The Universe a Vast Electric Organism Part 17

The creature whose intelligence measures the pulsations of molecules and unravels the secret of the whirling nebulae is no creature of a day, but the child of the universe, the heir of all the ages, in whose making and perfection is found the consummation of G.o.d's creative work.

G.o.d is a spirit and man is a spirit, and spirit power is the supreme sovereignty of the universe. And the soul of man can command electric energy to bear it with swift wings and tireless feet along the electric pathway to the luminous bosom of the sun, to the celestial cities of his future heaven.

And the angels will be our guides and direct our faltering spirits along the electric pathways to the stars, and light the s.h.i.+ning boulevards of eternity, and lead us to the golden streets and crystal palaces of heaven. And they will escort us into the diamond banqueting hall of the King of Kings, and we shall feast on angels' food, and sip nectar and ambrosia from the table of the G.o.d of G.o.ds.

And the angel choir shall take down their celestial harps from their panels of amethyst, and with deft fingers and entrancing voices sing us the old, loved melodies of heaven, and put a new song in our mouths, and we shall join the heavenly jubilee of eternal life and glory.

"When the daylight trembles into shade, When falls the silence of mortality, And all is done, we shall not be afraid But pa.s.s from light to light; from what doth seem Into the heart and heaven of our dream."

CHAPTER XV

THIS ELECTRIC UNIVERSE IS SELF-SUSTAINING AND ETERNAL

The natural beauty and utility of the world is vast and varied. The grandeur and strength of the universe is boundless and enduring. Nature is Deity, thinking in visible thoughts of beauty and power, and speaking in visible tones of life, motion and harmony.

All things in nature combine beauty with utility and while full of change are constant and enduring. The same electric laws, force and substance which gives luminous brilliancy to countless suns, and paints the aurora and the rainbow the rosy hues of dawn and the crimson glories of sunset, give color to the ruddy cheeks of youth, and red corpuscle to the arterial blood that brings health and strength to human forms.

These same electric laws, force and substance hold their sceptre of power through all the universe. Under electric law atoms and molecules embrace each other and evolve visible forms of life; and suns glow with warmth and light, and keep their appointed distances in the circling mazes of the sky. And by the grasp of electric energy these life-giving suns carry their family of life-bearing worlds upon their mysterious voyage through the realms of measureless s.p.a.ce.

All nature is a visible expression of Omnipotent Deity, all the universe is a symbol of creative power and wisdom which is boundless and enduring, and proclaims that our world, the sun and the universe are eternal and enduring.

The question of the continued existence of our solar system is a fascinating subject to most of our astronomers; they seem never to be weary of looking forward to a time when the light of the sun will expire with age, or it will be destroyed by some great catastrophe. I have no such apprehensions. First, because in the six or eight thousand years of human history on this planet there is no record of any sun or star being blotted out, or any planet being destroyed. The sun, stars and planets are substantially the same as they were when Babylon flourished, when Abraham was a sun wors.h.i.+per, and when the angels sang on the plains of Bethlehem. As far as human knowledge and science goes, not a single star has faded from the glittering hosts of night's jewelled crown.

Second, because the same electric force that started suns and planets on their grand velocities and fixed their orbits is not only an attracting force, but also a repelling force of marvelous power. And while suns and planets attract each other they also repel each other, and make each keep their respective distance under the law of electro-magnetism by which opposite poles attract and like poles repel each other. If you place the opposite poles of a horseshoe magnet together they will attract each other and cling together until a superior force overcomes their mutual attraction; but if you reverse them and put their like poles together, they will not cling together, but will repulse each other.

In chemistry molecules of opposite polarity unite, and this is called chemical affinity; molecules of like polarity will not unite, and this is called chemical repulsion. Magnets attract only when their poles are reversed, or when they are oppositely electrified, and suns and planets do the same. The sun as the great central magnet, or electric generator, has the power both to attract and to repel. The planets are kept in their orbits by both the sun's attraction and its repulsion. In the summer, when the earth gets four millions of miles nearer the sun, there is a repelling force from the sun that sends it off again, or it would continue to approach the sun until it would fall into his s.p.a.cious bosom. No law of gravitation or balancing force of planets could do this. The centrifugal force of electric repulsion in the sun does for the earth what all the balancing force of the planets could not do if they were all swung in the circling orbit of Mars.

The sun, by this electric propelling force, throws off the comets which approach it. This is proven by scientific records in many instances for centuries. By this same propelling force the sun holds off the swift leaden planet Mercury. By this same electric repulsion the planets prevent their moons from falling back onto their surfaces.

These moons are the same material and electric composition as the worlds from which they come, and, as like polarity repels, they are thus kept in their orbits. There are estimated to be eighteen to one hundred millions of suns in this universe. Can any one believe they are kept in their places by a mere balancing force?

They are held by electrical repulsion as well as by electrical attraction. There may also be belts or zones of ether with the proper electrical vibration or condition in the orbit of each planet and satellite which hold them with giant grasp in their allotted places.

