G.— ENGINEERING 175 



' An old exponent of applied mechanics may be forgiven if he expresses 

 something of the disillusion with which, now standing aside, he watches the 

 sweeping pageant of discovery and invention in which he used to take unbounded 

 delight. It is impossible not to ask, Whither does this tremendous procession 

 tend ? What, after all, is its goal ? . . . 



' The cornucopia of the engineer has been shaken over all the earth, scattering 

 everywhere an endowment of previously unpossessed and unimagined capacities 

 and powers. Beyond question many of these gifts are benefits to man, making 

 life fuller, wider, healthier, richer in comforts and interests and in such happiness 

 as material things can promote. But we are acutely aware that the engineer's 

 gifts have been and may be grievously abused. In some there is potential 

 tragedy as well as present burden. Man was ethically unprepared for so great 

 a bounty. . . . The command of Nature has been put into his hands before 

 he knows how to command himself.' 



Here too are words spoken somewhat earlier, in his wonderful James 

 Forrest Lecture, 1928, on ' A Century of Inventions '. In them still more 

 clearly, as I read them, he seems to feel as engineer a sense of special 

 responsibility : 



' I used, as a young teacher, to think that the splendid march of discovery 

 and invention, with its penetration of the secrets of Nature, its consciousness of 

 power, its absorbing mental interest, its unlimited possibilities of benefit, was 

 in fact accomplishing some betterment of the character of man. . . . But the 

 war came, and I realised the moral failure of applied mechanics. . . . We had 

 put into the hand of civilisation a weapon far deadlier than the weapons of 

 barbarism, and there was nothing to stay her hand. Civilisation, in fact, turned 

 the weapon upon herself. The arts of the engineer had indeed been effectively 

 learnt, but they had not changed man's soul. . . . 



' Surely it is for the engineer as much as any man to pray for a spiritual 

 awakening, to strive after such a growth of sanity as will prevent the gross 

 misuse of his good gifts. For it is the engineer who, in the course of his labours 

 to promote the comfort and convenience of man, has put into man's unchecked 

 and careless hand a monstrous potentiality of ruin.' 



To which I personally would answer : ' Yes, for the engineer as much 

 as any man, but no more.' And when, in more recent pronouncements, 

 I find the charge so glibly formulated — ' It is engineers who have given 

 men these potent weapons of destruction : on them more than others, then, 

 rests the responsibility for their use ' — then, admitting the premise, I 

 protest against the deduction. I would say rather : ' On them as much 

 as on others (but no more) rests the responsibility for their use.' Do not 

 think that I imagine the load thus shared will be light for all. I have no 

 illusion about the weight of responsibility — it is appalling ; but I hold 

 that we must share it equally, as citizens, not look for scapegoats when we 

 have been free to choose either our path or leaders to direct us. 



14. I can conceive no subject in which, more than this, clear thinking 

 is wanted to-day : the desire to hand on responsibility is so deep-seated, 

 and the will to believe that we could have had the benefits of science 

 without its risks and its temptations. But knowledge is of good and evil : 

 it is of its essence that we cannot know how to cure poison without know- 

 ing poison and its action, how to control and use explosives without 

 acquiring power for harm as well as good. We may elect either to shun 

 it or pursue, but we cannot have it both ways. Either we must choose, 

 deliberately, impotence as preferable to the power of doing evil, or we 

 must accept knowledge for the double-edged tool it is, vowing to use it 



