GREAT MEN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 165, 27 May 1940, Page 2

GREAT MEN

SIMPLIFYING OUR SCIENCE "Great men, and in particular great men of science, are for ever enlarging our mysteries, simplifying them and extending their scope* as when they record the law of attraction, or the idea which lies at basis of the notion of relativity. And thus with their fresher insight they keep for us our sense of piety to nature alive. Compared with other men they are like the springs of a river. Perhaps some of ypu £nay have shared with me the exquisite experience of seeing the springs of the Aberdeenshire Dee below the top of Brae Riach in the Grampians. There are clear water bubbles to the surface through mosses pink and yellow and green; and as it gathers to the edge it falls in tiny trickles which unite with one another into rills, and these with like rills from i other portions of the plateau, until in the end they combine to form the river which you see at the foot, already a considerable stream. The stream is discoloured in its course by the soil through which it flows or the products of human labour, and put into the service of man before, it reaches the sea. And as its springs are fed by the sea into which it falls, whose vapours are drawn up and fall in raiin so that a com tinuous life is maintained between the ocean and the fresh waters on the heights, so it is that the thoughts of great men keep up for general mankind our communion with the circumambient mystery." I —Professor Laird.