ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ANNUAL MEETING. 27
grasp of the possibilities of the vibrations of the ether, and we
had got a long way, no doubt, but Rentjen and his collaborators,
who were not hide-bound, have compelled us to open our minds
to the possibilities of vibrations of the extent of which we are by
no means satisfied yet.
We must have theories; we cannot make progress without
them; even a false theory may be better than none. Take for
example, the theories of the alchemists; they were false, no
doubt (though the possibility of transmutation seems now by no
means so unthinkable as it did a while ago); yet false as they
were, they served as an encouragement to the study of natural
phenomena and indirectly laid the foundations for modern
science.
Then again, popular ideas are mostly more or less wrong,
but they embody an unconscious and unscientific summing up of
experience that it is rarely wise altogether to ignore. Forty
years ago the Italian peasant was nearer the mark in calling
cholera "aquetta" and attributing it to poisoned wells, than the
more educated people who learnedly discoursed of "blue haze"
and so forth. Long ago experience had shown that there was
some connection between malaria and mosquitos, improbable as it
seemed to scientific thought.
Let us therefore hold fast to our theories—to our ideas —
taking infinite pains to choose the best; those that are alike
most far-reaching and most based on experience; yet never
holding them as absolute truth, never saying that something is
impossible because it will not come within their limits. Even
though something be unknowable, let us be very careful not to
say that it cannot be.
It may be said that this is all mysticisin and dreams.
Possibly, and yet it may be that there is an ignorance worse
than dreams. The Germans make a distinction, untranslateable
into English, between das mystic—the feeling after a truth too
great for comprehension—and das mysticismus—which is, to put it
vulgarly, muddle-headed dreaminess. It is the first that I wish
to plead for in science, especially to beginners filled with a sense
of how much they know. I would urge such ever to hold fast to
theories; without them progress is impossible. Try and grasp
the ideal that underlies the real, and is more true than it; but