The Universe
a Vast
Electric Organism BY GEORGE WOODWARD WARDER

AUTHOR OF
"Invisible Light, or the Electric Theory of
Creation," "The Cities of the Sun," Etc., Etc.

The universe is a vast electric machine or organism creating its
own cosmic force, lighting and heating itself from its own latent
electric fires, and bound together by invisible electric bands pulling
and guiding with the swiftness of lightning, and the power and wisdom
of Omnipotence.—From "The Cities of the Sun."

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
Publishers New York

Copyright, 1903
by
George Woodward Warder
Issued February, 1904

The Universe
a Vast
Electric Organism

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This volume is intended to further elucidate my theories of electrical creation, to cover some points lightly touched upon in my previous books; also to bring forward to date the most recent scientific facts and discoveries tending to show that the universe is a vast electric machine or organism.

This is the electrical age of the world, the age of magnetic marvels and electrical wonders. The people of this generation have witnessed the most astounding development of electrical machinery, appliances and utilities. In every department of effort human genius has called forth this invisible, mysterious magician, electricity, to work the miracles of Omnipotence.

And so rapid and marvelous have been the discoveries that the human mind stands paralyzed with wonder and amazement and asks, What next? In discovering electricity man has discovered the working force of Deity, the right hand of Omnipotence, the word of creative power, and uses it in all fields of human effort. With electric cables, electric motors, telephones, phonographs, telectroscopes, wireless telegraphy and mental telepathy, the world is revolutionized, "the old heavens and the old earth have passed away, and behold! all things are new."

The new heavens and the new earth as I see it through scientific facts and analogies is a perfect electrical machine, a vast electro-magnetic organism of marvelous power and perfection. This "stupendous mass of matter and force" we call the universe is a complete whole, a perfect unity, creating its own light, heat and life and bound together by invisible electric ties of measureless power, as swift as lightning and as strong as Omnipotence.

Then I took up the study of electricity as a matter of curiosity and mental stimulus for my leisure hours from the law practice and realty investments. I had an indefinite idea that this mysterious force and the laws governing it might help to solve the riddle of the universe. I studied its application to ordinary machinery and then applied it to the universe as a vast machine. And behold! the universe as a mighty electric machine or organism answered every scientific question and solved every puzzle in the material world as far as I could comprehend them.

I applied it to suns and planets, man and all animal and vegetable organisms, and as electric creations and electric generators they explained a thousand mysteries. I found man the most perfect electric organism, woven by electric energy from invisible atoms, receiving his physical life, growth and nutrition, and digesting and assimilating his food by an electric process, such as Prof. Loeb and Dr. Matthews discovered in 1902, nearly twenty years after. I soon formulated a theory of electrical creation, which has recently been accepted by some of the ablest scientists.

These things I discussed openly and on the platform for many years and then I published them in my book, The New Cosmogony, in 1898, in Invisible Light in 1900 and in The Cities of the Sun in 1901.

My attention was first called to this subject about twenty years ago when Prof. Henry built the first electric street railway ever built in this country. It was built on East Fifth Street, in Kansas City, Missouri, the city where I was living, and attracted much attention. It was used for only a short time because the machinery was not sufficiently perfected, and there was too great a waste of power, and the insulation was bad, for it magnetized and stopped the watches in the pockets of the passengers. While pondering over this electric railway and its mysterious force, as I sat in the twilight in the parlor of the old Coates House, a servant came in to light the gas. Instead of using a match, he turned on the gas, took a few gliding steps over the carpet and lit the gas by a flash of electricity from his finger, produced by touching his finger against the tip of the gas jet. I was surprised and said, "Have you enough fire in your body to light the gas?" He answered, "Yes, sir." I said, "Can you do that again?" "Yes, sir," and he turned on another jet took a few gliding steps over the carpet, touched the tip of the jet with his finger; there was a flash and the gas was lit.

