CHAPTER IX AT PRESENT SCIENCE IS IN A DUBIOUS AND CHAOTIC CONDITION
The last few years have been remarkable for the diligence with which scientists have scrutinized every phenomena of nature, and the abundance of new facts which have rewarded their researches.
They have also been remarkable for the changes in scientific opinions, which usually are so gradual as to be imperceptible, but which have recently taken on the speed of the earth's solar revolution in their transition from the old to new theories.
The vast body of scientists are seldom a unit in the acceptance of any theory, even of the most fundamental nature. And where there is such diversity of belief each student of nature is entitled to form his own opinions and beliefs.
But the most pitiable and unfortunate of the one-sided scientists are those who would banish logic from the realms of physics, and who regard a deduction or a theory as an enemy of science; who heap scorn on analytic reason—the highest gift of Deity to man—and who deem the tabulation of dry facts without causes the only purpose of science. Who want science fenced in with a stone wall and separated from religion and philosophy, and the earth cut up into sections and labelled astronomy, chemistry, geology, and so on ad infinitum; as if nature knew anything about astronomy, chemistry or geology, or ever considered anything but the unity and harmony of the whole universe, which includes science, religion and philosophy, one and inseparable, as God and nature are inseparable.
Mr. Cope Whitehouse, a New York scientist, says of present science: "The only fact established beyond doubt regarding suns and planets is their revolution on their axes, and this is all that is needed to generate light and heat. They are arc dynamos, and each in turn transmits what it receives to its neighbor on the circuit." This is well stated and shows that nine-tenths of the accepted facts and theories of science are mere guesswork, founded upon conjectures of some eminent scientist who was accepted as authority a hundred years ago. And the standard scientific works have propagated them as scientific facts.
It is a fact apparent to all well informed students that astronomy, physics and chemistry at present are in a chaotic condition—that nearly all the scientific facts and theories established for two hundred years are now in a state of uncertainty and are virtually overthrown by recent discoveries.
The recent discovery of radium seems to overturn the rock-ribbed scientific theory of the conservation of energy, and raises many new questions in regard to the nature of light and heat.
Lord Kelvin, recognized as the highest authority, says: "It threatens to overthrow the doctrine of the correlation of forces." If the scientists would accept the electric theory of creation, its explanation would not be so difficult, for radium seems to be a bundle of electric ions or corpuscles which have the power of drawing electricity from the atmosphere, like a miniature dynamo or a galvanic battery, and thus continually renewing itself, so that there is no loss of power and no shrinkage in size or bulk. The scientists may soon be forced by radium and other natural phenomena to accept the electric theory—that electricity and not gravity is the one and only fundamental force in nature.
The recent discovery of the three lines in the spectrum of hydrogen, discovered by Prof. Pickering, of Harvard, may upset the whole theory of the seventy-three elements set forth in our books of chemistry and said to constitute all the elements of the universe. It may prove they are not elements, or at least not primary elements at all, and finally drive the scientists to my theory that there are only three primary elements in the universe, and they are spirit, electricity and matter. That the so-called seventy-three elements are only different combinations of two of the original and primary elements—matter and electricity—and are what Herschell said they looked to be—"manufactured articles."
Prof. Pickering was the first to analyze lightning with the spectroscope and show that hydrogen is a compound substance made up of lines belonging to at least three chemical elements. This recent discovery was a great surprise to scientific men. And it was confirmed and doubly proven by the spectrum in the new star, in the constellation of Perseus, known as Nova Persei, which also shows in the hydrogen there the same lines consisting of at least three chemical elements.
This is new proof by high authority that oxygen, hydrogen and all the so-called elements are—as I have contended for many years—only compound substances, and justifies Prof. Serviss' statement in the New York Journal, that these facts "may revolutionize science and reconstruct chemistry."
The marvelous increase in brilliancy of the star Nova Persei last year, and its sudden shrinkage, all within a few days, and the same being observable almost instantaneously upon the earth, when that star is 3,400 light years distance from the earth according to the accepted speed of light, which is 186,000 miles a second, unsettles the whole question as to the speed of light. It tends to prove that light is instantaneous, as Prof. Wright says gravitation is.
