MAN AND ANOTHER ICE AGE

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 October 1925, Page 10

MAN AND ANOTHER ICE AGE

CANADIAN PROFESSOR’S VIEWS. HIS FAITH IN GOD. The annual meeting of the British Association gives the ordinary common or garden .person a chance of catching up with , the new developments of science. When Sir Ernest Rutherford was president 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. . We look to the British Association, therefore, to have scientific secrets to'ld ns in words of one syllable, but the bulk, of them are severely technical. 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 bf 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 yeans is, so to speak, but a day in geological, chronology. His address, too, is specially notable in a year which lias revealed the existence of Dayton and America’s Middle West primitive's, in that he asserted his 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 of years, and it is possible that the sites of our .present centres of civilisation will be '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 earth, and life, and the upward tendency of ’life, will all three reach out into the illimitable luture. “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, winch is constnatly 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 be regarded as unmixed calamities; ttiey are evidence that the fatal total rigidity' has not yet been attained.” Fortunately it seems that the earth is not showing :a trend towards rigidity, “but that earth movements and volcanic action are becoming less profound in scope, . and less widespread geographically, the average ol activity 'being maintained by more trequent recurrence.” “It is well known that die power or erosion is sufficiently great to hav.e reduced the' land mass to sea level again and again. Nevertheless, it is confidently -believed that this result lias never been entirely achieved. Rejuvenation has kept pace with erosion throughout' the hundreds of millions of years 'that the earth has endured.” js this, he asks, a mere coincidence, or is it evidence of design? The Professor answered this last question near xlie end of his lecture. “To humbleness and caution, 5 he eaid, “I would add a conviction of Theism -as a result of the s-tudy of geology. . “I believe that the inconceivably long gradient that has ever led upward to, the mentality of man lias not been traced without design, and L see no, reason why that .gradient should terminute. , “I look, rather, to its upward continuation to even greater heights bey o nd. ’ ’