I was amazed, for this was a new electric manifestation to me. He said, "You can do it, sir." "Well, I'll see if I can," and I took a few gliding steps over the carpet. He turned on the gas, I touched the jet with the tip of my finger and a flash of electric fire, an inch long, lit the gas. This I did many times afterwards and saw a dozen others do the same thing. In fact the servants seldom used matches in that parlor, the carpet held such a surplus of electricity most any person could by a few gliding steps increase the electricity of their body so they could light the gas by a touch.

Then I began to think—electric fire in man's body, in the clouds, in coal and wood, on the telegraph line, in flint, in cold steel—in everything. Electricity must be light, heat, life and creative force, and will explain the mysteries of nature.

In the hot, dry summer of 1901, when The Cities of the Sun[1] was issued, my publisher called me to one side and said that his salesman was going out West. He asked, "If he offers to sell your book, which says the sun is not hot, to those old Kansas farmers, won't they mob him and hang him to the first available tree?" I admitted it did look serious on account of the extreme heat then afflicting the West, but told him to have his salesman inform them that if they would go up in a balloon a few thousand feet nearer the sun they would freeze to death, and that if they had an arm that would reach four thousand feet up into the atmosphere it would freeze to the elbow in less than thirty minutes, the hottest day ever known, as every two thousand feet upwards from the earth there is a loss of over one hundred degrees of heat. I mention this to show how some of these theories may shock the sensibilities of some unscientific thinkers.

All scientists declare that the sun is a burning globe and also the material and electric center of the solar system; but I conceived it to be a living world like our earth, only more prolific in life and power, and the intellectual and spiritual center of our system of worlds. I believe I present the only reasonable scientific hypothesis ever presented in the history of the human race which shows and explains the unity, oneness and perfect organism of the universe. It shows that the universe is self-sustaining, harmonious and eternal, creating its own cosmic light, heat and life in the magnetic atmosphere of its suns and planets, and so simple that the law of atoms is the law of suns and worlds.

With the able assistance of the many scientists, electricians and specialists who have recently accepted and championed these theories, and the progress already made, they bid fair to soon revolutionize scientific thought.

The time will come, and is not far distant, when those who believe the sun is hot, or a burning globe of fire, will be regarded as the devotees of an antiquated superstition. The enlightened world will look upon them as they do now on those who believe in witches, human slavery and that the earth is flat; and will pity their ignorance, as we do those who worshipped the gods of Olympus.

CHAPTER I THE UNIVERSE IS A VAST ELECTRIC ORGANISM

Electricity, next to Deity, is the most remarkable entity in the universe. Its marvelous and varied powers and utilities create a new epoch in scientific thought and discovery. Its study is replete with new and fascinating ideas and scientific theories. It contains the story of the universe more sublime than an epic, more wonderful than a romance. It organized the machinery of the worlds, and holds the secrets of nature and the mysteries of life in its invisible grasp.

Electricity is the right hand of Deity, the tongue of the Spirit, the Word of Omnipotent power, the protean cosmic force and creative machinery of the universe. At the divine fiat it seized all atoms and space, it shook the ether into nebula, the nebula into worlds, the worlds into constellations, the constellations into a universe. It shaped planets and rounded suns and hurled them forth to circle in the chorus of the singing spheres. It gave form and functions to all matter from the rounded pebble to the stars; from the raindrop to the surging seas; from the chirping cricket to the sporting leviathan; from the helpless infant to the giant man.

It is the messenger and executive of Creative Will to all created things. It is the ambassador of spirit to matter, the autocrat of communication between all the faculties of mind and all the functions of physical existence. It is the law of affinity in matter, of selection in atoms, and whispers to the body the intuitions of the Spirit and guides insensate worlds to do the will of Creative Omnipotence.

Electricity is the wonderful medium and agent by which mind acts upon matter and works the miracle of life and growth. This mightiest servant of God and man, this genii greater than Aladdin's lamp, impresses all laws upon nature, and makes the universe obedient to the will of Deity, as man's body is obedient to the dictates of man's mind. This inscrutable word of power from the source of all power is beginning to supply the human race with an inexhaustible force that will revolutionize the earth and link all nations together as one family in a millennium of peace and good will.

