ning as to the limits of science, we have no lack of
instances of scientific men posing as authorities on subjects on which
they had no real right to be heard, and, what is worse, being accepted
as such by the uninstructed crowd. Thus Professor Huxley, who, as some
one once said, "made science respectable," was wont to utter pontifical
pronouncements on the subject of Home Rule for Ireland. His knowledge of
that country was quite rudimentary, and his visits to it had been as few
and as brief as if he had been its Sovereign; but that did not prevent
him from delivering judgment, nor unfortunately deter many from
following that judgment as if it had been inspired. I am not now arguing
as to the rights and wrongs of Huxley's view on the matter in question:
I have my own opinion on that. What I am urging is that his position,
whether as a zoologist or, incidentally, as a great master of the
English language, in no way entitled him to express an opinion or
rendered him a better authority on such a question than any casual
fellow-traveller in a railway carriage might easily be.

This is bad enough; but what is far worse is when scientific experts on
the strength of their study of Nature assume the right of uttering
judicial pronouncements on moral and sociological questions, judgments
some at least of which are subversive of both decency and liberty. Thus
we have lately been told that it is "wanton cruelty" to keep a weak or
sickly child alive; and the medical man, under a reformed system of
medical ethics, is to have leave and licence to put an end to its life
in a painless manner. To what enormities and dastardly agreements this
might lead need hardly be suggested; and I am quite confident that the
members of the honourable profession of physic, to which I am proud to
belong, have no desire whatever for such a reform of the law or of their
ethics. Then we are told in the same address (Bateson, _British
Association Addresses in Australia_, 1914) that on the whole a decline
in the birth-rate is rather a good thing, and that families averaging
four children are quite enough to keep the world going comfortably. The
date of this address will be noted; and the fact that the war, which was
then just beginning, has probably caused its author and has caused
everybody else to see the utter futility of such assertions.

However, if we are to rear only four children per marriage, and if we
are to give the medical man liberty to weed ou