THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 7 



in the pursuit and have not much greater aptitude as amateur 

 ministers of foresight than statesmen would have in planning 

 research. Fewer are skilled, however, in what should be the most 

 appropriate auxiliary to their work — the synthesising of scientific 

 knowledge. The more penetrating they are in their main pursuits, 

 the less may they absorb through analogy or plain intimation from 

 outside. We constantly hear that the average clinical application 

 lags much farther behind the new resources of diagnosis from the 

 laboratory than circumstances compel. But it may be the other 

 way round. The strongest hint of the presence of a particular factor 

 — a positive element in beri-beri — was given by the clinician to the 

 bio-chemist, who relied entirely on the absence of a particular factor, 

 a negative element, no less than fifteen years before the bio-chemist 

 took serious notice, looked for it, and found it. Bacteriology and 

 chemistry await the advance of the bio-chemist before they come 

 effectively to each other's assistance. The cause and prevention of 

 the obstinate degree of maternal mortality are objects pursued ad hoc, 

 with hardly a casual glance at the direct appeal of the eugenist to 

 observe the natural consequences of an improvement in female infant 

 mortality two decades earlier. 



I do not then pretend to dogmatise as to how far the scientist 

 should become a social reformer. One physicist welcomes the 

 growing sense of social responsibility, among some scientists at 

 least, for the world the labours of their order have so largely created, 

 though he deplores that in this field they are still utterly unscientific. 

 Then another great authority, Sir Henry Dale, declares that it is the 

 scientists' job to develop their science without consideration of the 

 social uses to which their work might be put. 



I have long watched the processes by which the scientific specialist 

 1 makes up his mind ' in fields of enquiry outside his own. It seems 

 still a matter for investigation whether the development of a 

 specialist's thinking on balance impairs or improves the powers of 

 general thinking compared with what they might otherwise have 

 been. We do not know the kind or degree of truth that may rest 

 in Anatole France's aphorism : ' The worst of science is, it stops 

 you thinking.' Perhaps this was more subtly expressed in the 

 simpler words of the darkie mother : ' If you haven't an education, 

 you've jest got to use yoh brains.' 



My own experience is that when the attempt to deal with social 

 consequences is made, we quickly find ourselves either in the field 

 of larger politics debating the merits of the three prevalent forms of 

 state government, or else performing miracles with fancy currencies 

 and their blue prints reminiscent of the chemical engineer. 



But there are some essential features of the impact which must be 

 dealt with under any form of society and government and with any 



