BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1365 



and carrying out their main inventions on yet greater scale. So for 

 their recent Centenary Celebration, they wisely elected as president 

 and spokesman Sir Alfred Ewing, as their most experienced and 

 widely cultivated mind, one long eminent in engineering and physical 

 science, and of unique career in the War, yet also in education as 

 well, and from that of the Navy, to the principalship of a great 

 University. Hence the best possible presidential address; and on 

 the right subject for our recalling here, the survey of "A Century of 

 Progress". Yet when this masterly discourse, with all its legitimate 

 pride of commemoration of notable advances, comes to discuss the 

 main social results of this upon its century, it sounds as deep a 

 note of pessimism as ever did Carlyle, Emerson, and Ruskin half a 

 century ago and more in fact, practically renewing these, and going 

 beyond them. "For it is the engineer who, in the course of his 

 labours to promote the comfort and convenience of man, has put 

 into man's unchecked and careless hand a monstrous possibility of 

 ruin." Yet while recognising how such material progress has so far 

 outstripped the ethical progress of the race, and even looking around 

 for such needed agencies, he can but vaguely hope and grope for 

 them; not realising that even in his own University, let alone 

 others, and the larger thinking and working world beyond — and 

 in this, and not least, the women — many are nearing the needed 

 answer, since more and more clearly raising its question, even to 

 the cry — Beyond all this Mechanism and War, how find the way 

 to Life, and Peace ? And our answer is — through life ! 



Busy though are biologists and psychologists with their respective 

 problems, and these so numerous and intricate that these bulky 

 volumes can be but a very incomplete introduction to them, even 

 from the biological side, it is thus time for them to be facing this 

 widest of general questions. How best do this? First of all through 

 realising that as the fullest life of any organism is that which best 

 expresses and advances the life of its species, so we workers on bio- 

 psychologic levels fall short, until we subserve the social life, which 

 in turn justifies and stimulates our labours, and utilises them. 



Briefly outlining then this outlook, and leaving its detailed argu- 

 ment to our sociological papers, our essential proposition is — that 

 this incipiently Neotechnic Industrial phase, still fixed by its 

 mechanistic and pecuniary culture, and thus responsible to physical 

 and arithmetical science wellnigh alone, has now to be increasingly 

 guided into Bio-technic service, and by Psycho-biologic thought; so 

 with subordination of its struggle for existence at all levels, as from 

 individual business to international and civil War. And this by 

 turning towards the Culture of Existence, and so with renewal of 

 that life- tending advance — itself preponderatingly feminine, yet 

 masculine too — ^which has been clearly manifested from pre-history 

 onwards, and in varying measure up to this day, and has also been 



