Notes and Comments. 307 
of safety, but at a time when it might have been thought 
desirable to keep open every avenue of popular instruction and 
of intelligent diversion, the galleries of our National Museum 
at Bloomsbury were entirely closed for the sake of the paltriest 
saving—three minutes, it was calculated, of the cost of the 
War to the British Treasury ! That some, indeed, were left open 
elsewhere was not so much due to the enlightened sympathy 
of our politicians, as to their alarmed interests in view of the 
volume of intelligent protest. Our friends and neighbours 
across the Channel, under incomparably greater stress, have 
acted in a very Gifferent spirit. 
SCIENCE AND EDUCATION. 
It will be a hard struggle for the friends of Science and 
Education, and the air is thick with mephitic vapours. Perhaps 
the worst economy to which we are to-day reduced by our 
former lack of preparedness is the economy of Truth. Heaven 
knows !—it may be a necessary penalty. But its results are 
evil. Vital facts tnat concern our national well-being, others 
that even effect the cause of a lasting Peace, are constantly 
suppressed by cfficial action. The negative character of the 
process at work which conceals its operation from the masses 
makes it the more insiduous. We live in a murky atmosphere 
amidst tne suggestion of the false, and there seems to be a real 
danger that the recognition of Truth as itself a Tower of Strength 
may suffer an eclipse. It is at such a time and under these 
adverse conditions that we, whose object it is to promote the 
Advancement of Science, are called upon to act. It is for us 
to see to it that the lighted torch handed down to us from the 
Ages shall be passed on with a still brighter flame. Let us 
champion the cause of Education, in the best sense of the word, 
as having regard to its spiritual as well as its scientific side. 
Let us go forward with our own tasks, unflinchingly seeking 
for the Truth, confident that, in the eternal dispensation, each 
successive generation of seekers may approach nearer to the 
goal.’ 
ORGANISATION OF THOUGHT. 
Prof. A. N. Whitehead, in his address to the Mathematical 
and Physical Science Section, deals with the Organisation of 
Thought. He tells us ‘It is an organisation of a certain 
type which one will endeavour to determine. Science is a 
river with two sources, the practical source and the theoretical 
source. The practical source is the desire to direct our actions 
to achieve predetermined enas. [or example, the British 
nation, fighting for justice, turns to science, which teaches it 
the importance of compounds of nitrogen. The theoretical 
source is the desire to understand. Now I am going to 
emphasise the importance of theory in science. But to avoid 
1916 Oct. 1. 
