Religion: Divine Spark

• Share

". . . From an evolutive point of view, the greatest invention of Nature is death."

So wrote French Biophysicist Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, who had noted that lower forms of life reproduce by dividing, and therefore never die a natural death. Last week, Nature's great invention was applied to 64-year-old Dr. du Noüy.

Paris-born Scientist-Author du Noüy was at one time a member of the Rockefeller Institute, head of biophysics at the Pasteur Institute, a director of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne. As a young officer in the French Army, he met Biologist Alexis Carrel (Man, the Unknown), under whose influence he became deeply interested in biophysics. In 1937, he attracted international attention with his book Biological Time ("Everything occurs as if sidereal time flowed four times faster for a man of 50 than for a child of 10").

Toward Spirituality. Dr. du Noüy, who had studied with Radiologists Pierre and Mme. Curie, published some 200 papers, most of them technical, and seven books which showed his growing interest in building a philosophy and a religion upon the foundation of his scientific work.

He lived in Paris under the Nazis until 1942. Then he made extensive lecture tours in the U.S. He was not very hopeful of man's immediate future. "Humanity," he wrote, "has not reached the age of reason. . . ."

With the help of his American wife, the former Mary Bishop Harriman, Dr. du Noüy wrote the current bestseller, Human Destiny (TIME, Feb. 24). In it he assembled impressive scientific and mathematical data to demonstrate that life could not have been the result of a chance combination of elements. Life, he said, must have been created for some long-range purpose. This purposiveness Scientist du Noüy called "telefinality." Mankind—the highest and most complex life-form of all—must, he believed, go on developing in the direction of spirituality, as exemplified by Christ.

"Let Man Remember. . . ." Consciousness of one's tremendous responsibility in the great evolutionary process was to him the mark of a more highly evolved human being: "Let every man remember that the destiny of mankind is incomparable, and that it depends greatly on his will to collaborate in the transcendent task. . . . And let him above all never forget that the divine spark is in him, in him alone, and that he is free to disregard it, to kill it, or to come closer to God by showing his eagerness to work with Him, and for Him."