from the Standpoint of Science 15 



nation ; then it is the codified experience 

 and the organized brain-power which tell in 

 the struggle.* 



It was consciousness of this lack of real 

 insight not in one, but in many depart- 

 ments of national life which gave an abiding 

 gloom to the depression arising from our 

 difficulties at the commencement of the year. 

 It was not only the need of * somehow 

 muddling through ' this matter, but the 

 problem of how we were to provide against 

 graver crises in the future, which depressed 

 many. How was the nation's own fault to be 

 brought home to it? How could it become a 

 more highly-organized whole, profiting to the 

 full by such brains as our race possesses ? 

 Such thoughts as these, rather than the 

 purely intellectual problems of science, filled 

 my mind when your invitation to lecture in 

 Newcastle reached me, and they led me 

 more or less directly to try and emphasize 

 the national value of science. 



* A further great object-lesson in these truths has 

 been since provided by the war in the Far East. But 

 we have been slow to realize the close resemblance 

 between the sources of our own and of the Russian 

 failure. 



