THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 3 
in our present civilisation of the material advantages which have 
come in the train of discovery, it would be disloyal to science itself to affect 
to depreciate them. For the most severely utilitarian result comes often as 
the result of a long and patient process of study and experiment, conducted 
on strictly scientific methods. We must recognise also the debts which pure 
science in its turn owes to industry, the impulse derived from the suggestion 
of new problems, and not least the extended scale on which experiment 
becomes possible. And a reference may appropriately be made here to the 
National Physical Laboratory, initiated mainly in the higher interests of 
industry, which by the mere pressure of the matters submitted to it is 
becoming a great institute of theoretical as well as applied science, informed 
throughout by the true spirit of research. 
But perhaps the most momentous consequences of the increased 
scientific activities of our time have been on the intellectual side. How 
profound these have been in one direction we have recently been reminded 
by the centenary of Huxley. Authority and science were at one time 
in conflict over matters entirely within the province of the latter. The 
weapons were keen, and the strife bitter. We may rejoice that these 
antagonisms are now almost obsolete ; one side has become more tolerant, 
the other less aggressive, and there is a disposition on both sides to respect 
each other’s territories. The change is even reflected in the sermons 
delivered before the Association. The quarters where we may look for 
suspicion and dislike are now different ; they are political rather than 
ecclesiastical. The habit of sober and accurate analysis which scientific 
pursuits tend to promote is not always favourable to social and economic 
theories which rest mainly on an emotional if very natural basis. Some of 
us, for instance, may remember Huxley’s merciless dissection of the 
theory of the social contract. There is hence to be traced, I think, a certain 
dumb hostility which, without venturing on open attack, looks coldly on 
scientific work except so far as it is directed to purposes of obvious and 
immediate practical utility. 
There is a more open kind of criticism to which we are exposed, which 
we cannot altogether ignore, though it again rests on a misconception of the 
true function of science. It is to be met with in quarters where we might 
fairly look for countenance and sympathy, and is expressed sometimes 
with great force, and even eloquence. The burden is one of disappointment 
and disillusion ; we even hear of the ‘ bankruptcy of science.’ It’ seems to 
be suggested that science has at one time or other held out promises which 
it has been impotent to fulfil; that vague but alluring hopes which it has 
B2 
