SCIENCE AND THE COMMUNITY 501 



would be of great assistance, and would save some futile experiments, 

 mistaken agitation, and unworkable proposals. Thus, the politician as 

 well as the professor, the housewife as well as the manager of great works, 

 whether they are aware of it or not, depend in the performance of their 

 work upon whether the public mind not only responds emotionally, but 

 sets about making that response, with the same care as to facts and the 

 same anxiety as to methods as the man of science shows in his own special 

 field. What are called ' moving descriptions ' of human ills, quite 

 accurate as to facts but left without carefully worked out conclusions as 

 to treatment, often become serious obstacles in the way of satisfactory 

 remedies. 



Perhaps the immediate reason why I have been asked to speak to-night 

 is because it was my good fortune to have held the office, for the past year, 

 of Lord President of the Council. This made me the constitutional head 

 of the scientific work for which the Government is directly responsible, 

 and brought me into direct contact with bodies like the Department of 

 Scientific and Industrial Research, with the National Physical Laboratory 

 as one of its main stations, the Medical Research Council, and the 

 Agricultural Research Council, together with the co-operating bodies. 



I found an inspiring companionship devoting its life and genius to find 

 out how the potentialities of Nature, discovered and proved by research, 

 could be valued, combined, and used by reason and further experiments, 

 so that man may be a co-operator and partner with Nature's powers and 

 rise above being a bond-slave ; and that Nature herself may find her ways 

 understood and made valuable, as quickly as possible, for meeting human 

 needs. 



In all public affairs I myself am an unrepentant evolutionist. There 

 must be change, not for the sake of change, but because social harmony 

 and progress will always continue to require it. Were it not so, civilisation 

 itself would soon become a relic, and we should have to deal with a society 

 which has breathed its last progressive breath and has reached the stage 

 of disruption through evolution because it is not adapting itself to the new 

 conditions which are the immediate offspring of its own life, a disruption 

 not created by men's imagination, but by the evolution and the changes 

 in the life of every society, every combination of human beings, every 

 community that has not come to an end of itself. Civilisation is not a 

 static state but one of dynamic activity which requires direction. The 

 most lasting and fruitful of changes are those which arise from the failures 

 of existing conditions or their hitherto imperfect successes. Or, we may 

 put it in this way in full accordance with the truly scientific mind : creation 

 was left imperfect for men to carry it on towards completion by coming 

 to understand it, both as an accomplishment and a promise, and you 

 cannot separate the accomplishment from the promise if the community 

 is to live. The place where the shoe pinches either body or mind is the 

 spot where disruptive unsettlement shows itself first. The remedy is not 

 to curse the shoe nor to content ourselves by describing the pains. The 

 shoe should be adapted so that it may be useful (as it was intended to be) 

 without doing what it was never meant to do, rack us with pain. 



Pain in the individual corresponds with discomfort and unrest in the 

 community. Both are signals of harmful processes and call for study 



