THE MEANING OF HIROSHIMA
By PROFESSOR HERBERT DINGLE
TWO fallacies are conspicuous in the prevailing reaction to the event at Hiroshima. The first is that what has been discovered is simply or primarily a new danger to the human race ; the second, that it has been imposed on the world by a group of independent persons called scientists, whose activities might, and perhaps should, have been controlled. These fallacies are not unconnected, but it is convenient to regard them separately.
In an objective view of the situation the new development appears in its essence as a perfectly ordinary and only a very slight step in a march which has beers proceeding continuously for centuries. So far as the facts have been revealed—and enough has been revealed to account for the whole of the consequences—very little, if any, advance in knowledge has been made beyond the position reached before the war began. We knew then that the nucleus of an isotope of uranium could be made to yield an abnormal amount of energy on fission, and we knew how to break it up. What has been done since is simply to isolate this isotope from the substances associated with it in its natural state and to devise a mechanism for releasing the energy at a chosen place andlime. These are problems demand- ing money and ingenuity, but no further insight into atomic secrets. Knowledge obtained for the sake of knowledge alone has, on the demand of the occasion, been turned to a particular practical use.
This is no new story : it is a typical part of the history of civilisa- tion. Gunpowder was discovered by disinterested inquiry, and turned to the destruction of men and the blasting of rocks for their comfort. The telescope, invented by accident, revealed a new heaven and gave the commander who used it a means of escaping from, or more easily annihilating, his enemies. The power of steam was dis- covered through human curiosity and used for good and bad pur- poses. Electricity, photography, X-rays, radium, wireless telegraphy and telephony—the list is endless—became part of our knowledge in the same way, not as ad hoc creations of men planning good or evil designs, but as fruits of an inquiry having no object but that of learning more of the facts of Nature. Their discovery was an cnd,not a means. That it can be used as a means to other ends is another fact of Nature, but we are very foolish if we allow it to blind us to the independent character of the first.
It is equally dangerous to seek to evade the responsibility which this second fact lays on us by shifting it on to the shoulders of those who discovered the fundamental principles. The impulse to understand the world in which we live is not a peculiarity of a few eccentrics ; it is an essential element of human nature, as ineradicable as the impulse to worship, to write poetry, to reproduce, or to seek the good of posterity. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, not an ornament or a disease. The scientists of any age are simply those in whom the undying impulse is strongest. If they had not existed others would have appeared as the leaders, and progress is slower or faster according to the individual genius of those who happen to survive the dangers of babyhood. At one moment in the course of the endless inevitable growth of knowledge it has happened that a great war has coincided with a stage at which the expenditure of an available sum of money has made a. new and potent weapon possible. To attribute this fact to the malevolence of the present generation of scientists is as stupid as to attribute to them the existence of uranium. It exhibits the mentality of the child who kicks the naughty table that has barked his shins.
We are about to face an exceptionally critical stage in the eternal trial of human nature. It is an essential condition of our existence that it shall have the power to destroy itself : we live dangerously at not at all. The menace of inanimate nature, always in the back- ground, is rarely considered, yet the meteorite fall which occurred in Siberia in 19o8, with more destructive energy than that of an atomic bomb, may be repeated at any time, and it was no contrivance of ours that it did not occur in London or New York. The peril from our own knowledge, " the sole death, when a man's darkness comes from his own light," also is no new thing. The very com- prehensiveness of our social services makes it possible for a single fanatic to poison or infect with deadly germs our water-supply, with incalculable consequences. Years ago, with almost incredible courage or foolhardiness, we made available to every child and every ignorant or evilly-disposed person, by the mere turning of a tap, an un- limited supply of an invisible, poisonous, highly inflammable and explosive gas. The potentiality for widespread destruction is already at hand in various forms, yet we have so far succeeded in turning it to our advantage at negligible cost.
The new situation, therefore, calls for no panic or senseless re• crimination, but for calm recognition of the fact that we have advanced to a new point in the fulfilment of our human capabilities, and for a determination to exercise such control over our destiny as we are able to command in order to ensure not only our survival, but our further development with whatever perils it may entail. Security is an idle dream, for whatever of natural resources can be used for good can be used in equal measure for evil. It does no service to humanity to condemn a discovery because it can be applied to evil ends, or to suppose that any moral problem lurks in the use of nuclear energy that has not already long existed in the similar use of electronic energy. No sensitive person can avoid a feeling at least of awe at the thought of the soo,000 victims of Hiroshima whose sacrifice has saved ten or twenty times their number, nor would it be good, even if it were possible, that we should ever contemplate such events with detachment. What is necessary, how- ever, is that emotion should wait on reason, or our peril is great indeed.
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