The Universe a Vast Electric Organism Part 11

He says: "Even after all has been said, many will be alarmed by the a.s.sertion that the forces we designate as mental come within the same generalization. Yet there is no alternative but to make this a.s.sertion.

The facts which justify or rather necessitate it being abundant and conspicuous. All the phenomena of mind belong to the same cla.s.s--the phenomena of force."

In this I agree, and contend that the mental or spiritual forces are the most potent and supreme forces of the universe and control all other forces, physical and electric, and are the ultimate of ultimates.

He says: "The various forms of force are all changeable into one another." This is shown, he says, by the conservation of energy and the correlation of forces.

This accords with my electrical theory of creation, which holds that there is but one physical force in the universe--electricity--and all other forces, such as light, heat, physical life and so-called gravitation, are manifestations of this one fundamental force, and are all changeable or convertible into one another, and all controlled by the dominant force of mind or spirit. In other words, G.o.d controls the universe as man controls his body. Man controls his body by the electric energy that permeates his body and brain, and G.o.d controls the universe by the electric energy that permeates all matter and s.p.a.ce, and which is subjected to His Omniscient Spirit and Omnipotent Will.

Herbert Spencer says: "An entire history of anything must include its appearance out of the imperceptible and its disappearance into the imperceptible. Be it a single object or a whole universe, any account which begins with it in a concrete form and leaves off with it in a concrete form is incomplete, since there remains an era of its knowable existence undescribed and unexplained."

The simplest statement of this fact, according to my theory, is that all visible things come from the great invisible sea of electro-magnetism in which all things exist, which he calls the imperceptible, and are woven by magnetic attraction and the aggregation of billions of invisible atoms into visible forms. Then, after they have run their course as visible substances or organic forms, they are again dissolved back into this invisible sea of electro-magnetism. Just as water continually changes from solid and liquid to invisible vapor and back again, so nature continually renews and purifies her ever-changing molecules but changeless atoms, and builds up organic forms by magnetic attraction and dissolves them by electric repulsion. I contend that matter could be gathered into visible form in no other way than by electric attraction.

The life period of all visible things is while magnetic attraction has sway and is paramount; the death or dissolution period is when electric repulsion predominates. The blossoms and fruitage of summer are samples of magnetic life from the sun currents, while the decay of winter is a sample of electric repulsion and dissolution.

The law of incessant change, he says, must be the unifying principle which in its simplest form is "the redistribution of matter and motion."

Again he says: "The progress from the most diffused and insensible state to that of concentration and definition is called evolution, and is attended by the dissipation of motion and the integration of matter."

This I call the law of electric attraction. "The progress from the form of definition to that of diffusion," he says, "is called dissolution and is attended by an absorption of motion and a disintegration of matter."

This I call the law of electric repulsion.

"This," he says, "is the universal law of evolution and dissolution in its simplest form." And I say that the law of evolution and dissolution in its simplest form is the law of electric attraction and repulsion.

Mr. Spencer's definition is complicated, but his process is substantially correct. Yet he offers no explanation of this natural and universal process, while my electric theory of creation does, and makes his universal evolution and dissolution simply universal electric attraction and repulsion under the well-known laws of electro-magnetism.

This is a great advance, a gigantic step toward the explanation of the universe. The simplest ill.u.s.tration in physics explains both theories.

For instance, dry steam, he says, will condense to its liquid form, water by permitting the dissipation of its internal motion in the process of cooling, and a further dissipation of internal motion of the water will reduce it to a solid form, called ice. This he calls evolution, but he does not state what produces it. I say it is produced by electric attraction.

Then he says the ma.s.s of ice thus evolved from impalpable vapor may be set out in the sun and gradually melt, by the absorption of motion from the sun, into water, and a further absorption of like motion will convert it into invisible vapor. This he calls dissolution, but does not explain it. I say it is the result of the law of electric repulsion.

He speaks of the absorption of motion. I contend there can be no absorption of motion, but only an absorption of that which produces motion, which is electric energy, from the sun--the electric heart of the solar system. Motion, I contend, is not a cause but an effect, and all physical motion is the result of electric energy. And to say with Tindall, that light and heat is a mode of motion is to state an absurdity, for motion is the result of some force operating on matter.

It is not a cause but an effect produced by a cause.

I explain force and "the redistribution of matter and force" as the product or the result of the universal laws of electric attraction and repulsion, which control atoms, suns and worlds and all matter in body and s.p.a.ce.

Mr. Spencer offers no explanations and relegates all to the convenient dumping ground of the unknowable. What he calls "The realm of the unknowable" I call the electro-magnetic sea of ether in which all things exist and from which all things are evolved, which is the imperceptible elements of the universe in solution. This I claim is the fourth form of matter, the invisible primary essence of all visible creations.

I state his law of the redistribution of matter and motion in this way: An increase of electric energy produces an accelerated motion of the molecules of a body or substance, and, if continued, tends to its dissolution by electric repulsion; while an increase of magnetic attraction decreases the activity of its molecules and tends to integration or solidity of form or substance.

