obe would
be utterly different from what it is. Nevertheless, in spite of their
ignorance about the real nature of water, men of science do not invent
an "aqueous principle" or "aquosity" with the notion of "explaining"
water. And I have yet to hear of any duly trained and qualified
biologist who is prepared at the present moment to maintain the
existence of a "vital principle," or of a force to be called
"vitality," supposed to be something different in character and
quality from the recognised physical forces, and having its existence
alongside, yet apart from, the manifestations of those forces.

Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton recently said: "The advance in science
takes the workers in science more and more beyond the ken of the
ordinary public, and their work grows to be a little understood and
much misunderstood; and I have felt that, as in many other cases, the
need would come for interpreters between those who are carrying on
scientific research and the public, in order to explain and justify
their work." Probably everyone will agree with the Lord Justice: but
what are we to say of those responsible owners of great journals who
not only abstain from providing such interpretation but allow
anonymous and incompetent writers to mislead the public? Is the
literary critic of a prosperous journal employed to write the City
article?

There has been a repetition this year (1912) of the usual
misrepresentation on the occasion of the meeting of the British
Association. The President, Professor Schaefer, had let it be known
that his address would be concerned with the chemistry of living
processes, the gradual passage of chemical combinations into the
condition which we call "living," and the possibility of bringing
about this passage in the chemical laboratory without the use of
materials already elaborated by previously existing "living" material.
The announcement was immediately made in some "newspapers" that
"startling revelations" were to be made by the President, that he was
"to throw a bomb-shell" into the camp, etc. He did nothing of the
kind. He gave an admirable and clear statement of the progress during
recent years towards the realisation of the construction in the
laboratory by chemical methods of the complex chemical combination
which exhibits those "activities"--essentially movements, unions,
disruptions and re-unions of extremely minute particles--which we call
"living." The conclusion that such a gradual