will find embedded in literature;
and although we are emerging from that conflict, it can only be to find
fresh opportunities for discovery, fresh fields of interest, in the
newer age. Towards a wise reception of these discoveries, as they are
gradually arrived at in the future, this little book will give some
help.

OLIVER LODGE.

{7}

GOD AND THE WORLD

INTRODUCTION

A man, so it has been said, is distinguished from the creatures beneath
him by his power to ask a question. To which we may add that one man
is distinguished from another by the kind of question that he asks. A
man is to be measured by the size of his question. Small men ask small
questions: of here and now; of to-day and to-morrow and the next day;
of how they may quickest fill their pockets, or gain another step upon
the social ladder. Great men are concerned with great questions: of
life, of man, of history, of God.

So again, the size of an age can be determined by the size of its
questions. It has been claimed that the age through which we have
passed was a great age, and tried by this test we need not hesitate to
admit the claim. It was full of questions, and they were great
questions. As never before, the eyes of men strained upwards and
backwards into the dim {8} recesses of the past to discover something,
if it might be, of the beginnings of things: of matter and life; of the
earth and its contents; of the solar system and the universe. We know
with what interest inquiries of this sort were regarded, and how ready
the people were to read the books that dealt with them; to attend
lectures and discussions about them, and to give their money for the
purposes of such research. It was a great age that could devote itself
so eagerly to questions of this importance and magnitude.

But as men cannot live upon appetite, so neither can they be for ever
satisfied with questions. Hence it follows that a period of
questioning is ordinarily followed by another, in which the accumulated
information is sorted and digested and turned to practical account; a
time in which constructive work is attempted, and some understanding is
arrived at as to the relation that exists between the old knowledge and
the new. It looks as if we were nearing such a time, when, for a while
at all events, there will be a pause for reconsideration and
reconstruction, and the human spirit will gather strength and
confidence before again setting out upon it