8 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



than that of the geologists, and the scale of geological time remains 

 in great measure unknown.' The light thrown by radium upon 

 the Helmholtz estimate was also referred to in the Presidential 

 Address of Ray Lankester at York in 1906, of J. J. Thomson, quoting 

 the work of Strutt, Joly and Rutherford, at Winnipeg in 1909, and 

 became a predominant subject in the Joint Discussion on the Age 

 of the Earth, between Sections A, C, D and K, at Edinburgh in 

 1 92 1.* Lord Rayleigh in opening this discussion concluded ' that 

 radioactive methods of estimation indicate a moderate multiple of 

 1,000 million years as the possible and probable duration of the 

 earth's crust as suitable for the habitation of living beings. . . .' 



Even in the present year Sir Ambrose Fleming, in his address to 

 the Victoria Institute, is reported in The Times of January 12 to have 

 maintained that ' We were not in possession of any generally agreed 

 scientific modes of geological time measurement, but only with 

 estimates which were based for the most part on personal predilec- 

 tion or guesses at truth.' It is to be regretted that the conclusions 

 of scientific colleagues should be attributed to ' personal predilec- 

 tion,' and as for ' guesses at truth ' — ^what are these but hypotheses ; 

 and surely the discoverer whose imaginative effort led to the therm- 

 ionic valve and did so much to endow the world with the infinite 

 possibilities of wireless — surely he has little cause to choose for the 

 serious efforts of others the word which in this connection carries a 

 suggestion of shallow irresponsibility. 



Geologists and biologists do not profess to know the age of the 

 earth as the abode of life, but they are sure that, in the words used 

 by Sir William Turner at Bradford in 1900, its birth ' must have 

 been in the far-distant past, at a period so remote from the present 

 that the mind fails to grasp the duration of the interval.' 



I fear that too much of our time has been occupied by the attempt 

 to show that the field is clear for the discussion of Organic Evolu- 

 tion, but, until this could be done, any such discussion appeared to 

 be well-nigh useless. 



It is, I think, a mistake to emphasise too strongly the very 

 natural shock received by many who read the Origin or heard of 

 its teaching for the first time and without any preparation ; and I 

 believe an even greater mistake to criticise the clergy for the time that 

 elapsed before their acceptance of the new teaching. I shall never 

 forget the reception of Aubrey Moore's paper, ' Recent Advances in 

 Natural Science in their Relation to the Christian Faith,' by the 

 Church Congress at Reading in 1883.' No speaker could have 

 carried his audience with him more thoroughly : there was not a 

 single protest or indication of dissent — nothing but enthusiastic 



' Report, British Association, 1921, pp. 413-415. 



' Science and the Faith, London, 1889, pp. 222-235. 