No less an authority than Prof. Simon Newcomb calls the scientific world's attention to this phenomena, and shows it throws doubt on the long-accepted theory as to the speed with which light travels. In his address before the Astronomical Society, December 29th, 1902, he says: "There is an inadequacy in the speed of light to explain the phenomena. We are forced to the conclusion that there exists in the universe a cause susceptible of transmission with a speed many times that of light."
What cause exceeds the speed of light, which is deemed the swiftest thing in the universe? We know of none. What was it surprised the scientists and came to us with many times the supposed speed of light? It was light, only light. Then this "inadequacy in the speed of light" came on double-quick time, and proves that light can travel many times faster than the scientists for two hundred years have declared it could. And this eminent scientist, with cautious diplomacy, does not directly attack the accepted speed of light, but says "there exists a cause" that produces a greater speed than light. But as only light came, did the "cause" bring it or did it come with its own velocity? If a "cause" or unknown force brought it, then we have a new force in nature which the scientists must reckon with. So they must accept the alternative and either change the speed of light or deal with a new and unknown force.
In addition to the above complications, Prof. J. J. Thomson, discovered (1901), the electric ions or corpuscles which is considered a new form of matter and force.
The discovery of these electric ions or corpuscles a thousand times smaller than atoms has produced utter confusion in the scientific world, and outside of the electric theory of creation they can make no possible explanation of them.
The fact is, the scientists are on an island of doubt, in a sea of uncertainty, scanning with telescope, microscope and spectroscope the ocean of foggy knowledge and dubious assumed facts to find a port of safety.
Their attempts to fix the specific gravity of the sun, and the sun's burning up and shrinkage as its source of heat, and the heat as the life of the planets; their treatment of heat as an entity and substance, when it is merely a sensation; their reliance on the spectroscope to indicate heat in distant suns, and their accepting gravity without a cause or an explanation, show the blind for centuries have led the blind in extravagant guessing.
But since they have seen an electric battery and an arc light, they should be ashamed to ever declare "the sun is hotter than any terrestrial furnace," or that it is hot at all. The arc and incandescent lights are object lessons they ought to study, for they will see almost an exact representation of how all light, heat and vital force are created on suns and planets.
They will see two wires, one positive and the other negative, brought together or so near together that in order to complete their electric circuit they must pass through a little space of resisting air, which is a non-conductor, and then they burst into light and moderate heat. In the same manner the positive and negative currents of electricity of the sun and earth, without wires, come together in our atmosphere, which is near the earth's surface a dense resisting non-conductor, and in order to complete the circuit they burst into light, heat and vital force and give life and energy to all animal and vegetable organisms. But the heat must be and is generally moderate, as no vegetable or animal life can exist in excessive heat. And as excessive heat means ruin and decay, therefore no burning sun can furnish light or give life and growth to any planet.
Prof. Simon Newcomb, the learned astronomer, says: "The sun is not a solid body, but must be liquid or gaseous, at least at its surface." He gives this singular reason, therefore, that "the sun's rotation at the equator is completed in less time than at a distance on each side of the equator."
I question both the fact and the sufficiency of his reasoning on this point. According to his own statement, the sun revolves at its equator 4,000 miles an hour, or over a mile a second, while it revolves very slowly near its poles and virtually is not in motion at all at its poles.
This rapid motion at the equator and slowness of motion near the centre of the sun is calculated to deceive the eye and make it think it completes its rotation at its equator in less time than at a distance from it, looking down along the slope of the sun's vast circumference. This is no evidence, for we see only the moving clouds of light on the outer rim of the sun's atmosphere, ten to twenty thousand miles or more from its surface, and they seem to and do complete their rotation a short time sooner. This they naturally should do. How frail and uncertain is the argument based on such doubtful and assumed facts?
Thus these wise astronomers claim from this slim, unreliable evidence and the assumed excessive heat of the sun, that the sun is not a solid body at its surface. Yet the same author rejects this same evidence—that Jupiter is not a solid body—in the following language: "The difference in the time of Jupiter's rotation at the equator and in middle latitudes is, so far as we yet know, about five minutes. That is to say, the equatorial regions rotate in nine hours and fifty minutes and those in middle latitudes in nine hours and fifty-five minutes, a difference amounting to 200 miles an hour, a seemingly impossible difference were the surface liquid. We cannot assume this to be the case without more observations than are yet recorded, as no well defined law of rotation in different latitudes has yet been made out." Thus this learned astronomer will not assume for Jupiter what he assumed for the sun, and weakens and destroys in Jupiter the very same arguments he used to prove the sun was not a solid body at its surface.
