked by 

 many people. But science had one enormous advan- 

 tage over its old enemies — it had the nature of things 

 on its side, and wherever it was disregarded and dis- 

 obeyed it did not talk, but struck. Dame Nature was 

 a good teacher, but her fees were high. It was 

 NO. 2694, VOL. 107] 



worth a great deal to impart the scientific way of 

 looking at things — the scientific conscience (should he 

 call it?) in education. He was himself an enthusiastic 

 humanist, and he should be sorry indeed if science 

 were to oust humanism in our education ; he should 

 be sorry for the sake of science itself, for a man 

 could scarcely be a scientific worker without being 

 also a humanist ; but science we must have as a part 

 of everyday training. Only he would suggest that 

 the faith and temper and conscience of science were 

 a more important acquisition than any mere facts. 

 We wanted to teach the next generation to respect 

 all facts wherever they might find them. .\ scientific 

 training marked a man who would not comnait his 

 soul and his conscience to the keeping of anyone, 

 whether priest or Labour official. We needed this 

 independence badly ; some whole classes viere in 

 danger of losing it. The other force that might help 

 us out of the mud was religion or, as he should prefer 

 to say, Christianity. The fundamental message of 

 Christianity was that we must get our values right, 

 and that if we got our values right nothing else 

 would be seriously wrong. Science was daughter to 

 one of the absolute and eternal values— truth ; art 

 paid its homage to another- — beauty ; and morality to 

 the third — goodness. Religion consecrated and en- 

 deavoured to humanise those three absolute values 

 which it regarded as revelations of the nature and 

 character of God. Our generation might be very stiff- 

 necked and perverse, but sooner or later wisdom 

 would be justified of her children. They must just go 

 on giving their testimony, whether men would hear 

 or whether they would forbear. "The mills of God 

 grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small." 



Sir Richard A. S. Redmayne (chairman of the 

 Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau) next spoke on 

 "The Importance of Research in the Development 

 of the Mineral Industries." He remarked that the 

 cessation of hostilities was succeeded almost at once 

 by a period of feverish industrial activity — it would 

 be erroneous to apply the words "general prosperity" 

 — to be followed by a cycle of great depression. The 

 demand for goods was great, but production was 

 falling. What was the explanation? It lay, he 

 thought, in a combination of circumstances : — (i) A 

 feeling of insecurity due to unsettled political and 

 financial conditions. Hence a disposition to conserve 

 rather than to utilise in commercial ventures such 

 capital as is available. (2) The incidence of the rate 

 of exchange. (3) The high cost of production con- 

 sequent on the high cost of living and the higher 

 standard of comfort demanded by the labouring classes 

 (and rightly so demanded) than formerly obtained. 

 (4) The lower, and still apparently decreasing, pro- 

 ductive power of Labour. The first two conditions 

 would in part right themselves in process of time as 

 the various political problems were solved, or partly 

 solved, and rates of exchange would then tend 

 towards the normal ; but a very great deal depended 

 upon the last two conditions, as the future position 

 of production was not easy to forecast. Higher and 

 cheaper production were difficult desiderata to obtain 

 in view of the high rate of wages now ruling and the 

 diminishment in working time either achieved or 

 claimed by the manual workers of the day, and these 

 were demands which were not likely to show much 

 abatement in the future. What was the solution? 

 The answer he ventured to give was "research,'' to 

 discover by research cheaper means of production, 

 and, by research, to create new outlets. How should 

 research be organised and carried, out? Empirical 

 investigations must be based upon a scientific founda- 

 tion if they were to be of ultimate and practical value. 

 It had, however, been well said that if an investigator 

 did not possess the inventive as well as the purely 



