G— ENGINEERING i79 



should stand in our defence ? Were it not better that the public be told 

 plainly : This is our work, which we do because we must ? 



1 8. A lead has been given, and we may be proud that the giver was 

 an engineer ; for the gleam is seen in that noble presidential address by 

 Sir Alfred Ewing from which I have quoted already : 



' The quest of truth goes on endlessly, ardently, fruitfully. And yet with 

 every grain of knowledge we realise more clearly that we can never really know. 

 To understand, as Einstein lately said, is to draw one incomprehensible out of 

 another incomprehensible. From time to time we discover a fresh relation 

 between pbserved phenomena, but each of the things which are found to be 

 related continues to evade our full comprehension ; and that is apparently the 

 only kind of discovery we can achieve. Our joy in the quest itself never fails ; 

 we are constantly learning that it is better to travel than to arrive.' 



That I say is the spirit ! Let us have the courage of the artist to exalt 

 our calling, and while deploring the folly that has led us and other men 

 to misuse them, let us not weakly question that the gifts of science hold 

 potential good. Fairly regarded, the record of engineering is not such that 

 we need feel ashamed of our calling. Again to quote Sir Henry Tizard 

 (1938) : 



' There is nothing new in the fact that experiment and invention are trans- 

 forming the habits of men and are adding to their problems. What is new is 

 that we are all more aware of it, because the rate of change has been steadily 

 increasing. . . . Bad news is, as a rule, better copy than good news. But can 

 it seriously be argued that any section of society is worse off and living under 

 worse conditions than a hundred years ago ? Broadly speaking, the natural 

 result of all scientific discovery has been greatly to improve the conditions of 

 life and all our social relations, in spite of — or possibly even because of — the fact 

 that scientific workers have been too busy doing their own jobs well to worry 

 about other people's.' 



So Dr. Johnson to Mr. Boswell : ' My dear friend, clear your mind 

 of cant. . . . You may say, " These are bad times ; it is a melancholy 

 thing to be reserved to such times "... You may talk in this manner ; 

 it is a mode of talking in Society : but don't think foolishly.' 



References. 



Eddington. The Nature of the Physical World, 209. 

 Ewing, Sir A. 1928 A Century of Inventions, 20, 21. 

 Guedalla, P. 1931 The Duke, 317, 241, no, 114. 

 Lamb, H. 1924 The Evolution of Mathematical Physics. 39. 

 Tizard, Sir H. 1938 Nature, 735. 



