18 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



Democratic Council's Committee on Biological Research 

 have said of Pasteur's first link ? Or of Darwin's earliest 

 discovery on the larvse of the sea-mat ? At the French 

 Revolution they executed Lavoisier, the founder of 

 modern chemistry, saying, " The RepubHc has no need 

 of Savants." 



The modern treatment of cretinism and the like was 

 founded on a very technical inquiry into the function 

 of the ductless glands, and the modern treatment of 

 diphtheria and plague on a very theoretical inquiry 

 into the meaning of immunity. A few years ago 

 zoologists were laughed at, who solemnly counted the 

 hairs on the backs of flies and quarrelled over the specific 

 distinctions between one gnat and another. And could 

 there be for able-minded men a waste of time more 

 scandalous than cutting sections of the entrails of 

 ticks ? Yet it has been this sort of knowledge of flies 

 and gnats and ticks that has made it possible to open 

 up tropical Africa and complete the Panama Canal. 



The historical facts should be weighed, for there is 

 danger ahead. With a hastily educated democracy, 

 naturally, eager for immediate results, with a conven- 

 tionally educated parliament, knowing little of what 

 Science means, and not humble enough to learn, there 

 will be a tendency to starve * Pure Science,' while 

 so-called * Applied Science' is subsidised. But as Huxley 

 always insisted, " What people call AppHed Science is 

 nothing but the application of Pure Science to particular 

 classes of problems." And it must be remembered 

 that the advance of Pure Science depends on the con- 