Human life seems to throb, pulsate, gleam and glow in this marvelous current of existence, which causes illumination, transportation, telegraphy, photography, surgery, horticulture, agriculture, metallurgy and manufacture to step forth as master magicians to work miracles for the comfort and happiness of mankind. Every new discovery, every step in the progress of electrical science conquers time, destroys distances, diffuses knowledge, dissipates ignorance, encourages friendship and draws men and nations closer and closer by physical ties and spiritual affinities. Where once noisy ponderous mechanism pounded the rocks to release the metals, electrical science with her unseen but resistless currents instantly separate the ore and the dross. Where the soot-begrimed engineer seizes the heavy iron throttle, she cleanly and softly touches a tiny button and the miracle is wrought—the heavy steed of steel receives its life not from smoking, hissing, fussing steam, but from an energy as silent as light and as potent as Omnipotence.

This invisible electrical energy, without brush or color, paints the gorgeous beauties of the rainbow, and photographs in every ray of light and on every human eye the moving panorama of every passing scene. It telegraphs between mind and matter, between soul and body, between suns and planets, and gives life and energy to all the varied functions of this electric magnetic universe. This strange, miraculous power has taken its place as the supreme force of all forces, the ultimate elemental force from which all other physical forces are derived, and, without fuel or expense, flies with its burdens swifter than the flight of eagles.

It is the last and greatest progeny of man genius and discovery, the seventh daughter of science, who dips her wand in the impossible and miraculous until miracles become prolific and common. Its power and expression are universal and its character and process superlatively grand. Its theatre of action is the universe and it comes to earth as the voice of Deity and the word of His Omnipotence.

This science of the impossible, this daughter of miracles, is destined to outstrip all past achievements. The ponderous and noisy mechanisms will pass away, the barren rocks will change into most precious things, the sunlight will be converted into reservoirs of power, and every raindrop and waterfall, ocean tide and wind current, will reveal exhaustless sources of wealth and energy. Then will the ancient curse, "by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," be removed, and agriculture and commerce will be conducted without the drudgery of toil or the weariness of labor, and the earth shall blossom at the touch of the silent electric forces which man will harness to his car of progress and power. Manufacture will then be automatic and the web she will weave in her silent loom will not be wet with the tears of imprisoned childhood, or the agonizing sweat of dungeoned manhood.

Omnipotence follows her footsteps and with the blessings of heaven she comes as a friend to relieve pain and toil and elevate and glorify humanity. Her power is as boundless as space and as universal as heaven's love.

For she comes with the Omnipotent power of Deity to relieve the burdens of toil, lift up the oppressed of the earth, and give man leisure for mental improvement and social elevation.

Electricity, I contend, is the invisible force which evolves form and substance and all visible things. Matter is but the outer garment of these invisible electric forces. It is Spirit which creates psychic life, and makes life the cause instead of the consequence of organism. It is electricity which evolved the physical universe and makes it a vast electric organism bound together by invisible electric ties, where its invisible forces are the cause instead of the consequence of physical organism. These are the basic differences between the materialistic science of the past and the psycho-electric science of the present. In the past science investigated only visible material effects and ignored the supreme invisible forces and laws which evolved and produced them.

This is an age of dominant mind, the development of a cycle of invisible forces. The past century was the age of matter. It is said Darwin, Tyndall, Haeckel and Huxley did a work which had to be done. But their work was limited to chemical and biological demonstration. It was science, but science of the old school. The discoveries since made in the domain of electricity and mental transmission make their discoveries seem trivial in comparison.

Francis Grierson says: "The discoveries and inventions of the past ten years have made child's play of every previously known system of philosophy. The simple but amazing facts disclosed during the past five years render the dreams, speculations and guesswork of the past absurd. The little we know in a practical way is more than all the philosophers of the past knew, from Aristotle to Leibnitz."