This same learned astronomer—and I mention him because he is high authority and has written the most recent work on astronomy—says that, "under the enormous pressure of the earth, continually increasing to the center, the matter composing the inner portion of the earth is compressed to the density of a metal. If the earth were composed of a fluid or even of a substance which would bend no more than the hardest steel, such a motion as that of the earth upon its axis would be impossible."
I accept this as a very reasonable conclusion, and hold the same rule applies to the sun, and that the sun's "enormous pressure, increasing to its center," would compress its inner portion to the density of a metal; and that the sun could not revolve upon its axis and retain its rigidity as it does unless its inner or central portion was as rigid as steel. And this necessarily means that its surface is about as solid as that of our earth.
Therefore the sun cannot be molten or liquid at its surface, as the scientific guessers have prognosticated. As they have guessed wrong about nine-tenths of the time, this is one of the nine hundred bad guesses.
Lord Kelvin, our wisest scientist, a few years ago estimated that our earth, only fifty miles below its surface, was a molten mass of fiery metal. Now, Simon Newcomb says it has the density of metal, and is as hard as steel, and I think Lord Kelvin has changed his opinion and will agree with him.
Thus the hoary-headed superstition that the center of our earth was a molten mass is passing away, and it will be the same as to the heat, and molten condition of the sun—it will be relegated to the plutonian shades of ignorance and superstition.
Because there were numerous volcanoes, geysers and hot springs scattered over the crust of the earth and in some deep mines there were hot sections, the scientists jumped at the conclusion that the inner portions of the earth were a molten, fiery mass. This was to accord with their false theory of a red-hot molten sun, and their assertion that the earth had its inception as a fire mist, and rolling ball of white-heated gases. But the scientists have changed their theories rapidly in recent years. They are just beginning to discover that there are zones of heat and cold beneath the earth's surface just as there are above its surface. That there are electric currents of heat in volcanic regions and mineral and mining sections, and none in others, and even in the same mines there are warm and cold sections.
Take the Cornstalk mines in Nevada. A section 2,300 feet below the surface is very warm, while another section 1,200 deeper—being 3,500 feet below the surface—is very cool. Surely Lord Kelvin would now laugh at himself to think he made such a calculation of the heat of the earth and said it was a molten mass of fire fifty miles below its surface. And he even said it was so hot seven miles down in the earth that water could only remain or exist in a state of vapor.
Ye gods! When so great a prophet makes such mistakes, surely the little prophets that walk in his footsteps ought to "go 'way back and sit down," and cease talking about the heat of the sun.
They should quit telling us the Beneficent Creator is burning up 18,000,000 of his most magnificent and beautiful worlds to heat his little, insignificant planets. They estimate our sun burns up thirty quintillion cubic feet of itself annually, and 18,000,000 of suns are doing the same, making the equivalent of a world destroyed every year and a sun every decade.
These statements are so unreasonable and appalling they refute themselves. I mean no disrespect for these learned but misguided scientists who have for two hundred years built all their theories on heat, which Langley now says truthfully is nothing but a sensation. Thus they built the universe on a sensation, and to sustain the old traditions they want to keep it there. They said the earth began in heat, that it was a ball of fire a few miles below its surface, and the suns were great flaming furnaces burning up with quenchless fire. They made the Great Creator a fire demon and world destroyer.
If Prof. Parker's testimony is to be relied on, nine-tenths of them waste their time on useless calculations and data. They have a wonderful faculty of putting the horse before the cart. For example, Prof. Huston of Princeton, says. "Electricity is being constantly produced during the phenomena of every day life. It is produced by chemical action, differences of temperature, the motion of conductors and magnets and the various physical and chemical processes that occur during the life and growth of plants and animals." Now, this is misleading, because it states facts backward. It is not true that electricity is being produced in the sense he uses it by these phenomena. These phenomena are being produced by electricity. They are the manifestations of electricity. Electricity is the cause; they are the sequence or results, and he should say electricity is manifested by these things. The same author says: "The earth is to be considered as one huge magnet." This is very true, and as a great magnet does not need to be hot to generate electric life-giving energy, no astronomer ought to look at an electric light or an electric battery without blushing that he ever called the sun hot.