There is no such thing as heat in reality; heat is accelerated motion, a sensation caused by the increased activity of the molecules; while cold is the absence of motion or heat.

Mr. Spencer has described a general indefinite process as "the redistribution of matter and motion," but he has revealed no natural law, or fundamental explanation of natural phenomena. Every important question leads him to a stone wall which he does not try to scale or penetrate, but labels the "Unknowable."

A learned philosopher who has spent his life endeavoring to instruct others should not fall back into the convenient ditch of the "unknowable."

He says: "What is it that holds together the parts of which this ultimate atom may be imagined to consist? The only answer is a cohesive force." But he does not attempt to explain what that cohesive force is, while I undertake to say it is magnetic cohesion under the law of electro-magnetism, which holds aggregations of atoms in organic affinity, producing visible form and substance.

He says: "Force is the ultimate of ultimates. Matter and motion are only different manifestations of this unknowable force."

This is making force usurp the place of Deity. Force is a servant, not a master--a tool and not an ultimate cause. Force without intelligence back of it is anarchy and ruin; it is chaos and not a cosmos. G.o.d is a scientific necessity.

The ultimate of ultimates is mind or spirit--the eternal intelligent spirit of Deity and man.

I accept the scientific postulate that the conservation of energy and the correlation of forces affirm, first, that there is but one kind of energy or force in the physical universe; but I go further and contend electric energy is that force. Second, that, like matter energy cannot be created or destroyed. Third, that energy appears in a variety of forms as motion, heat, light and so-called gravity and chemical action.

Fourth, that these forms of energy are interchangeable--any one form may change into any other form, and all are transformations of the one ultimate force I term electricity. Fifth, that there is nothing in science to show that mind or spirit ever changes into physical energy, or force into mind or matter, or either into the other. This destroys the doctrine of monoecism, or all things from one substance. And Haeckel will have to produce more facts and logic than he has yet set forth to prove that spirit and matter, force and matter are all one and the same thing or substance.

The psychic or mental force is the paramount force, and the true realm of evolution belongs to the mental or spiritual universe and to organic nature. Physical changes are not evolution in the highest sense except as they are the result of spiritual power and unfolding intellect. The highest sphere of evolution is in biology and psychology.

There _is_ matter, mind and force. Materialism is a shallow, one-sided doctrine; and the opposite extreme, that there is no matter, nothing but mind, is also shallow and one-sided. These three separate ent.i.ties maintain their separate and distinct existence. The electric theory explains and elucidates all natural philosophy and all material phenomena, and is as a scientist has well said, "the best exposition ever offered of the physics and metaphysics of the universe."

In regard to another phase of natural philosophy, Kant proved that in our experience objects can be known only in relation to a subject, and matter only in relation to mind. From this it is evident that mind is at least co-ordinate with matter and cannot be treated as a mere property of matter. From this doctrine Spencer took refuge in the strange notion that we possess two consciousnesses, the consciousness of ideas within us and the consciousness of motions without us. That neither of these could be resolved into the other, though both were the phenomena of an unknowable absolute. This self-contradiction of a dualistic separation between two aspects of our life, which as a matter of fact can never be divided, proved a citadel of ignorance which could not withstand the attacks of logical criticism.

Mr. Spencer's agnostic dualism of objective and subjective mind was due to a fundamental misconception of what is meant by the subjectivity of knowledge. If we have the consciousness of object and subject only in relation to each other, it is not necessary to seek the principle of their unity in any third principle, for his unknowable absolute is "in our mouths and in our hearts," and found in the inseparable unity of experience in which the inward and outward are correlative elements.

It seems Mr. Spencer's agnosticism is a sort of spiritual refuge for the dest.i.tutes who renounce their heritage like Esau or waste it like the prodigal son, and feed on husks. For those who by their abstractions separate the elements of experience from each other, are forced to go beyond experience for the unity they have lost, and flounder in the miry bogs of agnosticism.

The true way is to give up such abstractions as objective and subjective mind, for the mind is a unity, and learn to "think things together" and recognize the organic relation of the inner and the outer life and "explain the parts by the whole, and not the whole by artificially severed parts." This organic unity of mind in man is ill.u.s.trated by the organic unity of the universe, which, under the electric theory of creation, is a vast electric organism bound together by invisible electric bands, where every atom has an individuality manifested and explained in the harmonious unity of an ever-changing but indestructible universe.

As man is capable of knowing all things, he cannot be identified with any of them, or if as an individual he is so identified, he has within him in his spiritual nature that which carries him beyond the limits of his individuality. In his inner moral life man is revealed to himself as a free-will agent, a great and self-determining being, conscious of being subordinated only to the law of duty, which is the law of his own reason.