I contend that the universe is a vast electric organism. That all light, heat, and vital force is generated by electric energy in the dense magnetic atmosphere of suns and planets, where alone it is needed for animal and vegetable life, and in volcanic pockets or circuits in the outer crust of these bodies caused by electric repulsion. That the universe began in extreme cold, not heat, that the suns are not hot, but are self-luminous, perfected worlds, and like our earth, except greater and more prolific in life and power. I also contend it is as reasonable to bury an iron ship in the icebergs of the Arctic seas and expect it to become "red hot," as to expect the sun, planets or any body traveling through space 460 degrees colder than those icebergs to become "hot, red hot or molten," as the astronomers say the sun is. All light, heat, vital force and physical life is created by contact of opposite electrical polarities in the magnetic cushion surrounding all suns and planets.

The sun furnishes the positive electricity and the planet or satellite the negative, and from these two spring all the cosmic and material forces of the universe. The electric currents of the sun create induced magnetic currents on the earth, which evolves all visible substance and life forms.

The earth at its center is a magnet of crystalline rock and varied metals, placed layer upon layer as a thermopile or voltaic battery, which constitutes the solid core of the earth magnet, and draws and holds all matter and substance atoms and atmosphere close to its magnetic heart, so that nothing can be thrown off of its vast surface, though it shoots through space fifty times faster than a bullet from a rifle and whirls round with the speed of a revolving cylinder of a dynamo. Its swift duplicate motion makes it a working battery or arc dynamo of marvelous power. It draws all things to its magnetic center as the magnetic core of a steel magnet draws filings of iron and other metals to its magnetic surface, and they cluster there in the same spherical form.

This earth magnet drew countless meteors, swarms of nebulæ and invisible matter from surrounding space, and grew in size and magnetic power as a steel magnet may grow by adding other countless magnets with their increasing power and growing accretions. For my theory is that every atom is a tiny magnet, and every molecule, meteor and visible form of matter is a combination and aggregation of magnets.

Aside from the theory of magnets, this is not far from Lockyer and Proctor's theory of the stellar formation. Norman Lockyer says: "The stellar constitution may be explained by supposing it to arise from cool meteoric swarms represented by the nebulæ and the rise of temperature due to contraction toward a centre." And he adds: "In the stars we have celestial furnaces the heat of which transcends that of our most powerful electric sparks." In this heat theory I think he is radically wrong. The rise of temperature on the sun and earth, I contend, is not from contraction, which is both insufficient and too irregular to be considered. But it did arise from the growth in power and size of the earth as a great magnet, so that as a great arc dynamo it began to throb with electric energy, and, by drawing to itself powerful currents from space and from the sun, the central electric heart of its organism, it began to generate heat and light in its own environment, which in time became translucent to the sun's rays, and, instead of the sun and earth losing their light and heating power, they are steadily increasing them.

It is thus apparent that all light, heat, physical organisms and vegetable and animal life are evolved and exist only in the magnetic atmosphere of suns and planets.

The light we see does not come from the sun or stars; it is generated in our own atmosphere. No man ever saw the sun or stars; they see the rays of light which photograph them in our atmosphere. They see pictures of them at the end of the ray emanating from them, but some of these rays have been two hundred years in reaching us.

It takes light over four years to reach us from the star nearest our earth, so it is plain we do not see these stars.

As to the heat of the sun, there has been a vast difference of opinion among scientists. Newton held it to be 1,669,300 degrees hot; Erickson, 2,726,000 degrees hot; Sacchi, 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 degrees; Waterson, 9,000,000 to 10,000,000, and Soret, 5,800,000 degrees hot. But since the discovery of the law of the conservation of energy, which is only about a hundred years old, the scientists have been hedging and crawfishing with wonderful dexterity and reducing it, until now 18,000 to 20,000 degrees are accepted as possibly correct.

As Newton was a great mathematician and the scientists accept him on other scientific questions, they ought to accept him on the sun's heat, and acknowledge a fact that ought to be apparent to all—that if heat comes to the earth from the sun, in a column 93,000,000 miles long and 8,000 miles in diameter through frigid ether 460 degrees colder than ice, the sun must be millions of degrees hot. Then, as nothing in the known universe can exist a million or even twenty thousand degrees hot, they should admit the sun is not hot, and no heat comes from the sun to the earth. Only electric currents come from the sun, which generate heat and light in our own atmosphere.

