The Universe a Vast Electric Organism Part 18

He states, in the words of the professor, his theory, thus: "My theory is that if one of these dark objects chances to strike a star it bursts through its outer envelope and sets free the enormous fires pent up within." These pent-up fires within the sun, he claims, are going to blaze up more furious and be the cause of this dread catastrophe of ruin and death to the sun and planets. With all respect to this eminent astronomer, I insist, first, there are no pent-up fires in the sun.

Second, no dark or light star, planet or globe can ever fall into the sun, because the law of electric repulsion in the sun will send it off, as it does the comets, in an opposite direction; besides this same law of electric repulsion will forbid any such object from coming into the solar system.

He says this dark star, many times the size of our earth, striking the sun, would destroy it and our earth and planetary system by fire. All life and combustible material, including stones and the surface of the sun and planets, he insists, would be utterly consumed by the heat engendered by such a collision. Now, I contend, in the first place, that such an event is virtually impossible; and if it were possible, a star of many times the size of our earth, coming in collision with the sun, would make little more impression on it than a dozen hogsheads of dynamite thrown against the surface of the moon. Both would do great local damage to the spot and vicinity where they struck, but neither would produce any great general disturbance and injury to these orbs.

Many times the size of the earth would mean naturally something like a dozen times the size of the earth.

Let us estimate the general result by comparison. The sun is one million three hundred thousand times larger than the earth. It is so large that if we could drop our earth into the center of the sun, our moon, which is two hundred and forty thousand miles from us, would only be about half way to the circ.u.mference or outer rim of the sun. Now, a star many times the size of our earth, striking the surface of the sun, would create great heat by the compact, and great distraction in the locality where it struck; and would likely imbed itself in the sun, like large meteors do on the earth, and become a good sized mountain on the sun's surface. It would not increase the electric currents or radiation, of the sun sufficient to melt the snow on the mountains of the tropics or set fire to a haystack on the earth. Its effect on the earth would not be excessive in temperature, and would be very temporary. For my theory is that the sun sends only such currents of electricity to the earth as the earth draws and demands by its opposite polarity.

Only a great sun a thousand or a million times larger than our earth would make any great impression on the sun in case of a collision; and then it would not result in its destruction, or that of the earth and planets. Its size and power would be increased, but that would not necessarily increase the heat of the planets, if, as I contend, the sun could only send them the electric currents the planets draw by reason of their opposite polarity; just as a receiving station of wireless telegraphy receives only the electric currents intended for it because of the peculiar attracting power it possesses.

I am aware that the recent flaring out in light, and increase in size of the star Nova Persei in the constellation of Perseus, has given plausibility to the conjecture of some astronomers that it was caused by a collision between two suns. But I think the better opinion is that this star is a new sun, partly nebulous and in its formative state; and that it was visited by a great cloud or swarm of meteors, which produced the great illumination which flared out into s.p.a.ce for a few days and then subsided.

Its former small size, to which it has returned, and its present nebulous condition, or the nebulae that surrounds it, seems to fully justify this conclusion. I do not believe there ever has been or ever will be a collision among the suns or planets. The wisdom of the Creator, as manifested in the great universal laws of electro-magnetism, forbid it. If such a catastrophe was likely ever to occur, it would have happened many times since the history of the race began, and we would have had many undoubted demonstrations of the direful uncertainty of the life of the suns and planets and the varying chances and unstable condition of the universe.

Let us hear the conclusion of Prof. Newcomb's hypothesis in the last words of the last man on the earth, in the person of the professor of physics: "Such is the course of evolution. The sun, which for millions of years gave light and heat to our system and supported life on the earth, was about to sink into exhaustion and become a cold and inert ma.s.s. Its energy could not be revived except by such a catastrophe as has occurred. The sun is restored to what it was before there was any earth on which it could shed its rays, and will in time be ready to run its course anew. In order that a race may be renewed, it must die like an individual. Untold ages must once more elapse while life is reappearing on earth and developing in higher forms."

This is the present accepted scientific theory. But is it right?

According to my conception, it is not. The sun is not growing old, or cold, or feeble, nor can it "sink into exhaustion." Nature, on this earth, under electric law and process, is ever renewing herself. And it is the same in all suns and planets. Nature's curriculum of eternal processes is continuous change and evolution. Her processes of renewal and purification are so perfect here on earth, that our most luscious fruits and vegetables, and our most beautiful and fragrant flowers come from the rank manure of the farmer's stable. The fertilizers of our soil are the decayed excrement of bird and beast and the most loathsome decaying elements; yet, through nature's evolving and purifying process they become wheat and corn, plant, vegetable and flower, and our most wholesome, acceptable and nutritious food; and if we live many years in the same neighborhood we eat the same food over and over many times, and the cattle and all living creatures do the same thing.

