18 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
employment for millions of men. And, although it is an old story, 
let us also remember that the economic value of the work of one 
scientist alone, Edison, has been estimated at three thousand million 
pounds. 
Unhappily, no amount of planning can arrange a perfect balance. 
For as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so no one can control the 
direction in which science will advance ; the investigator in pure 
science does not know himself whether his researches will result in 
a mere labour-saving device or a new industry. He only knows 
that if all science were throttled down, neither would result ; the 
community would become crystallised in its present state, with 
nothing to do but watch its population increase, and shiver as it 
waited for the famine, pestilence or war which must inevitably come 
to restore the balance between food and mouths, land and population. 
Is it not better to press on in our efforts to secure more wealth 
and leisure and dignity of life for our own and future generations, 
even though we risk a glorious failure, rather than accept inglorious 
failure by perpetuating our present conditions, in which these 
advantages are the exception rather than the rule? Shall we not 
risk the fate of that over-ambitious scientist Icarus, rather than 
resign ourselves without an effort to the fate which has befallen the 
bees and ants? Such are the questions I would put to those who 
maintain that science is harmful to the race. 
