Evolution and creation / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

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

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    justifies the labour and sacrifice that has gone to produce him. Consider indeed the history of the planet on which man has at last appeared. Its age since it was molten is not accurately known, but is estimated as of the order of four hundred million years— not less than that. That appears to be the record of the rocks. Well, then, for these four hundred million years, for all except the last few hundred thousand, what were the inhabitants of the planet? Vegetation- beautiful, no doubt, and luxuriant—fishes, reptiles, and birds—and ultimately mam- mals—filled the scene. For ages nothing higher than reptiles crawled about on the surface of the globe. The history of man, compared with the history of these crea¬ tures whose remains are buried in the rocks, is ephemeral, and as it were momental. To them the earth seemed to belong. And the object of it all was unknown to any consciousness which had then come into being on the planet. For ages it must have seemed an apparent waste. No response to the Creator; no understanding or conscious help. Ultimately, however, after long patience,