A very famous and bestselling book of the previous generation or a generation before that (maybe), Human Destiny was authored by a very famous French philosopher and author, Pierre Lecomte du Noüy. Though the book seldom holds any significance today other than being a classic crossover of science and devotional spiritualism, it is still regarded as one of the very best books to have dealt with such a delicate issue – what is human destiny? Today, one of our contributors will present a book review of the same book for our readers who might be interested in this classic and interesting non-fiction.

“Pure intelligence, deprived of moral background, often ends in destructive criticism or in futile discussions, in an intricate and complicated childishness exemplified by the difficult games of medieval scholasticism.”

And this is true as well! What Lecomte Du Noüy writes on the page number 101 of his book is surely something to be understood and thought. What is pure intelligence at first? It’s sure that intelligence develops with time but as he argues, it should be linked with a sense of morality, to an extent, so that the intelligence does not bully all other things like those are nothing!

As a reader, once you start making progress in the terms of page numbers, you will find this book, Human Destiny, very strange at times. Intellect (in a very limited manner) has been likened or at least, ascribed to Lucifer and it has been shown as a corruption of the natural state of humankind. Maybe strange but it certainly seems perfect description if we think otherwise.

The central idea in the book has been finding the point where spirituality meets science and these two go together for the benefit of all. That’s why the author has talked in great detail about the evolution of man. He does not seem to be tired of making his points and counterpoints and proving somehow that man is essentially inquisitive and his desire to know more is not wrong. However, he has also been defensive of the desire to know something and once failed, to level that something with anything we know – like he has very well mentioned that we are still not sure of how we will manage to define the true nature of life, birth and death and why all these happen.

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy also offers many other things in his book and he tries to define the questions of religion, Godly realm, heaven and doctrines on the basis of his scientific evaluation of the facts concerned. The book will certainly be useful as well as interesting for the serious readers even today. However, those who have already read so many things (modern ones) about all these, will rarely find anything new or interesting. A good timepass, in the end, I can safely say that about this book – Human Destiny!

For those who would like reading this book, I have added the link to Amazon where they can get a copy of it.

Human Destiny on Amazon India 

review by a regular contributor