SIR OLIVER LODGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20710, 7 May 1929, Page 15

SIR OLIVER LODGE.

A GREAT SCIENTIST. HIS EVER-WIDENING WORLD. 'EXPLORING THE ETHER. There is no indefiiiiteness in Sir Oliver Lodges acceptance of the reality of the life after death, recent cables having recorded ■ his unequivocal belief in communications with those who have passed through the portal men call death. Sir Olivers work hn s appealed to the lay mind more than that of any other living scientist. From the start of his career, far from being “ on stilts at a miscroscope,” Lodge has brought science right to the front door of the ordinary man. In addressing bimsclf to a wide audience he has had nothing to gain; a sufficiency of this worlds goodg has pushed mere finance into the background. His position as one of the front rank discoverers of all time is secure. • To-day, as a pioneer in the fields of physics, he is predominant. It was on the results of his research in wireless telegraphy that Marconi built the vast commercial structure which has culminated in the British Broadcasting Corporation; in short. Lodge made ‘ listeningin ” possible. And he will go down in' history as the great prophet of the ether of space. Yet he has chosen to be also a popular teacher of science. That voluntary descent from Olympus has shown the true stature of the man. Big he is in every way., Six feet three in height, a huge, strong body, with a massive head. A voice of tremendous resonance and power, such as to fill the largest hall, he talks straight, as it were, from the shoulder; both the grip of his hand and the frank scrutiny of his keen eyes are direct and artless. In a pleasant corner of his garden Sir Oliver has built a revolving sun parlour, where in good weather he works with his secretary. Even to-day, at the age of 77, he labours Horn D o’clock in the morning until 8 at night, and glories in the bondage. He has written 10 books since his seventieth birthday, and' has others in the making,, including bis autobiography and a treatise on the ether which will probably be bis magnum opus. It can be said of Lodge, as was said of Newton, “science comes as easy to him as breathing.” HEART NOT IN TRADE. Oliver Lodge and Son was the name of a prosperous busiuess concern in the potteries. The present Sir Oliver was the son, and it was intended that he should follow his, father. But his heart was not in trade. Like Francis of Assisi, he had always a little book in his hand, and that book was on mathematics. “T studied in the evenings," he will tell you, “ and I studied at lunch time. I don’t think I wasted a minute. Even in station waiting rooms between trains' ! put in a lot of good hard reading;” But it was hearing Tyndall lecture at - the Royal Institution that was the turning point in Lodge’s life: with a thrill of illumination he saw that he was a born physicist. For work there was now an urgent motive. Without help from anybody, this boy who had been taken away from school at 14 sailed through the London University matriculation. Without tutoring, but with much evening toil, he passed the intermediate examination in science

and gained first-class honours in physics. < He was now 21. The bright eyes of danger—or at least of insecurity—• * beckoned and he took the plunge. He s threw up his business career and the 1 prospect of amassing a fortune and came ' to University College, London, to study. ; It was a desperately hard fight. He had to support himself by tutoring others in his leisure hours. But he won through. ’ At the age of 26 he was a married man and a doctor of science; and before he ■ was 30 be was first professor of physics 1 at the newly founded University College in Liverpool. ■ The grind was ended and the foundations laid. Lodge had now at his call a brain that was a finely sharpened tool with few equals in England. Since those days he has had something like 30 or 40 honours and posts of distinction showered on him, . including the I). Sc. or LL.D. of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Andrew’s, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, not forgetting Adelaide and Toronto. But these were only the symbols of a long series of achievements in scientific research. It was at Liverpool that he carried, out his pioneering work in electricity. It was at Liveri. poo], too, that he discovered E. E. RobinI son, thou little more than a boy, and ! gave him the job of demonstrator at his lectures. Eor years E. E. Robinson has j been his principal assistant. At his pri--1 vate laboratory at Egham, on the Thames, ■: he now keeps Mr Robinson busily occupied carrying out research, making calculations and verifying those facts that he may require for the development of new lines of thought. •It l is to a study ,of the ether that Sir Oliver Lodge is devoting the remainder of his days. He believes that where there is a body of matter—whether it is made of wood or stone or flesh and blood —there is also an ether body. “A matter body is animated when it belongs to a plant or an animal. Is the ether body . likewise animated?” be wonders. “If so, we may well ask further. What happens when the matter body wears out? We may be sure that the ether body does not wear out; that is contrary to all we know about the ether and its perfect properties.” THE ULTIMATE ESSENCE. In his “ Ether and Reality ” Lodge goes oven further. He says that matter is turning out to be one of the forms that the ether, or etheral energy, takes; in other words, that the ether is the ultimate essence that wo are made of. He suggests that, just as a magnet certainly attracts a bit of iron through the medium of the ether, so our mind and our wifi act directly upon, ether and through it on matter. “ Ether is our primary and permanent instrument,” he asserts. “It is in connection with the ether that we are able to express our thoughts and feelings and to manifest ourselves. . , . Even our apparently most material sense—the sense of touch—is dependent-on .this omnipresent medium, on which alone wc can directly act, and through which all our information' conies. It is tho primary instrument of mind, the vehicle of soul, (he habitation of spirit. Truly it may be called the living garment of God.”

