Evolution and creation / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Evolution and creation / by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was real. The problem, the idea of con¬ structing a free being, is far beyond any contrivance or ingenuity of man : he can invent and make machines, he cannot endow any of his manufactures with self- determined spontaneous activity, he cannot give them true responsibility and freedom. And note that once freedom was granted, it was fully granted. No man or group of men henceforth could be stopped from self-destruction by coercion. Influence, yes. Leading, guiding, educating, helping, all these. But force, no. Henceforth man was to be guided, not impelled. The risk was great; the value of the outcome would be greater. This was the spark of Divinity incorporated in man. Thenceforth he be¬ came as gods, knowing good and evil, with the power to help or to hinder the age-long process of evolution; which so far as this earth was concerned was to cul¬ minate in him, with the evident ultimate hope that he would become, perhaps ages hence—or, as we hope, even now to some extent—an understander and sympathiser and co-operator in the Divine process of Evolution.
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