Electricity can be generated without burning coal or wood or the use of a furnace. The turbine wheels that are turned by the waters of Niagara Falls, without heat or furnace, can generate a hundred thousand horse power.
The placing of two or three pieces of metal one above another with a moist substance between them will create a voltaic battery. And mines of two or three kinds of metals or ores, when clay or any soft substance between them become moist, will create a battery that will tear up the earth for miles and produce a geyser or an earthquake.
Prof. Proctor agrees with Langley in rejecting the nebular hypothesis, when he says: "Under the continual rain of meteoric matter the earth, sun and planets are growing. And the formation of the solar system resulted from the aggregations of vast meteoric and cometic systems rotating through space has greater support from what is now going on, and is far more satisfactory than the nebular hypothesis of La Place. The nebular hypothesis affords no explanation of the strange variety of size in the planetary system, variations of inclination among the planets, or the retrograde and almost perpendicular motion of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune. A general explanation of all these matters is at once suggested by their origin from aggregations of meteoric systems." This agrees with the electric theory of creation.
All the Newton-La Place theories of gravitation and the nebular hypothesis are now called in question by our wisest astronomers. And one of them has pointed out two hundred instances in which gravitation is set aside and ignored in the motion of the heavenly bodies. Such instances as the runaway stars, the retrograde motion of satellites, the repulsion of comets from the sun, and so on ad infinitum. And as to the outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter and Saturn, being older than the inner planets and being thrown off first from the vast whirling sun nebula of La Place's imagination, all modern astronomers either call it in question or reject it, as a fallacy disproved by more recent facts and discoveries. It is reasonable to suppose that there are zones of electric energy in space in each solar system which may help to hold and keep each planet in its orbit, just as there are belts and currents of electricity in the atmosphere and outer crusts of earth and planets. And the sun may send a different kind of electricity to each planet and receive a different kind from each planet.
Abbé Moreau, the noted French astronomer, in supporting Col. du Ligondes, who opposes the La Place theory of the formation of the solar system, in a recent article, April, 1902, undertakes to show that Mars is not older than the earth, as held by the La Place nebular theory, but on the contrary is much younger. His arguments entirely demolish the nebular theory that the outer planets were thrown off in successive rings of nebula from the sun, and therefore the outer planets are the older. In addition, Flammarion seems to take the same position, for he says: "In Mars two moons revolve rapidly in the heavens in opposite directions, which seems to refute the nebular hypothesis." These all tend to support my electrical theories, and relegate the Newton-La Place theories to the shades of obsolete fancy and mistaken conjecture.
Flammarion also says: "The earth in its orbit describes a spiral, and since its creation has never passed twice through the same point in space." This also supports my electrical theory of globular spheres and spiral motion in space to accord with the laws of electro-magnetic energy. This spiral shape of the earth's orbit, I contend, and not the tilting of its poles, creates the changes of seasons. Its poles seem to tilt or change because the earth passes above and below the line of the ecliptic, and in its spiral circuit has the sun above the earth part of the year, when it is summer in the north temperate zone, and below it part of the year when it is summer in the south temperate. And the elliptical shape of the earth's orbit is, I contend, caused by the sun being in motion, which lengthens the circle of the orbit in the direction the sun is traveling and causes the earth to be four million miles nearer it when it turns in front of it, and the same distance farther from it when it turns in the same direction the sun is traveling. It seems strange that no astronomers have thought of these things.
Sir Robert Ball said recently: "The most important advance in astronomy was Prof. Keeler's discovery of nebulae in such enormous numbers, and the fact that most of them were in a spiral shape." This spiral shape accords with the law of electro-magnetism and sustains the theory of electrical creation of suns and planets. Matter could not be gathered under any other law.
