Sir Oliver Lodge

“ It was then I think we realised what a strong instinct there was in some of us—not to struggle madly for life—but to wait for something to come to us, whether it be life or death; and not to lose our personality and become like one of the struggling shouting creatures who were by then swarming up from the lower decks and made one's heart ache. ”

“ Kepler to study and brood over them? Where is the man to spend his life in evolving the beginnings of law and order from the midst of all this chaos?
Perhaps as a man he may not come, but his era will come. Through this stage the science must pass, ere it is ready for the commanding intellect of a Newton.
But what a work it will be for the man, whoever he be that undertakes it—a fearful monotonous grind of calculation, hypothesis, hypothesis, calculation, a desperate and groping endeavour to reconcile theories with facts. ”

“ And when the present century, or the century after, lets us deeper into their secrets, and into the secrets of some other phenomena now in course of being rationally investigated, I feel as if it would be no merely material prospect that will be opening on our view, but some glimpse into a region of the universe which Science has never entered yet, but which has been sought from far, and perhaps blindly apprehended, by painter and poet, by philosopher and saint. ”

“ By the Holy Spirit is meant the living and immanent Deity at work in the consciousness and experience of mankind,—the guider of human history, the comforter of human sorrow, the revealer of truth, the inspirer of faith and hope and love, the producer of life and joy and beauty, the sustainer and enricher of existence, the Impersonation of the Grace of God. ”

“ The speed with which it travels is twenty-five miles a second, (for its orbit extends as far as Uranus, although by no means parabolic) , and yet it takes more than a year to pass. Imagine a procession 200,000 miles broad, every individual rushing along at the rate of twenty-five miles every second, and the whole procession so long that it takes more than a year to pass. It is like a gigantic shoal of herrings swimming round and round the sun every thirty-three years, and travelling past the earth with that tremendous velocity of twenty-five miles a second. ”

“ The visible shape of the body was no accident, it corresponded to a reality, for it was caused by the indwelling vivifying essence; and affection entwines itself inevitably round not only the true personality of the departed, but round its material vehicle also—the sign and symbol of so much beauty, so much love. Symbols appeal to the heart of humanity, and anything cherished and honoured becomes in itself a thing of intrinsic value, which cannot be regarded with indifference. ”

“ The most essential element in Christianity is its conception of a human God; of a God, in the first place, not apart from the Universe, not outside it and distinct from it, but immanent in it; yet not immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate in it and revealed in the Incarnation. The nature of God is displayed in part by everything, to those who have eyes to see, but is displayed most clearly and fully by the highest type of existence, the highest experience to which the process of evolution has so far opened our senses. ”

“ All that we ourselves can effect, in the material universe, is to alter the motion and configuration of masses of matter; we can move matter, by our muscles, and that is all we can do directly: everything else is indirect.
But now comes the question, how is it possible for matter to be composed of ether? How is it possible for a solid to be made out of fluid? A solid possesses the properties of rigidity, impenetrability, elasticity, and such-like; how can these be imitated by a perfect fluid such as the ether must be? ”

“ We ourselves are a part of the agencies for good or evil; we have the power to help or to hinder, to mend or to mar, within the scope of our activity. Our help is asked for; lowly as we are, it is really wanted, on the earth here and now, just as much wanted as our body needs the help of its lowly white corpuscles—to contribute to health, to attack disease, to maintain the normal and healthy life of the organism. We are the white corpuscles of the cosmos, we serve and form part of an immanent Deity. ”

“ Yes, that is what Herschel discovered—the life and activity of the whole visible universe. No longer was our little solar system to be the one object of regard, no longer were its phenomena to be alone interesting to man. With Herschel every star was a solar system. And more than that: he found suns revolving round suns, at distances such as the mind reels at, still obeying the same law of gravitation as pulls an apple from a tree. He tried hard to estimate the distance of the stars from the earth, but there he failed: it was too hopeless a problem. ”

“ Some are inclined to think that man is solitary in the universe, the highest of created things; without equal, without superior, without companionship; alone with his indomitable soul amid scenes of unspeakable grandeur and awe; alone with his brethren in a universe wherein no spark of feeling, no gleam of intelligence, can be aroused by his unuttered longings, no echo of sympathy can respond to his bewildered need.
Yet that is not the feeling which arises during spells of lonely communion with nature, on rock or sea or trackless waste. ”

“ Part of our experience is the connexion of spirit with matter. We are conscious of our own identity, our own mind and purpose and will: we are also conscious of the matter in which it is at present incarnate and manifested. Let us use these experiences and learn from them. Incarnation is a fact; we are not matter, yet we utilise it. Through the mechanism of the brain we can influence the material world; we are in it, but not of it; we transcend it by our consciousness. The body is our machine, our instrument, our vehicle of manifestation ”

“ We are accustomed to be careful as to what we assert; we are liable to be unscrupulous as to what we deny. It is possible to find people who, knowing nothing or next to nothing of the Universe, are prepared to limit existence to that of which they have had experience, and to measure the cosmos in terms of their own understanding. Their confidence in themselves, their shut minds and self-satisfied hearts, are things to marvel at. The fact is that no glimmer of a conception of the real magnitude and complexity of existence can ever have illuminated their cosmic view. ”