And every sun system may have its own peculiar electricity, which has a repulsion for all other systems and holds each in its proper place. All these things are possible and probable under the theory of electrical creation. As twenty-eight currents of electricity can pa.s.s over the same wire at the same time, fourteen each way, how many kinds of electric currents may the universe possess? May not each planet have its own peculiar current, and its own peculiar attracting power, and the sun give each a different electricity?

While each sun system, with its revolving planets, is held together by mutual electric attraction, the eighteen millions of sun systems are prevented from coming in collision with each other by the law of electric repulsion. This would prevent any one system from trespa.s.sing upon the domain or territory of another, and permit each and all to move freely among themselves and change places without danger of trespa.s.s or collision.

In case of too near an approach to each other the law of repulsion would drive them off. This would avoid the necessity of a central sun, which probably does not exist or it would be visible. If all these systems were positively magnetized or all negatively magnetized they would repel each other. This law of electrical repulsion would increase the nearer these systems approached each other, and this increasing power would send them further away, and forever prevent discord and collision. This is why there is no discord in the fields of heaven and harmony reigns triumphant.

Electric repulsion is all that prevents these almost infinite sun systems from coming into conflict with one another, and ending in aggregate and ruinous collision, and reducing the universe to a heterogeneous ma.s.s of discordant spheres. No law of gravitation could prevent such a wreck and ruin of the universe. On the contrary, the size and weight of every sun and star that floats in the broad expanse of ether would under the law of gravity tend to bring about just such a universal catastrophe.

If the boasted law of gravitation prevailed to-day, or ever did prevail, such would be the disastrous results. The law of gravitation tends to aggregate all bodies into one. If the universe was under the dominion of gravity there would be but one vast globe in all the universe, and if there was a man on it there would be but one enormous giant. Newton's law of gravitation is "large bodies attract small ones." If that is true, then all small bodies would fly into the arms of the larger ones, and the process would continue until the largest body had them all, and there would be no smaller ones to attract. This is a fair a.n.a.lysis of the law of gravitation.

As to the rule that matter and worlds "attract each other inversely to the square of the distance," that rule could not exist but for the law of electric repulsion. That rule is very near the law by which matter falls towards the sun by electric attraction. But it is not the law of orbital energy by which planets are kept out of the sun. Neither is it the law by which satellites are kept from falling into the planets around which they revolve.

The weight that falls to the earth by attraction may be lifted by dynamic repulsion. Therefore the law of repulsion is as necessary as the law of attraction. Gravitation ignores the laws of repulsion. With gravity only all spheres would fall together in a common ruin; with repulsion only they would dissolve into ether; and both of these forces, normally active and balanced, are necessary to preserve the universe.

Therefore, I contend that our earth, the solar system and the universe is self-sustaining and eternal in duration, because of the ever-active omnipotent force of electrical repulsion in sun systems, in suns and planets and their satellites.

Our wise astronomers for two centuries have bestowed upon so-called gravitation all the divine attributes, and thrown around it the halo of a wors.h.i.+ped divinity; and ignored its twin brother and dual force, repulsion. This was excusable before the discovery of electricity and its marvelous forces as a new causation. But since then it seems the blind folly of stupid conservativism that would cling to old traditions and antiquated authority. They recognized the law of repulsion in matter, in gases, in gunpowder, in volcanoes, in steam, in dynamite, in perfumery, in everything in the earth, but denied its operation in the sun and planets, and sidereal s.p.a.ce.

This ever-active omnipotent force of electric repulsion keeps all sun systems from coming together or trespa.s.sing upon each other's vast domains. There is electrical repulsion as a great barrier between them to hold them apart. Why? Because they have like polarities or become alike electrified as they approach each other. This without any other reason is sufficient to forever prevent collisions between the sun systems of the universe.

Electrical repulsion keeps our earth and the planets from falling into the sun. Why? Because our earth and the planets, when they approach within a certain distance of the sun, may become similarly electrified to the sun, and are thrown back to their proper and balanced orbit.

Electrical repulsion keeps all satellites from falling into their primary planets. Why? Because they have like polarities, and are positive or negative like their primaries, and repulse each other. Thus each and all the suns, planets and satellites continue in their orbits of balanced forces, and will always continue and are as eternal as the laws of electro-magnetism that created and upholds the universe.

The same law applies to comets. Why does the comet, when it approaches just so near to the sun, dart away so quickly? Because it becomes alike electrified as the sun, and the law of repulsion strikes it like the blow of a mammoth triphammer and hurls it in the opposite direction.

This is one reason; there may be others, for the laws of repulsion are as many and various as the laws of attraction.

The scientists in all ages have been fascinated with fearful, grim and dismal pictures of the end of the world. Like the theologians who delighted to paint the tortures of the fiery tophet of their imagination, the scientists have exhausted their wildest fancy in picturing the sun consumed with fire, the earth melting with fervent heat and the final "wreck of matter and the crush of worlds."

