12 June: Boreham on Oliver Lodge

Learning and Life
This is the birthday of Sir Oliver Lodge. Like all men of outstanding intellectual eminence, Sir Oliver had his peculiar foibles, his personal fancies, his own pet themes, and it may be that the prominence into which he has thrown certain of his psychic theories has somewhat prejudiced his conclusions on more matter-of-fact subjects, but for all that he has proved himself to be one of our clearest, most independent and most audacious thinkers, and his name must always rank among those of the most eminent scientists of our time. As Sir Richard Threlfall said, in expressing regret of the Court of Governors at Sir Oliver's retirement from the Principalship of Birmingham University, many of his discoveries have been of really first-class importance. There is scarcely one department of human experience and adventure, that has not been immensely enriched by his patient investigations. In the science of electrolysis the most sensational advances have been made, while thanks to Sir Oliver's tireless perseverance and dauntless persistence, discoveries have been made in relation to radiography and wireless telegraphy that have simply revolutionised our systems of international communication. Sir Richard Threlfall, after claiming that he had weighed his words with meticulous care, declared that Sir Oliver Lodge stood, beyond the shadow of doubt, as one of the greatest scientific pioneers that the world had ever known. This is high praise, but it is high praise nobly earned and justly bestowed.

Wealth Of Nations
Any nation may regard itself as affluent if it possesses in its universities, academic bodies and halls of learning, open-eyed men who are prepared to toil terribly, who will sternly refuse to allow their preconceived theories to bias their observations and researches, and who, in their determination to read the riddles of the universe, will diligently follow the truth in scorn of consequence. Sir Oliver Lodge always impressed both his admirers and his critics as a man of transparent sincerity, of stainless honour, and of dogged tenacity of purpose.

Years ago, in making a presentation to Professor Masson on his retirement, Lord Rosebery employed an illustration that lends itself with singular appositeness and felicity to our present purpose. "Last night," he said, "in my house by the sea I was gazing at the waters in front of me, and in the absolute calm and impassive face of the Firth of Forth there were reflected the stars in the vault above, a blurred and faint reflection it may be, but at any rate a true and sincere portraiture, as well as the waters could give it, of the eternal lamps and lights of the firmament of the heavens. And I thought that we, in the course of human life, meet rarely, but now and then, with some human soul that seem to have caught the reflection of the eternal verities, not by striving or by seeking to improve himself so that he may earn that complexion, but by the simple and pure search for truth that caught that glow, and it remains reflected in their life." No words could better express the sentiments with which the loftiest minds of many nations review the fruitful and disinterested service of the illustrious scientist who, happily, has lived long enough to enjoy the recognition and appreciation of his grateful fellows.

Dreams And Destiny
The outstanding lesson of Sir Oliver's brilliant career is represented by the connection that he has so vividly demonstrated between the meditations of the savants on the one hand and the rough-and-tumble of everyday experience on the other. It is no secret, for example, that Sir Oliver Lodge's investigations in regard to the coagulation of smoke proved of inestimable service to the Navy in the arrangement of camouflage and smoke-screens, while, turning from war to peace, the same discoveries have assumed growing importance in their application to our great national industries. Sir Oliver has maintained, in season and out of season, that humanity must never submit tamely to discomfort, inconvenience or pain. For all such things there must be an underlying cause. It is the duty of science to discover that cause and to find the necessary machinery for its removal. Sir Oliver is not even sure that we are justified in suffering too much at the hands of the weather. The time is rapidly approaching, he assures us, when, instead of feebly submitting to any weather that happens to drift along, we shall deliberately make up our minds as to the kind we really want, shall send in our order, and shall see to it that delivery is according to instructions. "I do not see," says Sir Oliver, "why we should put up with bad weather if we do not want it. It is inevitable that, sooner or later, we must assume control of the elements. We shall soon be doing things that, a little while back, would have been thought extremely presumptuous. The future of mankind is a very long one. We have only just begun. Do not imagine that we are highly-developed creatures. We are not. We are merely at the beginning of things. Look at what has been achieved during the past century and then ask yourselves what humanity is likely to be doing 1,000,000 years hence."

Such language represents, of course, a violent reaction. There was a time, and it lasted for centuries, when science considered it beneath its dignity to concern itself with mundane and material things. It held aloof from life. It was the stern and pitiless denunciation of Lord Bacon that introduced the salutary change. Men of learning were compelled to face live issues, and, in consequence a better day was ushered in. And then, for many years, the shoe was on the other foot. Men of the world had become so accustomed to living one life, while men of the schools lived quite another that they at first resented, and resented bitterly, the lucubrations of the academicians on workaday themes. Wisdom, however, is justified of all her children. The new methods soon vindicated themselves by their results. Scientists have learned that, to justify their appointments, their researches must serve some practical and humanitarian end, and men of the world have learned in their turn that the verdicts of the schools must be treated with the respect that they so obviously deserve.

Carrying On The Torch
This being so, another question arises. When brilliant and commanding figures like Sir
Oliver Lodge grow old and leave the laboratories and lecture-halls that they have so strikingly adorned, it is of vital importance to the nation, and to the world at large, that others, no less capable, should be found to fill the vacant places. Does our national system of education afford us sufficient guarantees that the supply of such men will be equal to the demand? Is anything being done to point out to promising boys—and girls, the attractions and advantages of a scientific career? And are sufficient inducements being offered? There are, of course, and always will be, an army of youths willing to devour the prescribed text-books and to learn all that Sir Oliver Lodge, and men of his calibre have discovered.

But this is not enough. The sphere of truth, like the sphere whose dust we daily tread, is divided into two hemispheres—the known and the unknown. Of these two hemispheres, the latter is infinitely the greater. The students who are satisfied to attend lectures, to pass examinations and take diplomas are the men who are content to inhabit the first and smaller hemisphere, the hemisphere of the known. But these men, however great their numbers and how admirable their work, can never become the natural successors of men like Sir Oliver Lodge. Science, like other departments of human activity, needs its adventurers, its explorers, its audacious pioneers. If tomorrow is to be worthy of yesterday, there must be men who, learning all that there is to be learned, push restlessly out into the unknown in quest of knowledge that has never before been attained. The true successor of Sir Oliver Lodge is not the man who sets himself to acquire all the knowledge that Sir Oliver Lodge has amassed, but the man who, taking that hoard of gathered wisdom as his starting-point, sets off to find the treasure that has eluded all his predecessors. A sense of poignant regret must always mark the withdrawal from public life of a great figure in whose personality and conquests his generation has taken natural pride, but a compensating sense of satisfaction is experienced when evidence is forthcoming that young men of similar temper and equal ability are buckling on their armour.

F W Boreham

Image: Oliver Lodge