NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19141, 6 October 1925, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

INDIA'S DESTINATION. A warning against the dangers of undue haste toward self-government was uttered by Lord Reading, Viceroy of India, in a speech shortly after his return from England. " Constitutional problems are not solved by a phrase," he said, in emphasising the diversities of races and religions and of intellectual development in India. " Those who express themselves as humiliated by the programme and the conditions of advance laid down in the preamble of the Government of India Act assume that the path to self-government lies along a broad metalled road, and that if they could only be freed from the impediments and restrictions imposed by the present forms of Government they could run safely and directly to their goal," Lord Reading continued. "To my mind the problem presents itself under a different figure. I think rather of a man picking his way through unexplored regions toward his destination, which glimmers, faint but, clear, in the distance. He halts on firm ground, and seeks the next spot on which he can safely entrust himself; a rash step may engulf him or delay his progress indefinitely; his advance may not be. rapid, but it is well and surely planned as he advances. Experience teaches him to distinguish more certainly and quickly firm ground from a treacherous surface, and so he wins to his ultimate goal." ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. Subscriptions to the Times fund for the preservation of St. Paul s Cathearal brought the total to over £250,0 CX) on August 26. Reviewing the' response to the appeal, the Times says that a quarter of a million is very nearly twice as much as the Dean and Chapter found it their duty to ask for at the beginning of the year; for their commission of experts, who had taken over three years to consider the problem, put the required amount at £120,000 or £140,000. Ihe appeal had not been before the public longer than a fortnight when, on St. Paul's Day. the fund handsomely exceeded the greater of these two sums, but contributions have continued to flow in. The distances from which some of the latest contributions have come are as typical as any of the far places in the globe over which St. Paul's casts its glamour. One cheque hails from Yukon, another from Ballarat, another from Geelong, and a fourth from the Diocese of ChristchuTch, New Zealand. Nothing could better have illustrated the unity of the English race than their loyalty to the Cathedral Church of the mother city of the Empire. It is not. to be suppceed that all who have given to its support have seen St. Paul's with their own eyes; but its name and fame and shape are a common possession. Every one who has given appears to have thought that the work of restoration should not only be done, but done thoroughly. Meanwhile, the operations made possible by the fund are proceeding. The noise caused by them in the building is not wholly ungrateful to ear, nor would remote supporters of the Cathedral in Yukon and New Zealand find it harsh if it could be conveyed to them by wireless transmission. THE AIMS OF SCIENCE. The purpose of science has been defined as "to subdue the forces of Nature to the service of man." Tho inadequacy of that, statement was emphasised by Professor Horace Lamb in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, "We may recognise that practical utility haj been a conscious aim in scientific work, and sometimes its main justification; but we can hardly admit that any such formula as I have quoted worthily conveys what has been the real inspiration of discovery," he said. "To take a recent instance, when Faraday and Maxwell were feeling their way toward an electric theory of light, they could hardly have dreamed of wireless telegraphy, though as we now know tbis was no remote 'sievelopment. The primary aim of science is to explore the facts of Nature, to ascertain their mutual relations, and to arrange them as far as possible into a consistent and intelligible scheme. This endeavour is tho true inspiration of scientific work, as success in it is the appropriate reward. The material effects come later, if at all, and fjften by a very indirect path." Professor Lamb referred to criticism of scientific study that was based on the failure of hopes which the leaders of science had never authorised. "Its province is vast, but has its limits," he continued. "It can leave no pretensions to improve human nafture; it may alter the environment, multiply the resources, wide,-a the intellectual prospect, but it cannot fairly be asked to bear the responsibility for the use which is made of these gifts. That must be determined by other and higher considerations. Medical science, for instance, has given us longer and healthier lives; it is not responsible for the use which we make of those lives. It may give increased vitality to the wicked as well as the just, but we would not, on that account, close our hospitals or condemn our doctors. In spite of such criticisms we may still have confidence that our efforts have their place, not a mean one, in human activities, and that they tend, if often in unimagined ways, to increase the intellectual and the material and even the aesthetic possession# of the world."