The atoms that compose our bodies have been used over and over again many times. They have been in the bodies of millions of men and animals, plants and vegetables before we used them, and will be in millions of bodies yet uncreated. They have been tossed by winds, hurled and threshed about by tornadoes and cyclones, drowned in the sea, and buried in the earth and often digested by other animals before they came to rest under balanced electric forces in our bodies.

Every atom in our bodies have been to the sun and back billions of times and will be again. They have been renewed by the electric currents of the sun, by the energy of the soil, by the electro-magnetic ether of s.p.a.ce, and are as eternal as law and destiny.

In like manner, the elements of the sun are constantly being renewed and invigorated, and he has an area of six billions of miles in diameter from which to draw virgin atoms, and like a great sea of inexhaustible force, it is the fountain from which he receives his measureless power and indestructible life and energy. For he is the central dynamo and electric heart of the solar system, and with his family of planets is floating in a boundless sea of electro-magnetism that has no limit of life and energy. The sun may send a different kind of wireless electricity to each of the planets, and each of the planets may return a different kind of electricity to the sun. Thus these electric currents may pa.s.s and repa.s.s between sun and planets and be re-energized and used over and over again, just as the atoms of our bodies and all earthly molecules are used over and over again.

Thus the sun constantly renews and invigorates himself and all the elements of the solar system, and can never come into "a state of exhaustion," as so graphically described.

But this vast electric universe is stable, enduring, self-sustaining and eternal; and no law or act of conflict among its millions of suns and planets has ever been discovered, or is likely ever to be, the conjectures and sophisticated prognostications of pessimistic scientists to the contrary notwithstanding. Can any reasoning, common thinker, aside from the scientists, after viewing our moon swinging around our earth, as it has done for thousands of years, only 240,000 miles from us, without approaching a mile nearer the earth in all that time, believe there is any danger of a collision between them? The law that holds them apart thousands and millions of years will continue to do so; and their collision is virtually a matter of impossibility until the electric laws of the universe are abrogated. Can any one believe that the little leaden planet Mercury that has been swinging so close around our enormous sun--only thirty millions of miles from it--for millions of years could keep its constant orbit unless there was an irresistible law, as omnipotent and changeless as Deity, that has and will forever keep it from falling into the sun.

Look at the planet of Mars with two satellites, of Jupiter with six, and Saturn with eight, flying swiftly around their primaries, all only a few thousand miles from their surface, and some of them going in different directions--could any balancing force, any law of gravitation, keep them from falling into their primaries? Every one of them is a contradiction of the law of gravity, and puts the stamp of falsity on all its claims.

But they all show there is a law which defies so-called gravity and is a correlative force, and that is the law of electric repulsion; and it is the cosmic force which, with electric attraction, has built the universe as a vast electric machine, and they will forever preserve its integrity and existence, and the sun, earth and universe are eternal.

The world moves; knowledge increases, and science is gradually broadening her conception of the harmony and endurance of the universe.

The theory of dead matter and blind force has been relegated to the obsolete and discarded past, and been replaced by the recognition of ever-present life and infinite grades of consciousness.

The vast and varied factors in nature's problems of eternal destiny point to our sun and earth as a present existing and unending reality.

Nature builds up, tears down, and reproduces her organic forms on the surface of planetary globes, but she does not destroy her great sun magnets and world magnets in the same manner, as many of our scientists think. There is a great difference in the powers and functions of suns and planets and the creeping things on their surfaces. Suns and planets, after they have attained their matured and balanced powers, are immortal, and creating, enduring and perfected organisms; and, like man in his immortal spirit, they have attained to eternal life, and neither death nor ruin can ever come near them. Suns and worlds in their electric energy have the powers of creation, and as the creator is always superior to the created, they should not be judged alike.

Therefore the changing and transitory nature of many things on the earth's surface is no proof that such will be the earth's destiny. On the contrary, every ligament of force and power in this electric universe is pledged to secure the continued and endless duration of our sun and solar system, including our earth. And timorous humanity should no longer shrink in horror at its prospective wreck and ruin.

