though nobody in their senses behaved as if life were determined, there was no logical answer to the determinist's argument. Well, no longer is this so; and we owe it to the inspired use of computers.
I know that complicated electrical circuits can sometimes seem to take on a life of their own, and give rise to interference noises. I suppose it is like impedance in alternating currents, but much more complicated. Yet heaps of ironmongery never yet won wars, without the will to use equipment properly; and it would be a bold man who disputed Napoleon's judgment that the moral is to the physical as three to one. What has transformed war is the atomic bomb, which represents the confidence to manipulate matter. What is likely to transform the spiritual world is the confidence to handle spiritual concepts, and the willingness to use them to try to create. I doubt if brains generate super brains.
Consider the position from the point of view of a creator. It would be most welcome to him, if the end of evolutionary time and the prevalence of consciousness synthesis allowed him to interfere much more often and much more directly in the world's affairs, without there being any danger of its changing his nature. (This danger is one of the most reasonable obstacles preventing him interfering very much at present). It would be disconcerting to say the least for a creator to discover one morning that a new supra-personality had arisen spontaneously, and was hovering over mankind. What would he do about it?
As I have already hinted, a trend towards consciousness synthesis is in harmony with the other advances of science. When the first atomic bomb exploded over Arizona, its light heralded the dawn of a new confidence. Previously men had used and exploited natural resources, but this was the first time that men had dared to try to manipulate atoms. How the experimenters…