It cannot be too emphatically stated (hat Sir Oliver Lodge is not a Spiritualist. He stands aloof from the movement He is a member of no Spiritualist church, he is a member of the Church of England. But he does believe in the survival of human personality after death. And he does believe that authentic communications have been received from the dead. Two or three times a year, ho says, he has a talk (through a medium) with his sou, Raymond, who was killed in the war. Many worthy folk think that here is the one '“blind spot’’ in an otherwise great mind. The truth is that his psychical interests have been closely linked up with Ins main life's work. In his early days at University College, London, he was familiar with the ideas of investigators like Gurney and F. W. H. Myers. He thought these ideas stuff and nonsense. However, a little later on he began to study telepathy. In. 1889 he received his first convincing proof of survival. It is all down iu black and white in Part XVII of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and the subject is further expanded in his book, “The Survival of Man.” “ I am as convinced of continued existence on the other side of death as I am I of existence here,” he saj’s in “Raymond.” | “It may be said, you cannot be as sure ] as you can of sensory experience. T say I can. A physicist is never limited to

direct sensory impressions—he has to deal with a multitude of conceptions for which he has no physical organ SECRETS OF NATURE. The fact is, of course, that most scientists deliberately ignore what one has called the “ whole psychical bag of tricks.” They regard the entire business as fanaticism and not quite respectable. But, as Lodge points out, even what is now regarded as the most orthodox science was not always respectable. To early man it sounded like witchcraft. Investigators were burned for prying into the secrets of Nature. Plato was sold as a slave for his devotion to science. Roger Bacon was twice imprisoned for 10 years for the same crime. Because he asserted that the world moved round the sun, Galileo also was twice imprisoned; and that happened as recently as the seventeenth century. Indeed, up to the time of Elizabeth, scientific progress was slow. Francis Bacon was the man who paved the way for the burst of activity during the Commonwealth that resulted in the formation of the Royal Society in the reign of Charles 11. And it was Newton who correlated the previous knowledge into one great system. Chemistry and optics were the chief forces in the first part of the nineteenth century; heat and geology occupied the middle; and during the latter part, electricity and biology flourished. Since the war tremendous strides have been made in psychology. But psychical investigation is still looked on askance, “ Phantasms and dreams and ghosts, crystal-gazing, premonitions and clairvoyance; the region of superstition? ” says Lodge. “Yes, hitherto; but also the region of fact. . . . The whole of our knowledge and existence is shrouded in mystery, and the business of science is to overcome the forces of superstition.” A lifetime of science has left Lodge an optimist. He believes that each one of us is a spark struck from some divine fire. Our future, our heritage, is a splendid one. In all his books that cry rings out. Even in his brochure of. “Modern Scientific Ideas,” the .call,is clear:. “ Vv’hcri for a moment, after a long day’s survey of the field, we lift our, eyes' and. gaze toward the spiritual horizon, we perceive a region beyond the scope of science, where measurements fail, where explanations cease, and we catch a glimpse of an unfathomed glory.”