18 president's address. 



we wish to communicate its results to others, presents not only the 

 ordinary difficulties of translation but reveals faults in the perfection 

 or sequence of the images. Only when tiie logic of words finally 

 coincides with the logic of images do we attain that feeling of con- 

 fidence which makes us certain that our results are correct. 



A more detailed examination of the instinctive predilections of a 

 child would, I think, confirm Poincar^'s conclusion that a decided pre- 

 ference for one subject is in the main due to an unconscious appeal lo 

 his emotions. It should be remembered, however, that the second step 

 of Poincar^'s philosophy is as important as the first. The mere 

 emotional impulse would die out quickly, if it were not supplemented 

 by the gratification experienced on discovering that the .=iearch for 

 the beautiful leads us to results which satisfy our intellect as well as 

 our emotions. There may still be bifurcations in the second portion of 

 the road. Some may rest content with achieving something that 

 supplies the material needs of humanity, others may be inspired to 

 search for the deeper meaning of our existence. 



There remains therefore some justification for the question why 

 we persist in studying science apart from the mere intellectual pleasure 

 it gives us. It was once a popular fallacy to assume that the laws oi 

 Nature constituted an explanation of the phenomena to which they 

 applied, and people then attached importance to the belief that 

 we could gauge the mind of the Creator by means of the laws which 

 govern the material world, just as we might trace the purpose of a 

 human legislator in an Act of Parliament. As this archaic interpreta- 

 tion was abandoned, philosophers went, in accordance with what 

 politicians call the swing of the pendulum, to the other extreme. We 

 can explain nothing, they said — in fact, we can know nothing — all we 

 can do is to record facts. This modesty was impressive and it became 

 popular. I know, at any rate, one scientific man who has acquired a great 

 reputation for wisdom by repeating sufficiently often that he knows 

 nothing, and, though his judgment may be true, this frame of mind is 

 not inspiring. As a corr^tive to the older visionary claims, which centred 

 round the meaning of the word ' explain,' the view that the first task 

 of science is to record facts has no doubt had a good influence. 

 Kirchhoff laid it down definitely that the object of science is to describe 

 Nature, but he did not thereby mean that it should be confined to 

 recording detached observations : this would be the dullest and most 

 unscientific procedure. Description, in the sense in which Kirchhoff 

 uses it, consists in forming a comprehensive statement gathering together 

 what, till then, was only a disconnected jumble of facts. Thus the 

 apparently quite irregular motions of the planets as observed from 

 tlie earth were first collected in tabular form. This was a necessary 