In addition to the contradictions and complications of science already mentioned, scarcely a fundamental principle or concept remains. One of the eternal indisputable postulates of science was that "two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time." But that is exploded, and we know they do and we have proof of it every day. There are numerous instances; I will mention only one: Twenty-eight electric currents can pass over the same wire at the same time, fourteen one way and fourteen the other, and occupy the same space and do not interfere with one another.
Scientists used to put great stress on solid matter, and their primary division of matter was into solid, liquid and gaseous. They have recently discovered there is no such thing as solid matter. What they termed solid matter is but the outer and visible shell of invisible forces. That not a single atom of matter touches another atom of matter; but there is a space between them, and the atoms revolve around each other in very much the same way as the earth revolves around the sun, thus showing that the laws of electro-magnetism are the same in atoms as in worlds.
The scientists only discovered the non-solidity of matter since the use of the X-rays, and the Crookes tube, and they have been puzzled ever since to know what holds the atoms or molecules together in organized form. They undertake to say it is gravity, but gravity is weight, and atoms have no weight, and they are forced to look to electricity and magnetism to solve the question. And the electric theory gives the only rational explanation, which is, that all things are held together by magnetic attraction or cohesion under the laws of organic affinity. The molecules of iron, stone and marble do not touch each other, but their magnetic attraction is stronger than that of wood or hay; that is why they have more solidity, strength and endurance. Science said we could not look through a grindstone or any solid matter, but we can. We can look through men, grindstones, iron and brick walls, and if we could turn on sufficient electric power we could look through the earth and take photographs of Chinamen on the other side of the globe.
Prof. Serviss, in the New York Journal of October 1st, 1902, calls attention to "the remarkable growth of speculation concerning electric or electro-magnetic influences exercised over the earth by the sun and planets," and says: "They have been seized upon by astrological soothsayers to bolster up their pretended science."
As I have never taken any interest in astrology, but have taken great interest in the electro-magnetic power of the sun, I am surprised at the obtuseness that would undertake to blend them together when they have no scientific relation.
Astrology undertakes to reveal the future by the position and influence of the stars, and is entirely different from any electrical theory of the sun or planets.
He says, "The subject of the sun's electric influence is of absorbing interest, but there is no solid scientific basis for a genuine theory."
From the lack of knowledge he displays of the well-known laws of electricity I am not surprised at his statement. He says and illustrates it by a diagram: "If we grant the sun does act as a stupendous source of electro-magnetic waves, as the planets circle about the sun in nearly a common plane, and sometimes lie practically in the common plane in a straight line, in such a contingency there may be a stream of electric energy linking them all together." He seems to think this would produce confusion and settle the whole question.
He should know that the simplest law of electro-magnetism teaches that the electric attraction of every planet is the measure of its power in drawing the electric currents of the sun. Distance from or nearness to the sun or planets or their being scattered or all on the same plane or in a straight line has nothing to do with the supply of electric power from the sun.
Each receives the positive electricity from the sun, which it draws by reason of its negative polarity. He should know that twenty-eight currents of electricity may pass over the same wire at the same time, fourteen one way and fourteen the other way, and do not interfere with one another, and each go to their separate destinations. The sun may send a different electric current or vibration to each planet and nothing in the universe could prevent it from reaching that planet. It would pass through or go round any other planet or substance in its way.
Wireless electricity is founded on the basic principle that an electric current goes only to the opposite electric polarity and vibration which draws and attracts it or is attuned to it.
Prof. Serviss says: "If I examined this subject with a show of interest, it draws upon me sour and suspicious looks from my scientific friends." He should remember that all great truths have had to struggle with "sour and suspicious looks," ever since man began to investigate, and that we must look not to authority for truth, but to truth for authority.
He said, in the summer of 1901, the sun was a furnace and the black spots the open door of the furnace, and we would have four years of torrid heat on account of those black spots; but he proved himself a false prophet, like the rest. But he is not to blame; he only followed the old traditions and scientific authority, and they proved to be a broken reed on which he leaned. I mention him because he is an able and recent writer on astronomy.
