JBS Haldane’s “The Last Judgment”

In “The Last Judgment, a Scientist’s Vision of the Future of Man” (in Possible Worlds and Other Essays Chatto & Windus, London, 1927) the biologist JBS Haldane argues that the further evolution of humanity will take place over millions of years, just as our evolution to this point took millions of years. He speculates on the terraforming and colonization of Venus, and on the enhancement of posthumans to be able to live on Venus and other planets. He concludes:

The end towards which ‘the whole of creation groaneth and travaileth’ is the emergence of a new kind of being which will bear the same relation to mind as do mind to life and life to matter. It is the urge towards this which finds its expression in the higher forms of religion. Without necessarily accepting such a view, one can express some of its implications in a myth…

Man’s little world will end. The human mind can envisage that end. If humanity can enlarge the scope of its will as it has enlarged the reach of its intellect it will escape that end. If not the judgment will have gone out against it, and man and all his works will perish eternally. Either the human race will prove that its destiny is eternity and infinity, and that the value of the individual is negligible in comparison with that of destiny, or the time will come

When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on
When even lovers find their peace at last
And Earth is but a star that once had shone

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