ON THE WRONG TRACK ?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 18 June 1936, Page 10

ON THE WRONG TRACK ?

POWER WITHOUT WISDOM (Bv Air Mail—From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, 14th May. Only a year or two ago a great engineer, in his presidential address to the British Association, deplored the inequality of human progress. lie feared the immense disparity between modern scientific invention and the uplift of civilised thought was placing in mankind’s hands powers it was quite unfitted to use rightly and wisely. Nobody who contemplates the latest bombing plane or the deadlier poison gases will be disposed to quarrel with this anxiety. It is emphasised by Professor Brierley, of Reading, apropos the gift by a famous motor magnate of a quarter of a million for inorganic research. Power without wisdom to use it rightly, and for human welfare, is dangerous, he argues, and asks are there no wealthy men with the vision to endow research into living things, above all, in this unbalanced robot age, into man’s mind and society. In that direction alone, says Professor Brierley, lies “whatever hope of salvation there is for man and his civilisation.”