Then arises another question. All bodies lose their magnetic power when heated to less than one thousand degrees hot. Professor Fleming in his book, "Magnets and Electric Currents" says: "Magnetic bodies become changed into feeble magnetic ones by heating to a certain temperature. Iron at its critical temperature, 690 degrees to 870 degrees or a light red heat, loses all its strong magnetic qualities. In the same way nickel loses them at 300 degrees." Thus we have the sun at even 1,000 degrees hot deprived of its magnetic power and unable to control the solar system. Prof. T. C. Mendenhal, in a recent article in Harper's Magazine, says: "The electrical resistance of pure metals diminishes at a rate which indicates that at absolute zero it would vanish and these metals would become perfect conductors of electricity." Thus cold increases and heat diminishes the electric energy of metals and all substances.

In my previous book, The Cities of the Sun, I have given over fifty reasons why the sun is not hot. Among them I may mention, first, because of the extreme cold that prevails in the upper atmosphere of the earth, through which the sun's rays must pass, but whose temperature they cannot alter. Second, because the sun's rays must traverse 93,000,000 miles of space between sun and earth, which is 460 degrees colder than ice, which would make it impossible for them to retain any degree of heat whatever. If heat comes from the sun it must come in a column 93,000,000 miles long, 865,000 miles in diameter, converging to 8,000 miles at the earth's surface, which would destroy the sun or any known body in the universe to furnish such heat. Third, because the perpetual snow upon the mountains even in the tropics show the sun's rays bring no heat to the earth, or the snow would be melted by the first and greatest volume of heat from the sun. Fourth, because if heat came from the sun there could be no clouds in our atmosphere, for the heat of the sun would strike them first, and greater heat above the cloud level would prevent their formation and forever banish them from our skies.

Fifth, because heat by the law of its nature is diffusive, and cannot be shot from one sun or planet to another, or forced through space like a leaden ball or other substance, but is soon dissipated in the cold ether of space. Sixth, the sun is not hot because comets have passed three hundred thousand miles through the sun's corona without visible change or injury, which would be impossible if the sun is excessively hot, for the comet, coming from outer space, must be intensely cold, and excessive heat in the sun would explode and destroy it. This argument alone should destroy the hoary headed superstition that the sun is hot. Seventh, heat does not come from the sun, because there is no such thing as heat. Heat is simply a sensation; it is not a substance or an entity. It is a sensation caused by the increased activity of the molecules of which a body is composed, and, is produced by electric currents. I hold the sun is not a thermal or heating engine, as the astronomers claim, but an electric generator which is not hot and does not need to be hot. I repudiate the law of gravity and adopt electricity as the evolving force of the universe.

As the sun is 745 times larger than all the planets of the solar system combined, and controls the life and energy of the solar system by all laws of analogy and distribution in the universe, it should be more highly endowed with all the elements of growth, living forms and intellectual organisms than all the planets combined. Therefore, the sun should be the spiritual and intellectual center as well as the physical and electric center of our system of worlds, the headquarters of Deity and the future abode of man. No life could come from a hot or burning sun or world, yet all animal and vegetable life comes from the all life-giving energy of the sun. Heat is not life-giving, it is not even a substance or a force. Heat does not exist except as a sensation created by the increased activity of the molecules of which the body is composed. This increased activity is caused by currents or waves of electricity passing through a body or substance. Cold is the absence of heat or lack of motion of the molecules of a body or substance, and, like heat, is not a reality, a substance or a thing, but only a sensation.

Heat and cold are produced by electricity, and are sensations resulting from electrical conditions. Heat is not a creator; electricity is the creator and heat is its servant, and only one of its thousand-fold expressions. Electricity creates the activity of the molecules which gives the sensation of heat. A person standing in the sun on a hot day receives currents of electricity which were not hot when they left the sun, but only became so when they came in contact with the earth's opposite electricity near the earth's surface. These currents produce the sensation of heat. The sun is not a burning globe, or blazing world of fire; it is an enormous magnet of measureless power, thirteen hundred thousand times larger than the earth magnet on which we live. It revolves on its enormous axis at the rate of four thousand miles an hour and is thus constituted a working magnet or arc dynamo, drawing electric energy from its vast electric field, embracing the solar system, six billions of miles in diameter. Of this electricity, it uses for its own light, heat, and vital force what it needs, and the balance is thrown off to its luminous corona or photosphere, where it is shot by the law of electric repulsion in the sun and electric attraction in the planets to the earth and plants. The brilliancy of the sun is caused by its surplus electricity creating a luminous aurora which extends from its poles to its equator.