May the truth prevail and man's mind be freed from the horrors, of an antic.i.p.ated destruction of the sun and earth, and the optimistic joy of imperishable life and love here, and in the all-glorious sun hereafter brighten the terrestrial existence of humanity. All hail! thou life-giving sun!

Sweep on and ever while the cycles roll Thou wandering orb of luminous sod!

Thou blazing banner of the mighty G.o.d!

From Creation's center to its farthest pole, Speed on and on in thy unknown track; But the hand that send thee can draw thee back, And teach thee the way when thy footsteps stray, As He doth the wanderer.

Like a silent thought from Creation wrought, Thou speakest a language weird and strange Of the breadth of s.p.a.ce and the speed of change, And the wondrous dream that the ages taught; That from star to star and from sun to sun The soul shall pa.s.s while the cycles run Renewed in its youth, gleaning wisdom and truth, G.o.d's wisest wanderer.

The living shall die, and the dead shall live, And the mystery deepens on every hand, And the worlds shall stay, and the soul shall stand, And a lesson of truth shall all things give.

And a mystic touch hath a world to a world And the banners of G.o.d are ever unfurled In creation's face teaching truth and grace To the wanderer.

CHAPTER XVI

ARE ALL SUNS AND WORLDS INHABITED?

Are all suns and worlds inhabited? This has been a puzzling question to the astronomers, who have had various opinions on the subject. From the laws of electric creation, as I understand them, the affirmative answer seems reasonable and natural. But as we cannot visit these suns and worlds in the flesh, my answer must be formed from the operations of the laws of electricity as applied to this planet.

Prof. Newcomb says astronomers have no means of knowing as to the inhabitability of distant orbs any more than other persons, and that we can only reason cosmologically on the subject, and, reasoning thus, he thinks only the earth and possibly Mars are inhabited.

Prof. H. H. Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford, England, in the Fortnightly Review of April, 1903, in combating Alfred Russell Wallace's theory that our earth is in the center of the universe, and the only inhabited world, says: "Why should not any one of the suns possess planets as well adapted as we are to develop high forms of organic life?" He seems to think no valid reason can be given why there are not many inhabited worlds as favorably situated as ours to produce and maintain organic life. And I fully agree with him, and go a step further and say there are many reasons why nearly all suns and worlds are inhabited. Reasoning from electric law and cosmological facts, our world, and its laws, forces and creations, should be a fair sample of the laws, forces, and creations of all worlds and planets. This is in accord with universal chemistry, which teaches that the same laws and substances exist throughout all the realms of s.p.a.ce.

In reasoning on the formative period of our world, we found the electric current to be the first form of matter and force, or the first form of creative manifestations in s.p.a.ce. These currents antedate all suns, worlds and visible objects. We also found that all visible forms of matter were the aggregation of billions of invisible atoms, and all visible matter and forms were simply the outer garment and scaffolding of these invisible electric forces; that force follows the law of motion, and atoms the law of form obedient to the lines of motion. The second step in planetary construction was the arrangement of the atoms into crystalline formation, due to opposite currents of electrical motion, and to atomic balance. This produced the rock-ribbed foundations of the earth and solidified it into a vast magnet of marvelous force and power.

Then when the crystalline rocks and metals were settled into a crystalline globe throbbing with electric power, vegetation came and the electric life-cell was formed as the first step towards organic life.

Then came the formation of nerve tissue as the basis of form structure and the evolution of microscopic life which developed under electric energy into all forms of animal existence which now inhabit the earth.

These were all formed and perfected through ages of response to the varying electric currents of life-giving power.

Then the animal form evolved a brain, and acquired the sense of feeling and sight and hearing by reason of the electric currents that impinged on the sensitive tissues of the brain, and animal instinct was slowly and gradually developed and the animal organism raised to the highest grade of the perfected mammal. All this was done under electric law by magnetic energy. Then the Creative Deity said, "Let us make man." And it is likely He took a perfected mammal, enlarged his brain-pan, stood him erect to front the stars, and breathed into him an atom of his own spirit, "and man became a living soul." The psychic power of glowing thought and reasoning mind, inspiring hope and heaven-bound love, and truth, and language, music, poetry, and dreams of heaven, were implanted as a celestial fire in his deathless spirit. This is man,--the soul, the spirit, the divine, eternal spark of Deity himself--not the body; that is merely the overcoat of atoms for the spirit, the temple for the soul, the house in which it dwells.

