Evolution and revelation / by J.A. Fleming.

  • John Ambrose Fleming
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution and revelation / by J.A. Fleming. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bead as it falls into a certain place on the floor depending on its colour. A bead pattern exhibiting an order might thus be formed on the floor in place of a disorderly heap, yet there would have been no violation of the law of Conservation of Energy. It is therefore permissible to take the view that the power latent in every germinal cell or seed of development or growth, according to type, cannot be wholly due to impersonal agencies, but is a continual manifestation of Thought and Will which are attributes not of things but of Mind. This principle, that Growth requires Guidance, may be, and most probably is, operative in the inanimate things of Nature as well as in the animate. Our astronomy has made us cognizant that stars, no less than vegetables and animals, have a growth and a life-history, a birth, maturity and decay. Our large telescopes show us in the nebule vast masses of incandescent gas being whirled in spirals and condensing round one or more centres into infant suns. It has been shown that as such an incandescent mass radiates light and heat, it first becomes hotter in itself and not cooler, then by degrees it contracts and cools, and finally ends by becoming a dark and invisible mass. A distinction is now made between so-called giant stars, which are enormous masses of incandescent gas of small density, and so-called dwarf stars which are dense and small. The giant stars are in the first vigour of gaseous youth and activity, the dwarfs are the ancient ones in a state approaching senile decay. No one, however, who possesses the smallest powers of serious thought can have looked at the starry heavens in open country on a clear night, with even a small knowledge of astronomical science, without asking himself the questions: How comes it to pass that this Universe has developed along the lines on which we see it has? Is it by the merely fortuitous action of physical forces? Is it the only possible Universe, or can it be the product merely of a chance concourse of atoms? It is a mighty maze. Is it without a plan? It is perfectly certain that it has not always been as we see it now, and that the changes from simple to complex have been gradual, and therefore that Evolution, in the proper sense of the word, has been operative. To say, however, that Evolution alone has produced it or guided it to its present condition is equivalent to attributing to Matter a self-arranging power, to bestow upon it the qualities of Mind, and to make a creative deity out of that which is merely the name for an observed process or effect.
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