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.

    41/194 (page 37)
    Contemplate for a moment the alterna¬ tives. Either Humanity is in some sense permanent, or else it is evanescent and temporary. If it be temporary,—if the age of human achievement lasts a certain num¬ ber of centuries or millenia and then termi¬ nates so completely that all goes on as if it had not been,—if no permanent advance or addition to the value of existence is the result of all this labour and sorrow,—then the moods of the pessimist are partly justi¬ fied. For in the majestic pageant of Eternity a few million years more or less are as nothing and mere vanity, like an iridescent bubble which flashes the sunlight and vanishes, if they have no permanent result. The unwholesome attitude of lament over the transitoriness and ineffectiveness of human learning and glory is depicted in “ The Archytas Ode ” (Hor., C. i. 28). Of the opening lines of this Ode, F. W. H. Myers’ poem “ Immortality ” contains remi¬ niscences :— Lo all that age is as a speck of sand Lost on the long beach when the tides are free, And no man metes it in his hollow hand Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be; At ebb it lies forgotten on the land And at full tide forgotten in the sea.