A THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
inspired have proved delusive. It may be admitted that extravagant 
and impossible claims have sometimes been made on behalf of science, but 
never, I think, by the real leaders, who have always been most modest in 
their claims and guarded in their forecasts. It is true again that in the 
enthusiasm which attended the first sensational developments of modern 
industry hopes were conceived of a new era, where prosperity would ever — 
increase, poverty would be at least mitigated and refined, national anti- 
pathies would be reconciled. When these dreams did not swiftly come true 
there was the inevitable reaction, the idols were cast down, and science 
in general has rather unreasonably come in for its share of depreciation. 
The attitude which I have been trying to describe is put very forcibly in a 
quotation from President Wilson which I saw not long ago, though its 
date is not very recent : 
‘ Science has bred in us a spirit of experiment and a contempt for the 
past. It made us credulous of quick improvement, hopeful of discovering 
panaceas, confident of success in every new thing. . . I should fear nothing 
better than utter destruction from a revolution conceived and led in the 
scientific spirit. Science has not changed the laws of social growth or 
betterment. Science has not changed the nature of society, has not made 
history a whit easier to understand, human nature a whit easier to reform. 
It has won for us a great liberty in the physical world, a liberty from super- 
stitious fear and from disease, a freedom to use nature as a familiar servant ; 
but it has not freed us from ourselves.’ 
The tone is one of bitter disillusion, but we may ask why should 
science, as we understand it, be held responsible for the failure of hopes 
which it can never have authorised ? Its province as I have tried to define 
it is vast, but has its hmits. It can have no pretensions to improve human 
nature ; it may alter the environment, multiply the resources, widen the 
intellectual prospect, but it cannot fairly be asked to bear the responsi- 
bility for the use which is made of these gifts. That must be determined by 
other and, let us admit it, higher considerations. Medical science, for 
instance, has given us longer and healthier lives ; it is not responsible for 
the use which we make of those lives. It may give increased vitality to the 
wicked as well as the just, but we would not, on that account, close our 
hospitals or condemn our doctors. 
In spite of the criticisms I have referred to we may still hold up 
our heads, let us hope without arrogance, but with the confidence that 
our efforts have their place, not a mean one, in human activities, and that 
they tend, if often in unimagined ways, to increase the intellectual and the 
