MAN AND ANOTHER ICE AGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 232, 1 October 1925, Page 11

MAN AND ANOTHER ICE AGE.

CANADIAN PROFESSOR'S VIEWS. HIS FAITH IN GOD. (From Our Own Correspondent.) fcONDON, August. 28. The annual meeting 61 tfte British j Association gives the ordinary cotfflnon 'or garden pergon a cfta'n'ce of catching up with the new developments of science. . When Sir Ernest Rutherford was preei- ! dent his clear exposition of the marvels of the atom were eagerly listened to by millions of people who had hardly heard of the atom's existence till he broadcasted the story of its life. i We look to the British Association, therefore, to have scientific secrets told us in words of one syllable, but the bulk :of them are severely technical. i That of Professor W. A. Parks, of Toronto, however, who dealt with "Cultural Aspects of Geology," is worth forwarding, for it holds out a prospect to which those of us to whom sunny climes are dear may well shudder. We may, however, take comfort in the thought that geological changes do not take place in a lifetime, and that a million years is, bo to speak, but a day in geological I chronology. ! His address, too, is specially notable ;in a year which has revealed the existence of Dayton and America's Middle i West primitives, in that he asserted his j faith in God. ! Professor Parks' view is that "it is (highly probable that variation in climate , will greatly affect the activities of the ■ human race within a measurable number Jof years, and it is possible that the sites !of our present centres of civilisation will ibe buried under glaciers, and that a new civilisation will occupy, under a genial climate, the present inhospitable regions around the Poles." Professor Parks believes that the inconceivably long duration of the earth itself and of life probably constitutes a guarantee of a similar extension into the future. World Without End. "I confidently believe,"' he said, "that geological history teaches us that the J earth, and life, and the upward tendency lof life, will all three reach out into the illimitable future. "Can it be inferred," he asked, "that mental development is the indicated road for future progress? "Does the evolutionary series of sensibility begin with a protoplasmic response to stimulus and end with omnipotence, and does man occupy a position on eternity from the starting post, and another eternity from the goal ?" He said that if the earth, wnich is constantly adjusting its structure, became

perfectly rigid it would be a tremendous calamity.

"This condition attained," declared the professor, "the universal deluge is in sight, geologically speaking, and the end of the present order of things must inevitably ensue. Earthquakes, therefore, are not to he regarded as unmixed calamities; they are evidence that tho fatal total rigidity has not yet been attained." •"

Fortunately it seems that the earift is not SlJbwiHg a tre'rid towards rijSdity; "byt that eartii ffibveinimta aid tmcanic' action '&._ becoiiiihg less ptofbyßd ..in sebpei less widespread the average of activity being maintained hy more frequent recurrence."

"It is well known that the power of erosion is sufficiently great to have reduced the land mass to sea level again and again. Nevertheless, it is confidently believed that this result has never been entirely achieved. Rejuvenation has kept pace with erosion throughout the hundreds of millions of years that the earth has endured."

Is this, he asks, a mere" coincidence, or is it evidence of design?

The Professor answered this last question near the end of his lecture.

"To humbleness and caution," he said, "I would add a conviction of Theism as a result of the study of geology.

"I believe that the inconceivably long gradient that has ever led upward to the mentality of man has not been traced without design, and I see no reason why that gradient should terminate. "I look, rather, to its upward continuation to even greater heights beyond."