It will be seen from the foregoing that electricity is the creative, evolving force of the universe, the word of omnipotent power, the creative machinery of suns and worlds. That it creates suns and worlds and all animal and vegetable organisms, that it can evolve all forms, and give animal instinct as the result of balancing the experience of one sense with another through long ages of experience.

But it cannot create mind, soul or the spirit of Deity. It could not create man as a psychic being. It could organize his body, but it could not confer on him a soul. Electricity does not rob G.o.d of power; it is his creative machinery, and the right hand of His power, and, guided by His omnipotent will as the law of nature, it can and does evolve suns and worlds and all organic life. But not spirit-life--not man.

Moses and the Bible were inspired or they could never have shown so clearly the n.o.bler creation of man, and his inherent sovereignty over the world, and dominion over all the animal creation. I like that statement, "And G.o.d said let us make man." Electricity was the word of His power, the creative agent of His will, which is the law of nature.

It could create a sun, a world, a universe; it could give sense and feeling to insensate dust, and evolve and fashion man's body as a house suited for his earthly habitation, but it could not furnish a tenant or evolve a soul. The G.o.d-father and the G.o.d-mother alone could do this, and make man a spiritual and eternal being.

Now, I argue that if electricity created this earth with all its complex elements and organic forms, it also created all suns and worlds and all the machinery of the universe by the same process, and has endowed every rolling sphere in s.p.a.ce of sufficient size and power with vegetation, and all the varied forms of animal organism. Is not this a rational conclusion, since it has been demonstrated by universal chemistry and spectroscopic a.n.a.lysis that all laws, force and substance are the same in all suns and worlds and throughout the universe? Is it reasonable to believe that the electric currents and magnetic energy of our earth could evolve billions of billions of little living creatures which float in the air thicker than motes in a sunbeam, that swim in the waters so abundant that there are millions in a raindrop, that penetrate all vegetable and animal substance and organisms, that course through the veins of our bodies by the billion, and eat our food for us that we may digest it better; yet in other suns and worlds produce no such results? I cannot think so.

The animalculae are so small that Ehrenburg estimates that five hundred million of them exist in one drop of water one twelfth of an inch in diameter; that not only the blood, but the flesh and muscles are also composed of infinitesimal lives, each cell possessing a distinct life of its own.

Binet describes man as a colony of protozoans; and according to these two biologists he is a walking Chinese Empire, when you consider the microscopic beings in his body. Besides our bodies and those of vegetable and animal organism that are thus honeycombed and flooded with animalculine life, there are countless millions floating in the air, swimming in the water, and buried in the dust of the earth.

So that organic life is everywhere present on the earth, in invisible or visible form. And the invisible forms of life of the earth everywhere surpa.s.ses the visible forms millions of millions of times. Just as the invisible matter in the world and the universe surpa.s.ses the visible countless billions of times. Thus the natural, spontaneous production of life and life forms in myriads everywhere on this earth emphasizes the reasonable hypothesis that they are evolved on all suns and planets.

This shows the unity of matter and life. Wherever there is matter there is electric energy and life-force, which evolves infinite grades of life-forms. Prof. Buchner a.s.serts that "spectrum a.n.a.lysis has brought about the highly important conviction of the unity of what is to us the visible universe." And Prof. Shaler of Harvard declares, "the unity of life is the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century." The infinite diversity in nature first fixed the attention of investigators; now its infinite unity is the marvel which excites their wonder and admiration.

Now the unity of matter, force and physical life are accepted by the ablest thinkers.

This all tends to prove the inhabitability of all suns and worlds. Prof.

Huxley put himself on record as believing in intelligent organic life in other worlds, in the following vigorous language: "Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the a.s.sumption that amid the myriads of worlds scattered through endless s.p.a.ce there can be no intelligence as much greater than man's as his is greater than a black beetle's, is not merely baseless but impertinent. Without stepping beyond the a.n.a.logy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with ent.i.ties in ascending scale, until we reach something practicably indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience.

"If our intelligence can in some matters surely reproduce the past of thousands of years ago, and antic.i.p.ate the future thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the limit of possibility that some greater intellect even of the same order may be able to mirror the whole of the past and future."

This is a masterly statement that demolishes Alfred Russell Wallace's little arguments like a trip-hammer would an eggsh.e.l.l. Ruskin also saw much good in the idea of life in other worlds above us, "in creatures as much n.o.bler than ours as ours is n.o.bler than that of the dust."