That science is at present unintelligible and almost chaotic to the masses of fairly educated people is too true for superfluous argument. The old farmer's definition of bacilli is a fair sample of the nebulous condition of many minds on scientific subjects. He said they were "little critters from the back cellar that floated in the air, called germs in Germany, parasites in Paris, and microbes in Ireland." Many intelligent people deplore the prolific use of useless technical terms and dry statistics of most scientific works, and their use makes them exclaim with Portia, "My little body is aweary of this great world."
I find a very sensible editorial in the New York American of April 18th, 1903, entitled "Science Needs Another Interpreter." It says: "Science is moving too fast for the ordinary layman, who would like to keep pace with its theories and discoveries.... Chemistry and physics needs a man who will do for them what Huxley did for biology—a man who has not only a scientific mind but a literary capacity.... Vaguely the layman knows there have been all sorts of discoveries since the X-rays showed him there was a way of seeing through a grindstone.
"But he had the idea of X-rays only partially digested when science came on him with the cathode rays and crowned the confusion by discovering radium. With a mind dazzled by light rays that are invisible, and invisible rays that are not light, and bewildered by being told of a substance that gives off terrific energy without loss of bulk or power, he lays away the natural philosophy of his college days and reaches blindly for what the new men have written of these things.
"He is then confronted with what reads like a catalogue of fossil insects diversified by stepladder algebraic formulas, the mere parenthesis of which are enough to make a school teacher shudder. The wretched seeker after knowledge is confronted with measurements of light waves until sunbeams are powerless to illuminate the day. Similarly he gathers from the fugitive words he understands among the mass that has no meaning for him, that Prof. Loeb has been putting salt on eggs and creating sea-urchins, to the utter distraction of the rules of nature's game as he has learned them.
"Somewhere there must exist the man whose skill with the pen and whose appreciation of knowledge are equal to the task of acting as interpreter between scientists and the world.... The world is hungrier for knowledge than it is for amusement, and the sales of the books of the man who succeeds in making science readable will make the returns of even the most popular novelist small in comparison."
This splendid editorial states facts graphically and truly, and portrays the real condition of things. It shows a scientific chaos, which portends a transition state, and a rapid evolution from the old traditions to a new and more perfect science. Without meaning to be egotistic or to assume any superior knowledge, or to have any of the qualities suggested in the editorial, I am impelled to suggest that if there are persons befogged scientifically, if they will read The Cities of the Sun, I think their minds will be clarified on many points and many of the old scientific traditions will fade into the nothingness from which they came.
I am glad to welcome so able a champion of the electrical theory as Mr. Cope Whitehouse, who achieved fame by discovering that the depression in the Egyptian desert could be used for irrigation, and which the English Government is now utilizing.
This New York scientist says, in an interview in the Kansas City Star of Dec. 2d, 1902: "The English scientists have partially reduced our solar system to a machine, and assigned to Deity little less than the duty of squeezing heat from the sun or stoking it with aerolites. Such theories are made for sale and not for science. When Newton suggested that gravity might swing the moon as well as attract an apple to the ground, he knew nothing of electricity. He might have observed however, that a comet never enters the sun and therefore could not have been attracted by it.
"A comet, as it closely approaches its supposed goal, changes its direction and darts away, tail foremost, in a curved path due to a resistance too feeble to obstruct its passage. No allowance is made for the attraction of gravitation in wireless telegraphy, and the most superficial observations in ozology, or the science of smell, show that there is a force in odors which ignores gravitation.
"We have reason for supposing that gravitation is a purely local affair, and heat and light do not emanate from the sun. Heat comes from the earth, and the light from the atmosphere, precisely as the film in an incandescent lamp is heated by the resistance it offers to the electric current, and light is produced by the vibration of the motes in the air."
"The only fact established beyond doubt regarding the sun and planets is their revolution on their axes, and this is all that is needed to generate light and heat. They are arc dynamos and each in turn transmits what it receives to its neighbors on the circuit." This accords with my theory published five years previously. He continues: "We do not see the stars, nor even the sun.
"The astronomer who claims that his eye penetrates space billions, trillions and decillions of miles stultifies himself in the next breath by declaring that worlds and solar systems are being formed of cosmic dust. Was the polestar ever obscured by the interposition of a world in formation? Yet the film formed by the breath of the observer on the eyepiece of a telescope would obscure Jupiter. Evidently, therefore, we no more see a star than we see a distant power house that supplies electricity to trolley lines. We only see the end of the stellar or solar ray where it enters the bubble of which the earth is the center.
