GENISIS OF THE WORLD.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 781, 3 November 1922, Page 5

GENISIS OF THE WORLD.

“Whence sprang the world, and whether framed by hand divine or no, are questions that have fascinated and perplexed the greatest thinkers of every age or at least since man reached such a level of intellectual evolution that he could speculate about thorn, ’’ says “Nature.” If we may reason from our knowledge of mentality of Hie lowest grades of human- ■ itry as we know them to-day, it is reasonably cetrain that man must have existed on the earth for aeons before Ze attained to a degree of mental development that would enable him to give l-he slightest consideration to such matters. “Anlli.ropologrs.ls tell ,us that even in this twentieth century there are races of men, situated in remote and widely separated regions of the world, who have never framed, and as far as can be discovered, have never attempted lo frame, any conception or surmise concerning its origin. And yet these races'-ire as far rdriioVed in development from the pro-historic man. as the prehistoric man was fropa the ape. “The lecture which Professor Nerst reprints in the little bro'chure before us is, we believe, the latest attempt to focus the outcome.; of, modern ..research upon this question of the origin and mode of formation of the world. He applies to it the knowledge with which his study and training as a worker and expositor of chemical physics has equipped, him. As may be anticipated the whole is instructive and highly suggestive, hand ■ we have read it with interest and pleasure. v “Nevertheless we rise ffom its per- ■ usal with a humbling sense of the inn* adequacy of our present means of grappling with so stupendous a problem. More than ten years ago the y same theme was handled by Professor; Svantei Arrhenjas in his ‘Werden tier Welteii,’ and afterwards in ‘The Life of tiu* Universe,’ and it may be doubted whether in reality Professor Nernst has succeeded in carrying the • matter any further. How partial and inadequate is the basis on. which even the latest cosmogony rests was well brought out in the discussion last year at the Edinburgh meeting of tlw*eJs>i British Association on • the age of the? earth. The work of one epoch dees, little more than upset that of its. pise l - ? deeessor. Premises in regard to; the •: earth's heat are vitiated by the dis,- j'covery of radio-active materials.'••Wer’r. are still in ignorance .as ‘to the true?? i source of solar energy: "Secular contraction apparently is- not enough to j aocount- for it. We have absolutely no definite knowledge on so fundamental a matter. The more we learn the greater seems our ignorance. We can but go on groping for the light, testing 'our surmises as best we hiay in tiie fdeble glimmer that, our pres-v ent knowledge sheds. “Negligible as is the scientific merit of the old cosmogonies,, they had at, : least the charms of imagery arid fatiCy’ - —charms at which the Cold, unsympathetic eye of a passionless science looks askance'. Even the imagination, of a Tyndall would find it difficult lo in vest; our modern cosmogony with f • the vestiges of such attributes.”