176 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



wisely. We may not say to the scientist, ' Keep searching, but let your 

 discoveries be such as must benefit and cannot hurt us ' ; or pretend that 

 the use we make of science is something outside our responsibilities as 

 citizens, a thing imposed upon us by science itself. Knowledge is not 

 moral : good and evil are its opposite sides, inseparable in its very 

 nature. I have no quarrel (though no sympathy) with the plea we some- 

 times hear, for a cessation of scientific activity : it is arguable that on 

 balance knowledge is undesirable. But when men talk of ' beneficent ' 

 and ' destructive ' science as though we were free to pick and choose, 

 then I say that they have not even begun to understand what science is. 



Holding these views, I find it matter for regret that so often our concern 

 with the impact of science on the life of the community, which is good 

 and healthy, is expressed in a manner that is neither. Too often we seem 

 to be weakly apologising for results that have followed our activities, as it 

 were because we did not take sufiicient care. Need the geneticist apologise 

 for having increased the earth's fertility, because we have found no better 

 use for plenty than to destroy food while thousands are in want ? Ought 

 doctors to regret that by coming to a fuller understanding of disease they 

 have lengthened the span of life in a world where birth rates are falling ? 

 Here and in countless other instances, science impinging on the life of the 

 community has set problems that will tax to the utmost its courage and 

 intelligence ; the hardest and clearest thinking will be wanted, and it is 

 right that engineers and scientists should seek to contribute their share. 

 But I think that we only confuse the issue when we intervene as specialists 

 in discussions which concern us really not as specialists but as members 

 of a community. 



15. Whether in these days, when all but a small minority seem con- 

 vinced of the necessity of rearmament, the engineer is still regarded as 

 scapegoat or has (for a time) been transferred to the role of saviour, I 

 have no means of judging. But if any still reproach him for making what 

 all men now seek to buy, I would answer that horror is not peculiar to 

 modern war ; all war is horrible, both in nature and by purpose, and wars 

 are made not by engineers but by communities. No war is righteous, 

 though it seem so at the time ; or inevitable, except as a penalty of national 

 sins : pride, greed and indolence ; and those more contemptible because 

 weaker sins, vacillation of purpose, persistence in shams, clinging to safety 

 even at the loss of honour. 



More and more frequently, in lectures and in editorials, the decline of 

 international standards is noticed with consternation and lament. Naturally, 

 perhaps, in this country we are apt to see it mainly as an increasing 

 tendency towards ' repudiation of law and order in favour of brute force \^ 

 revealed most clearly in states that have abjured the democratic ideaJ. 

 But I think that the malady is at once deeper and more general. Dare we 

 claim that our own policy has shown no falling away from earlier belief 

 in straight-dealing, generosity, and the sanctity of contracts ? 



Increasingly, as it seems to me, nations incline to put trust in the adroit- 

 ness rather than the sincerity of their statesmen. Ethics are out of fashion, 

 and while as individuals we may still admit the moral imperative, the 



* Vide Nature, May 28, 1938. 



