HUMANITY STILL IN INFANCY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 53, 4 March 1925, Page 8

HUMANITY STILL IN INFANCY.

WHAT IS MATTER 1 THE WONDER OF THE UNIVERSE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 20. Sir Oliver Lodge seized the occasion of his election to honorary membership of the Mersey and North Wales section of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, to discourse on energy and the wonders of modern research into it.

Sir Oliver said that already it has been seen that matter could* be turned into energy and could actually be converted into radiation- The most intense example of this radiation was that of the stars and the sun. The conversion of matter into radiation in the case of the sun was at the rate of four million tons every second. It sounded incredible, and yet it had made no impression in-a million years. "To mc it seems a very remarkable thing," he said, "if the solar system has lasted all this time that the electrical theory of matter and the nature of electricity is leading us to this view, that the earth has been preparing all these millions of years for a human race, and that the human race is the flower and crown of all that labour and preparation. I cannot suppose that the human race has come to its climax, or is anywhere but in its infancy, for it is only a moderately short fraction of time that it has existed. I think it is remarkable because we hardly feel worthy of it. The mess we make of things sometimes makes us wonder if all the preparation were worth while,- but I assume the hope of an ultimate outcome in the millions of yeare which follow, are seen in the eyes of One wiser than ourselves to be worth while, provided we realise our responsibility and make the most of the opportunities we have." /