“ He took out his old papers and began again the calculation. If gravity were the force keeping the moon in its orbit, it would fall toward the earth sixteen feet every minute. How far did it fall? The newly known size of the earth would modify the figures: with intense excitement he runs through the working, his mind leaps before his hand, and as he perceives the answer to be coming out right, all the infinite meaning and scope of his mighty discovery flashes upon him, and he can no longer see the paper. He throws down the pen; and the secret of the universe is, to one man, known. ”

“ It were preposterous to imagine an over-lofty conception in a creature. Reality is always found to exceed our clear conception of it; never once in science has it permanently fallen short. No conception is too great or too high. But also no devout conception is too simple, too lowly, too childlike to have an element—some grain—of vital truth stored away, a mustard seed ready to germinate and bud, a leaven which may permeate the whole mass.
I would apply all this to what for brevity may be called Human Immortality. ”

“ CLAUSE X The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental element in every religious creed. There is no scientific reason for imagining it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence—there is no reason to suppose that we dwellers on this planet know more about the universe than any other existing creature. Such an idea, strictly speaking, is absurd. Science has investigated our ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are—a development of life on this planet earth. ”

“ But before the century closed there was destined to arise one remarkable exception—a man who was comparatively ignorant of that which had been done before—a man unversed in mathematics and the intricacies of science, but who possessed such a real and genuine enthusiasm and love of Nature that he overcame the force of adverse circumstances, and entering the territory of astronomy by a by-path, struck out a new line for himself, and infused into the science a healthy spirit of fresh life and activity. ”

“ We have to realise that the Will of God is to be done on earth, that the Kingdom of Heaven is to be a present Kingdom, here and now, not relegated indefinitely to the future. Our life is not in the future, but in the present, and it will always be in the present: it is in our life that we have to apply our beliefs, utilise our talents, and bring forth fruit. The Kingdom of Heaven is not only at hand, it is potentially in our midst, and may be actually within us. These are its two chief aspects, the social, and the individual. ”

“ But our real existence embraces far more than that. The present, alone and isolated, would be meaningless to us; we look before and after. Our memories are thronged with the past; our anticipations range over the future; and it is in the past and the future that we really live. It is so even with the higher animals: they too order their lives by memory and anticipation. It is under the influence of the future that the animal world performs even the most trivial conscious acts. We eat, we rest, we work, all with an eye to the immediate future. ”

“ Another thing one may notice, as showing their enormous distances, is that from every planet of the solar system the aspect of the heavens will be precisely the same. Inhabitants of Mars, or Jupiter, or Saturn, or Uranus, will see exactly the same constellations as we do. The whole dimensions of the solar system shrink up into a speck when so contemplated. And from the stars none of the planetary orbs of our system are visible at all; nothing but the sun is visible, and that merely as a twinkling star, brighter than some, but fainter than many others. ”

“ Yes, truly, Christ was a planetary manifestation of Deity, a revelation to the human race, the highest and simplest it has yet had; a revelation in the only form accessible to man, a revelation in the full-bodied form of humanity.
Little conception had they in those days of the whole universe as we know it now. The earth was the whole world to them, and that which revealed God to the earth was naturally regarded as the whole Cosmic Deity. Yet it was a truly divine Incarnation.
A deity of some kind is common to every branch of the human race. ”

“ CLAUSE VIII The essence of sin is error against light and knowledge, and against our own higher nature. Vice is error against natural law. Crime is error against society. Sin against our own higher nature may be truly said to be against God, because it is against that purpose or destiny which by Divine arrangement is open to us, if only we will pursue and realise it.
Sin is a disease: the whole of existence is so bound together that disease in one part means pain throughout; the innocent may suffer with the guilty, and suffering may extend to the Highest. ”

“ True he is best known as an artist, but if you read his works you will come to the conclusion that he was the most scientific artist who ever lived. He teaches the laws of perspective (then new) , of light and shade, of colour, of the equilibrium of bodies, and of a multitude of other matters where science touches on art—not always quite correctly according to modern ideas, but in beautiful and precise language. For clear and conscious power, for wide-embracing knowledge and skill, Leonardo is one of the most remarkable men that ever lived. ”

“ I would even venture to urge that, ever since the grant to living creatures of free will, there must be, in some sense or other, a real element of contingency,—that there is no dulness about it, even to the Deity, but a constant and aspiring Effort.
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Let us trust our experience in this also. The Universe is a flux, it is a becoming, it is a progress. Evolution is a reality. True and not imaginary progress is possible. Effort is not a sham. Existence is a true adventure. There is a real risk. ”

“ The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind has resented this negative conclusion, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the earth was no mere planet among a crowd of others, but was the centre of the universe; and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it. A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still—not now as regards the planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume—some of us—to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than our own. ”

“ These may be workers, they may and do advance knowledge, but they are never pioneers. Not to them is it given to open out great tracts of unexplored territory, or to view the promised land as from a mountain-top. Of them we shall not speak; we will concern ourselves only with the greatest, the epoch-making men, to whose life and work we and all who come after them owe so much. Such a man was Thales. Such was Archimedes, Hipparchus, Copernicus. Such pre-eminently was Newton.
Now I am not going to attempt a history of science. Such a work in ten lectures would be absurd. ”