PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 489 
has worked in faith purely for the love of knowledge, and has enriched mankind 
with the fruits of his labours; but this altruistic attribute is undergoing a 
change. Scientific workers are beginning to ask what the community owes to 
them, and what use has been made of the talents entrusted to it. They have 
created stores of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and of power unlimited, 
and these resources have been used to convert beautiful countrysides into 
grimy centres of industrialism, and to construct weapons of death of such 
diabolical character that civilised man ought to hang his head in shame at 
their use. 
Mankind has, indeed, proved itself unworthy of the gifts which science has 
placed at its disposal, with the result that squalid surroundings and squandered 
life are the characteristics of modern Western civilisation, instead of social 
conditions and ethical ideals superior to those of any other epoch. Responsi- 
bility for this does not lie with scientific discoverers, but with statesmen and 
democracy. Like the gifts of God, those of science can be made either a 
blessing or a curse, to glorify the human race or to destroy it; and upon 
civilised man himself rests the decision as to the course to follow. With science 
as an ally, and the citadels of ignorance and self ag the objective, he can 
transform the world, but if he neglects the guidance which knowledge can 
give, and prefers to be led by the phrases of rhetoricians, this planet will become 
a place of dust and ashes. 
Unsatisfactory social conditions are not a necessary consequence of the 
advance of science, but of incapacity to use it rightly. Whatever may be said 
of captains of industry or princes of commerce, scientific men themselves cannot 
be accused of amassing riches at the expense of labour, or of having neglected 
to put into force the laws of healthy social life. Power—financial and political— 
has been in the hands of people who know nothing of science, not even that 
of man himself, and it is they who should be arraigned at the bar of public 
justice for their failure to use for the welfare of all the scientific knowledge 
offered to all. Science should dissociate itself entirely from those who have 
thus abused its favours, and not permit the public to believe it is the em- 
blem of all that is grcss and material and destructive in modern civilisation. 
There was a time when intelligent working men idealised science; now they 
mostly regard it with distrust or are unmoved by its aims, believing it to 
be part of a soul-destroying economic system. The obligation is upon men of 
science to restore the former feeling by removing their academic robes and 
entering into social movements as citizens whose motives are above suspicion 
and whose knowledge is at the service of the community for the promotion of 
the greatest good. The public mind has yet to understand that science is the 
pituitary body of the social organism, and without it there can be no healthy 
growth in modern life, mentally or physically. 
This Conference of Delegates provides the most appropriate platform of 
all those offered by the British Association from which a message of exhortation 
may be given. There are now 130 Corresponding Societies of the Association, 
with a total membership of about 52,000, and their representatives should every 
year go back not only strong with zeal for new knowledge, but also as ministers 
filled with the sense of duty to inspire others to trust in it. In mechanics 
work is not considered to be done until the point of application of the force 
is moved; and knowledge, like energy, is of no practical value unless it is 
dynamic. The scientific society which shuts itself up in a house where a 
favoured few can contemplate its intellectual riches is no better than a group 
of misers in its relations to the community around it. The time has come 
for a crusade which will plant the flag of scientific truth in a bold position 
1921 Lb & 
