SCIENCE AND MORALS 



I. SCIENCE AND MORALS 



I. THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE 



IN the days before the war the Annual 

 Address delivered by the President of 

 the British Association was wont to excite 

 at least a mild interest in the breasts of the read- 

 ing public. It was a kind of Encyclical from the 

 reigning pontiff of science, and since that poten- 

 tate changed every year there was some uncer- 

 tainty as to his subject and its treatment, and 

 there was this further piquant attraction, wanting 

 in other and better-known Encyclicals, that the 

 address of one year might not merely contradict 

 but might even exhibit a lofty contempt for that 

 or for those which had immediately preceded it. 

 During the three years immediately preceding 

 the war we had excellent examples of all these 

 things. In the first of them we were treated to 

 a somewhat belated utterance in opposition to 

 Vitalism. Its arguments were mostly based upon 

 what even to the tyro in chemistry seemed to 

 be rather shaky foundations. Such indeed they 

 proved to be, since the deductions drawn from 



