THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 25 



through the hands of thousands of practitioners, each with too small 

 a sample to be statistically significant, and is, therefore, wasted from 

 a scientific standpoint. Half-verified theories run riot as medical 

 fashions, to peter out gradually in disillusionment. If the scattered 

 cases were all centralised through appropriately drawn case-histories, 

 framed by a more scientifically trained profession, individual idio- 

 syncrasy would cancel out, and mass scrutiny would bring the theories 

 to a critical statistical issue of verification or refutation in a few 

 months. This would be to the advantage of all society, and achieve 

 an even greater boon in suggesting new points for central research. 



A suggestion has been made for an inventions clearing house, to 

 ' co-operate the scientific, social and industrial phases of Invention, 

 and to reduce the lag between invention and application ' managed 

 by a committee of scientists and a committee of industrialists and 

 bankers. The proposal came to me from New York, but London 

 was to be the home of the organisation, which was to adopt a code of 

 ethics in the interests of inventors, industry and social progress. This 

 brings me to my third example, the field of ethics, which needs the 

 toil of new thought. The systems of to-day, evolving over two 

 thousand years, are rooted in individualism and the relations between 

 individuals. But the relations of society to-day are not predominantly 

 individual, for it is permeated through and through with corporate 

 relations of every kind. Each of these works over some delegated 

 area of the individual's choice of action, and evolves a separate code 

 for the appropriate relationship. The assumption that ethical 

 questions are decided by processes which engage the individual's 

 whole ethical personality is no longer even remotely true. The 

 joint stock company may do something, or refrain from doing some- 

 thing, on behalf of its shareholders, which is a limited field of ethics, 

 and may but faintly resemble what they would individually do with 

 all other considerations added to their financial interests. The whole 

 body of ethics needs to be reworked in the light of modern corporate 

 relations, from Church and company, to cadet corps and the League 

 of Nations. 



In no case need we glorify change : but true rest may be only 

 ideally controlled motion. The modern poet says : 



* The endless cycle of idea and action, 

 Endless invention, endless experiment, 

 Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness.' 



But so long as we are to have change — and it seems inevitable — let 

 us master it. T. S. Eliot goes on : 



1 Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge ? 

 Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ? ' 