"It is strange that no astronomer has ever heretofore observed that the magnifying power of a lens, two inches in diameter could have no appreciable effect on an object as remote as Saturn. Yet the ring and the satellites of this planet are thus made visible. In short, there is a kind of screen which presents the image of stars, as on a sheet between the observer and the magic lantern at an exhibition. The image can be magnified but their distance is perhaps scarcely fifty inches."
In regard to the eruptions of Mont Pelée he says: "Within twenty miles of the earth there is a cold as intense as liquid air. Differences of temperature can be converted into an electric flash, as electricity can be converted into heat. The so-called eruption of Mont Pelée was purely electrical. The sympathetic eruption of La Soufrière was partly due to an interrupted circuit and partly an induced current. There was no flow of lava, but can any one imagine the crater discharging what was said to have issued from it?... When there is an accurate statement of facts it will be found that neither dust nor gas came from the volcano. Really, only mud, hot water, smoke and stones were ejected. This material descended as a thin covering of uniform thickness. And this blanket was the dust precipitated by the electrical vibration still warm from crystallization. Had it been otherwise there would have been about one hundred million tons of frozen mud falling in the neighborhood.
"What Père Mary saw was the cloud of decomposed matter caused by the electric discharges. It is as absurd to speak of all this coming out of the volcano as it would be to say that the smoke and stifling gases in a fire caused by an electric wire came from the power house. As a fuse burned out in the circuit, Pelée simply sparked.
"It set fire to everything between its summit and the sea, and the surface of the water itself was made warm. Now you see how mastodons are found, with hair and flesh intact, imbedded in Siberian ice. If the uprush of an air current would disturb the cold stratum above a chimney, what would be the effect of the upheaval of a mountain mass with or without a volcano? It is unnecessary to suppose that the axis of the earth has changed.
"The ice crop of the Antarctic is much larger than that of the North Pole, but the volcanoes of Erebus and Terror are in violent activity. There are scores of terrestrial and celestial phenomena, from the double tide to the cold moon, that can be explained only by the electrical theory."
Thus I could fill a book with the recent proofs and statements of scientists which sustain the electric theory.
The dropping of an icicle into a barrel of unslaked lime once caused a great disaster in one of our cities. The slaking of the lime caused a fire. The firemen came and the more water they used the greater was the heat generated, until an explosion wrecked the neighborhood. In like manner, water in the fissures of the earth act chemically upon various minerals and produce similar results. Two or three layers of different metals in the earth produce a galvanic battery and results in the disaster of a volcanic explosion or an earthquake.
A silver dollar, a twenty-dollar gold piece, and a piece of copper of similar size, placed one on top of the other, with pieces of moist paper blotter between them, will generate sufficient electricity to send a telegram. Two iron tablespoons tied together with a piece of copper wire and their ends dipped in water will generate an electric current sufficient to send a cablegram across the Atlantic Ocean. So says Prof. Trobridge of Harvard. If this is true, what a fearful volcano or earthquake may be produced by water moistening the clay or substance between the thousands of acres of different mines or metals one above the other in the outer crust of the earth?
These things are marvelous to contemplate and paralyze the imagination.
CHAPTER X ELECTRICAL CREATION EXPLAINS NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
Herbert Spencer says: "Science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge," and the first knowledge obtained by primitive man was that of sense and inference from such experience. Later there arose a disposition to speculate as to that which lies beyond sense and known only by its effect on sensible things. This speculative propensity is worthy of the highest consideration as a means of knowledge. It has developed all of the numerous systems of philosophy which have flourished in the history of the human race.
First in the order of development comes the knowledge of things through the direct experience of physical sense, then comes imagination, reasoning, theoretic science and speculative philosophy.
The object of all systems of philosophy is to comprehend and teach the truth about the world around us, especially that part supposed to exist beyond the range of our senses, and to prescribe what is right and good in the life of man.
In modern times the attempt to unite all the sciences into a general system has been made by August Comte in France, and Herbert Spencer in England. According to Comte, it was time wasted and labor lost to attempt to explain the cause of gravity, chemical affinity, and electric and magnetic attraction and repulsion.