The latest display of dismal and excessive fancy on this subject is from the prolific pen of our most eminent and worthy astronomer, Prof. Simon Newcomb. It is to be found in McClure's Magazine of May, 1903, which I have just read, ent.i.tled "The End of the World." It is a well written, imaginative story or article, embracing his theory or hypothesis of the cause and manner of the world's destruction.

I admire his scholarly style, his great learning, and splendid fancy, and if I believed in the scientific theories and traditions which he champions with such an able pen, I should say it was a masterly presentation of what would occur in sun and earth at some indefinite future time. But as I have discarded the old scientific traditions I cannot accept his theories or his fancy picture. It is too dismal for my optimistic conception of what has occurred or what will occur in this vast and mighty universe.

He is a worthy successor of Newton and La Place, for he has a vigorous imagination, which easily scans the future and presents what I deem antiquated theories, sustained by traditional facts.

Each person lives in a different world and sees a different universe, according to his knowledge and imagination.

The universe Ptolemy saw was different from that of Copernicus, and Newton's different from both, so my conception of the universe is different from that of Prof. Newcomb's. Imagination is a creature of education and converts knowledge into utility, and reasons from the known to the unknown, and is the telescope of futurity and the microscope of past centuries.

I am a great believer in imagination or ideality as the highest gift of Deity, and accept Napoleon's statement that "imagination rules the world." I believe no man can be a great astronomer without it, and the tallest and broadest enlightened imagination will naturally have the best conception of the complicated motion and grandeur of the universe.

Tyndall in an address at Liverpool in 1870, said, "There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than to be employed. In fact, without this power our knowledge of nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistence and sequences; the soul of force would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations would disappear, and with them that science which binds the facts of nature to an organic whole."

This is n.o.bly and truly said, for all progress is heralded by theorization; which is an intelligible explanation of things, and serves to relate cause and effect. It distinguishes the human being from the animal, the civilized from the savage, the wise and learned from the ignorant and foolish. Herbert Spencer said, "In the formation of a theory we have the highest condition of the human mind." And Holder, in his life of Darwin, says, "Darwin was greater than others, because he had the genius of scientific hypothesis." Therefore I am proud of Prof.

Newcomb's hypothesis of the cause and manner of the death of the solar system, though I do not accept his theory or his conclusions. I am glad he is not one of those scientists, who said in the New York Journal not long ago, that the only thing of value to science was the tabulation of facts. The mere tabulation of facts would be of as little value to the world without causation, theory and hypothesis, as the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

Let us see what the learned astronomer, Prof. Newcomb, says. He projects himself into the future and starts out by imagining that from the central observatory in the Himalayas, "Mars is signalling a dark star."

This, he says, was after "the world had long been dull and stagnant."

Now, I protest that this world will never become dull and stagnant, nor any part of this electric universe, but all will go on steadily progressing to more perfect conditions. Here is where our theories clash on the first sentence.

Then he proceeds to tell the kind of dullness and stagnation that existed. He says almost every scientific discovery had been made thousands of years before, and all inventions had been perfected, and everything went on as by machinery. The peace of the world was settled and the time when men fought and killed each other in war lay far back in the mists of antiquity, and the newspapers chronicled little but births, marriages, deaths and the weather reports. "Only one language was spoken the world over, and all gentlemen dined in blue coats with gilt b.u.t.tons and wore white neckties with red borders."

Now I cannot accept this as a true picture of our earth at any time in its future, or the hypothesis of human stagnation as possible or probable. I do not regard the world's peace, and perfected machinery, and "blue coats with gilt b.u.t.tons and white neckties with red borders,"

as evidence of dullness and stagnation. And I cannot believe the newspapers, whose proverbial energy is perennial, will ever get to the low ebb of stagnation he describes.

But to the more important points. Three thousand years before this time messages had been successfully interchanged with the inhabitants of Mars, and now this message of "a dark star" arrives from Mars, which excites the astronomers, and later the people, until the whole world is in a frenzy of terror, apprehension and despair, watching this terrible star, which continued to increase.

The people of Mars are also "in a state of extraordinary excitement,"

and our astronomers are much puzzled about the orbit of this dark star, many times the size of our earth. Then the Himalaya observatory sends out the startling announcement that, "the dark star has no orbit; but is falling toward the sun with great speed."

Then a professor in physics sees the dangerous possibility of its collision with the sun, and has an immense vault, which had been previously built for scientific experiments, a hundred feet under ground, stored with provisions, etc. In this safe retreat he hides himself and his a.s.sistants when the dark star strikes the sun, and the fearful conflagration of the sun and earth occurs. And when the sun and earth were burned up by the collision of the dark star with the sun, they, like Noah and his family, were saved from the general destruction.

The description of the melting of the houses, stones and all combustible material on the surface of the earth, the anguish and despair of the thronging mult.i.tudes, and the destruction of the great city of Hatten, built on the ruins of the old city of Neeork, would duplicate the horrors of Dante's "Inferno." The ill.u.s.trations are equally horrible and terrific, and both are calculated to shock the mind of the reader and r.e.t.a.r.d mental composure and aesthetic culture.