That law, in spite of every outer pressure, he knows he _ought_ to obey, and therefore knows that _he can_ obey it. Thus man is both natural and spiritual; he is limited to a finite personality, yet possesses a universal capacity for knowledge and an absolute power of self-determination. Human reason with one voice seems to depress man to the level of an animal, and with the other voice proceeds to elevate him to the theatre of all life and being, as a "spectator of all time and existence," gifted with absolute freedom of will and conscious individuality. There is an ident.i.ty which is below or above all distinction; and the universe is one through all its multiplicity and permanent through all its changes. The unity beneath all differences, the priority of the universal to all particulars, is necessary to the true conception of the organic unity of the world. All opposition of thought and things are relative oppositions which find a solution in the life and movement of the whole. In all the great controversies that have divided the world the combatants have really been co-operators. They developed truth and unity.

We do not see anything truly until we comprehend it as a whole, and see it in all its relations to the universe. Everything so far as it has an independent, individual existence at all is an organism. While conceiving the universe as organic, Hegel maintained that it "is not a natural but a spiritual organism." For the limited scope of a natural organism and its process cannot be regarded as commensurate with a universe which comprehends all existence, whether cla.s.sed as organic or inorganic. Only the conscious and self-conscious unity of mind can overreach and overcome such extreme antagonisms and reduce them all to elements in the realization of its own life.

The natural universe, I contend, is an organism which includes nature, but manifests its ultimate or highest spiritual force only in the life of man. The universe as an electric organism obeys the higher supreme spiritual forces. It is said that "Hegel was only working out in the sphere of speculative thought what Christianity had already expressed for the ordinary consciousness." Nearly all great thinkers, I contend, reason forward or backward to the fundamental truths of the Bible, only expressed in a little different way, and which is the old familiar process in human history of "pouring old wine into new bottles." Hegel sought to show how an idealistic view of the universe and human life could be maintained consistently with the fullest recognition of scientific methods and results. This was an attempt at the reconciliation of science, philosophy and religion proceeding from the growing prevalence of that harmonizing spirit which seeks to do justice to the results of scientific investigation and at the same time give them a new and enlightened interpretation. In this he was right. The main conflict in philosophy as in religion has ceased to lie between materialism and idealism or spiritualism, but rather between Herbert Spencer's "Vague Consciousness of the Absolute," which he bids us worship, and that faith which enables us to pierce the veil of the phenomena and grasp the ultimate reality of things. Philosophy, therefore, is always toiling after the intuitions of faith as "cities of refuge." All philosophy can safely maintain that "what is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational." And all accord with man's highest inspirations of spiritual faith and hope. And the electric theory of creation is the most rational explanation of an organic universe evolved and controlled by natural law which is the will of Deity, whereby spirit intelligence controls by electric energy all the forces and manifestations of visible creation.

Herbert Spencer has done a great work for science. He has been a great champion and expounder of evolution, and the laws of the material universe. And while he has been a great agnostic on religious subjects it is because he is a spiritual non-conductor.

Man is like a wireless telegraphic receiver; he draws only that which corresponds to his nature and character.

Different men have different casts of mind and different natural apt.i.tudes. Some are natural receivers of truths, and others are natural non-conductors of certain truths.

There are two eminent ill.u.s.trations of this fact, it is said, in the immortal Sir Isaac Newton and John Milton, whose names are equally historic and ill.u.s.trious for their learning and culture. For it is said that Newton could not appreciate "Paradise Lost," and Milton could see nothing in "The Principia." This was not to the discredit of either of these books, nor was it a reflection upon the technical learning of either man. Neither was attuned to the message which the other brought to humanity and it proves that in order to apprehend truth in any quarter a man must be sympathetically disposed toward it.

Milton had no mind for mathematics, nor Newton for poetry. So the wisest philosophers like Herbert Spencer may go to religion and find nothing there but the abstruce and unknowable. Spencer's mind dwells on the phenomena of matter and material senses only. It is said nearly every great thinker has some central thought fixed firmly in his mind. The central thought of Plato is the theory of ideas--the a.s.sertion of the apparitional character of the seemingly real world. The central thought of Pascal is that of human intelligence confronting the universe and strangled by its inexorable tragedies. The central thought of Schopenhauer is the absurdity of life, and the central thought of Herbert Spencer is the evolution of the material universe.

PART SECOND

Sleep, death and oblivion are things that mock; Sleep in dreams; death and oblivion in the grave; And yet we are not mocked. We only walk Amid realities that bind us like a slave.

Sleep soothes and cheers; death grimly reaps and slays.

It makes earth but a tomb--its house of revelry; It stalks amid life's dark and brightest ways And takes its victims. All are 'neath its slavery.

With chilling frosts it nips life's brightest flowers, And with pale faces and a gasp they go, And vaguely trust to bloom 'neath other bowers, Where death's grim hand will never blast them so.

All hearts beat to music and measure, Like songs of the spheres as they roll, And from dreamland's far mystical treasure Come songbirds that sing to the soul; Where the glint of the gold in fair tresses Hide a face that we never have seen, And the infinite hope that caresses Kisses joys that we never may glean.

For the wealth of the world is ideal; There is bliss in the beauty of rhyme, And the thoughts of the soul are the real, Outlasting the cycles of time.

And the soul is the diamond eternal Where spirit and power are one, Brushing dross from its splendor supernal As dust from the eye of the sun.