22 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



of instant death— it gave me a headache which has not left me yet — 

 some damnable thing must come of it. I am glad to have seen this 

 miracle, but quite satisfied with my first achievement being my last.' 

 In the British Association meeting for 1836, an address on Railway 

 Speeds prophesied that some day 50 miles an hour might be possible. 

 Forty years ago we may remember that a cyclist doing 15 to 18 miles 

 an hour was a ' scorcher ' and a public danger. Twenty-five years 

 ago, 30 miles an hour in motoring was an almost unhealthy and 

 hardly bearable pace. To-day the fifties and sixties are easily borne, 

 both by passenger and looker on. Aeroplane speeds are differently 

 judged, but at any rate represent an extension of the tolerance. 

 Direct taxation thirty years ago in relation to its effect on individual 

 effort and action seemed to reach a breaking-point and was regarded as 

 psychologically unbearable at levels which to-day are merely amusing. 

 The copious protection of women's dress then would have looked 

 upon to-day's rationality as suicidal lunacy. One hesitates to say, 

 therefore, that resistances to scientific changes will be primarily in 

 the difficulty of mental and physical adjustments. But there can be 

 little doubt that with the right applications of experimental psycho- 

 logy and adjusted education, the mind of man would be still more 

 adaptable. Unfortunately, we do not know whether education as 

 an acquired characteristic is in any degree inheritable, and whether 

 increasing educability of the mass is a mere dream, so that we are 

 committed to a sisyphean task in each generation. Nor do we know 

 whether this aspect is affected by the induced sterility of the age. 

 It may not be a problem of changing the same man in his lifetime, 

 but of making a larger difference between father and son. The 

 latest teachings of geneticists hold out prospects for the future of 

 man which we should like to find within our present grasp, and 

 recent successful experiments with mammals in parthenogenesis 

 and eutelegenesis bear some inscrutable expression which may be 

 either the assurance of new hope for mankind or a devil's grin of 

 decadence. 



What is economics doing in this kaleidoscope ? 



The body of doctrine which was a satisfactory analysis of society 

 twenty-five years ago is no longer adequate, for its basic postulates 

 are being rapidly changed. It confined itself then to the actual 

 world it knew and did not elaborate theoretical systems on different 

 bases which might never exist. It is, therefore, now engaged in 

 profoundly modifying the old structures to meet these new con- 

 ditions. Formerly it assumed, quite properly, a considerable 

 degree of fluid or competitive adjustment in the response of factors 

 of production to the stimulus or operation of price, which was 

 really a theory of value-equilibrium. Wherever equilibrium was 

 disturbed, the disturbance released forces tending to restore it. 



