2 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



and have made a selection for which I am glad to have no 

 responsibility. 



Of General Smuts I would say one word more. His occupancy 

 of the chair not only added to the lustre of our rejoicings : I like to 

 think it had a deeper significance. May we not regard it as a 

 harbinger of the spirit of goodwill and sanity which civilisation 

 longs for, but does not yet see .'' Our hundred years of science have 

 done sadly little towards curing the nations of mutual mistrust. 

 Surely it was a good omen that, in marking the close of one century 

 of achievement and the opening of another, we should have had for 

 President a citizen of the world whose life has been a lesson in sub- 

 ordinating the lower patriotism to the higher good, who by example 

 no less than by precept has taught his fellows that they should 

 beat their swords into ploughshares and not learn war any 

 more. 



Now we revisit our birthplace well aware of our maturity. We 

 have scored our first century and begun to compile our second with 

 the easy assurance of a Bradman or a Hobbs. At once the question 

 arises, Is that assurance justified by the Association's continued 

 vitality ? Do we still give the community reason to support us ? 

 Or are we a survival, trading on a reputation which our present 

 activities do little to increase } I put the question bluntly — nowa- 

 days we are all familiar with disagreeable stock-takings and shrinking 

 values — but it need not detain us long. I am confident you will 

 find no trace of decrepitude. It is true that the sciences included 

 in our purview have become specialised and differentiated to a degree 

 that would make ridiculous any claim to the qualified omniscience 

 which was possible in our early days. It is also true that each 

 department of science now has its own society of votaries who meet 

 as it were in a masonic temple and converse in a jargon that has 

 little if any meaning for the general ear. But these very facts make 

 this Association the more useful. Notwithstanding the restrictions 

 of specialism, science has its own broad outlook, demanding expres- 

 sion and explanation to laymen. And more than ever is it true — far 

 truer than it was a hundred years ago, when we were ridiculed as 

 a hodge-podge of philosophers and made the target of an unsym- 

 pathetic Press — that laymen want to have intelligent contact with the 

 seekings and findings of the scientific mind. 



I say seekings and findings rather than conclusions, for that word 

 has too final a ring. Here we may note a striking change in the 

 temper of the investigator. I am old enough to remember a time 

 when some of the spokesmen of science (never, indeed, the greatest) 

 displayed a cocksureness that was curiously out of keeping with 

 the spirit of to-day. Among contemporary leaders nothing is 

 more general than the frank admission that they are groping 