Newton discovered an imaginary force. Newton had an imagination which the scientific plodders who came after him lacked. They have dug in the dirt, while he sailed through azure seas and linked suns and worlds together by the mere sweep of the imagination, without any explanation or conceivable cause, and called it gravity. He might just as well have called it weight or ponderosity, which means the same as gravity. And the scientists followed him and accepted his theory of gravity, which means nothing and explains nothing. It was the best they could do, as he had an imagination and an idea and they had none. Thus the blind led the blind for two centuries, until electricity and its invisible forces were discovered, and a new field for thought and causation was opened up.

Let us suppose that space and the invisible atoms or star dust which permeate it are seized by electric energy, creating a boundless sea of invisible electro-magnetism, which began to vibrate to the law of action and reaction, attraction and repulsion. Under this law every atom became a tiny magnet, and electric centers are formed which are the foundation stones and nuclei of growing suns and worlds; and invisible atoms, nebulæ and finally meteors are drawn by electric energy and woven by magnetic force or induced electric currents into orderly layers of crystalline rock and varied metals, forming a vast thermopile, galvanic battery, working magnet, and electric dynamo all combined. By the law of electric attraction all matter would tend toward a common center, and in that common center would be found the vast central magnet-sun, sphere and dynamo many times larger and more powerful than all the others combined. As each grew in size their electric potentiality would be increased, their electric and magnetic attractions multiplied, and their revolution upon their axis and their orbit motion would be accelerated to a marvelous extent, giving them measureless force and power.

Herbert Spencer affirms that space is eternal and has always existed. We will suppose the same of matter in its elemental form, known as the atom, and we will venture also to assert that force is a substance like matter, but a thousand times more refined and invisible than the atom, and we will call it the electric ion, or electron.

Thus we have three indestructible, invisible entities—space, matter and force—which have existed eternally and which constitute the basic foundation and fallow ground of primeval chaos, which was the beginning of the universe. Then stars and planets, suns and worlds were transparent ether, as impalpable as the viewless air, and scattered as star-dust in the measureless void of space along the forgotten highways of the eternities. Silence reigned profound in the pulseless regions of the air where, motionless and dumb, the atoms hung in dark and lifeless space. There was nothing in all that seemingly chaotic universe; nothing but cold, darkness and silence. But these are the home of atoms and ions, the star dust and cosmic force, creative Deity had scattered by the breath of His power through the highways of space in the beginning of primeval creation. While these seem as nothing to man, they are the foundation stones of all creation.

This nothingness of space was the fallow ground of the universe and the formless shadow of suns and worlds. It was a universe in solution, as viewless as ether and as intangible as mind. The electric energy of space was yet unstirred by the divine fiat or shook into vibrating force by the word of creative power.

Then at the creative behest, "Let There Be Light," the ions of force, like an electric clothing of light and life, leaped into power, permeated all atoms, and wrapped as in swaddling clothes a new-born universe. Then atoms and ions of electric force met in fond and unending embrace, substance and energy clasped hands, and matter and persistent force were woven into each other's arms and saturated with electric life-giving energy.

The sun magnet, being larger and more powerful than all the others combined, would hold the others we call planets in the magnetic field of his sovereign power, and become the electric heart and commanding force of his system of world magnets. He would draw his electric life and energy from his vast electric magnetic field embracing his solar system, which with our sun is six billions of miles in diameter.