The atomic theory of the constitution of matter, the conception of an interstellar ether, the undulatory theory of light and heat were all cast aside as useless and unworthy of notice because they were not directly observable and the senses unaided could not apprehend them.
According to Comte, the only object of science and philosophy is to observe, record and classify sensible phenomena. What could not be observed by the senses could not be known and did not exist. It is said the only open road to the advance of philosophy was thus forbidden by the man who made the first valuable contribution to its advancement.
Herbert Spencer first undertook the great task of discovering the unifying principle of nature. He recognized all possible phenomena as parts of one great whole, and held that all were united by natural law. He differed from Comte in that he recognized the imperceptible as a reality, but made no attempt to explain it or to bring it into harmony with the phenomena of sense, but designated it the unknowable. He divided his system into two general divisions—the knowable, which includes all things of sense, experience, and the unknowable, which includes everything else, or the invisible and imperceptible.
He held the knowable is the proper sphere of man's knowledge or philosophy, and the unknowable the legitimate domain of God and religion. And while he held that God and religion were imperceptible and unknowable, he held they were none the less a truth of the highest degree of certainty. It is therefore well said that all who fear the downfall of religion as a result of the encroachments of science or philosophy may thank Herbert Spencer for placing it where neither science or philosophy can touch it.
Upon the law of relativity he places the basis of that which can be known, and that which cannot be known. He says: "We think in relations. This is truly the form of all thought.... On analyzing the process of thought we found that cognition of the absolute—the unknowable—was impossible because it presents neither relations nor its elements—difference and likeness. Further we found that not only intelligence but life itself consists in the establishment of internal relations in correspondence with external relations. And lastly, it was shown by the relativity of our thought we are eternally debarred from knowing or conceiving absolute being, yet that this relativity of our thought necessitates that vague consciousness of Absolute Being which no mental effort can suppress."
It is apparent that these propositions contradict each other. For, if from the relativity of thought we are eternally debarred from knowing or conceiving Absolute Being, how is it that we have a vague consciousness of this same Absolute Being which cannot be suppressed? Consciousness is one form of knowledge. Spencer, thus recognizing the reality of the unknowable, regards that which is or can be known as different manifestations of the unknowable.
These manifestations he claims, as they appear in consciousness, pass through a double series. First, a vivid series which includes all sense experience, and second, a faint series which includes thought, as in speculation and deliberation. Force, he contends, is the ultimate and deepest truth of the universe. All forms of consciousness, he says, are derived as experiences of force. All sense experiences as in the objective series, all subjective feeling or thought, everything known or knowable, is a manifestation of the one universal force or energy. This universal force, I contend, is, first, spirit or mind force; second, electric force controlled by mind force.
He says: "Contemplating pure force, we are irresistibly compelled by the relativity of our thought to vaguely conceive some unknown force as the correlative of the known force." This unknown or imperceptible force I contend is electricity and the mental force back of it. All our ideas of matter and motion, he says, are ideas of force. The demonstrated fact of the indestructibility of matter is but another name for the indestructibility of force.
The persistency of force means also the persistency of motion. All forms of physical energy—as light, heat, sound, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, gravity and sensible motion—he says, are different manifestations of force. In this I fully agree with him and claim these are all manifestations of the one fundamental force in nature—electricity.
He says: "Even after all has been said, many will be alarmed by the assertion that the forces we designate as mental come within the same generalization. Yet there is no alternative but to make this assertion. The facts which justify or rather necessitate it being abundant and conspicuous. All the phenomena of mind belong to the same class—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, God controls the universe as man controls his body. Man controls his body by the electric energy that permeates his body and brain, and God controls the universe by the electric energy that permeates all matter and space, 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 illustration 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 mass 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 space.
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. God 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 monœcism, 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 entities 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 destitutes 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 illustrated 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 identity 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 classed 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 aptitudes. Some are natural receivers of truths, and others are natural non-conductors of certain truths.
There are two eminent illustrations of this fact, it is said, in the immortal Sir Isaac Newton and John Milton, whose names are equally historic and illustrious 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 assertion 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.