Making of man : a study in evolution / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Making of man : a study in evolution / by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/194 (page 16)
    all this long course of preparation must be something beyond our present imaginings. It is no great effort of faith to assume that there is a real value in existence; and that the long course of evolution, with its ups and downs, its advances and regressions, must, as it presses forward like the rising tide, reach some end or elevation of perma¬ nent value. Though indeed the word “ end ” is out of place, for there is no end. At the same time there might be periodicity of phase; and a certain standard having been reached, there might be a local re-beginning. Cyclical changes and repetitions seem appro¬ priate to material, though not to healthy mental, phenomena. The analogy of the Seasons, and of the growth and destruction of worlds, though the time periods are so different, suggests the possibility of utilising a physical periodicity for moral and spiritual advance. But there is plenty of sub-permanence in Nature. This planet has already lasted long, in its continued blaze of sunshine, as testified to by the fossils in the rocks; and neither the earth nor the sun shows the least sign of decadence, or any likelihood of coming to a catastrophe for, let us say, twenty or a