As these bodies grew in size under the law of electric attraction, which draws all matter toward a common center, they would become more and more compressed, dense and stable, until they attained their natural equilibrium of balanced forces and assumed their permanent form and solidity. Then they would assume their normal velocity of revolution on their axis, and their orbital motion along evenly balanced lines of force, without friction or change, for countless ages. All suns and planets revolve on their axis under the law of electro-magnetism by which electric currents of force pass through their centers at their poles, and magnetic currents of equal force pass one way around them, creating their diurnal motion.

This law is briefly stated by a standard work on electricity: "A wire or any conductor having a current of electricity passing through it has lines of magnetic force passing one way around it, and the number is in direct ratio to the quantity of current passing through the wire. This magnetic effect is strongest close to the wire, and decreases inversely as the square of the distance." This is a marvelous combination of the dual forces of electricity, which operates as a wonderful mechanical contrivance to spin the heavenly orbs on their poles, like a top is spun by a string or band around it or like the cylinder of a dynamo is revolved by its leather bands or a water wheel turned by the swift current of a river. By reason of this law, all suns and planets revolve on their electric centers at their poles. The great electric currents from the sun eight thousand miles in diameter and ninety-three million miles in length, like a mighty, inexhaustible river of force and power, cause the earth to turn over, as a water-wheel is turned by the swift current of a river. This vast stream or current of invisible power, when it starts from the photosphere of the sun, is 865,000 miles in diameter and is narrowed to a focus of 8,000 miles at the earth's surface, thus increasing its force and power a thousand-fold. The largest river on the earth is 180 miles wide at its mouth and about 3,000 miles long, but what an insignificant rivulet it is in contrast with this vast, invisible, omnipotent stream of electric life-giving power, constantly passing to and fro from sun to earth and from earth to sun.

Think of its marvelous speed! While the swiftest current of a river or the speed of a railroad train is scarcely fifty miles an hour, this mighty electric tide comes with the speed of light 186,000 miles a second, or almost 12,000,000 of miles an hour; and it turns the earth over at the rate of a thousand miles an hour by its lines of magnetic force, just as the swift tide of a river turns the water-wheel of a mill. And that the earth may turn more surely and steadily, it has vast mountain ranges running north and south from its poles, such as the Andes and the Himalayas on opposite sides of its surface, and other ranges scattered between, to act as extending flanges and paddles, like those on a water-wheel, to enable this vast electric tide to turn it more readily, and, like the brushes on an electric dynamo, to generate and draw electric currents from earth and sky, and moisture from the clouds, to bless and fertilize the earth and make it the theatre of man's life and activities.

Beneath these mountain ranges and in the outer crust of its surface are many cavities or openings we call volcanoes connected by powerful currents of magnetism constantly circulating from the equator to the poles; and when there is an influx of water or other substance sufficient to generate electric resistance and repulsion, a fuse burns out in the circuit at that point, the volcano sparks, blazes, explodes with great force, and shoots its molten lava into the clouds, or, like Mount Pelee, blows its head off.

Another simple illustration of the universe as a vast electric mechanism is the electric street-car system in our cities. The sun represents the great central power house where the electric power is generated.

The planets represent the cars, which revolve on their axis and speed forward by the same force and in almost the same manner as the planets revolve on their poles and continue in their orbital lines of force. The trolley wire and current are the cars' electric line of force and they come and go in their circuit propelled by the electric generator at the central power house, in very much the same way as the planets revolve and come and go on their orbital circuits around the sun by the moving force and electric power of the sun.

The circuit of the electric current on the car line starts from the dynamo at the power house and returns along the rails or through the earth back to the dynamo. In like manner, the vast electric currents of the sun pass to the earth through the ether without wires and do the lighting, heating and cosmic life-work, and return to the sun completing their circuit; and the earth sends its electric currents to the sun and they return to the earth through the ether in the same manner and complete their circuit. Thus there are vast highways and boulevards of electric currents passing from suns to planets and from planets to suns which are pathways to the stars and the great highways of eternity, on which invisible atoms, and perhaps invisible human souls, may pass from earth to suns and central suns. In the future, man will turn the searchlight of investigation upon electricity as the universal operating cause of all physical phenomena. He will solve the riddle of the universe by its subtle invisible forces. He will cease to regard creation as vast constellations of burning spheres whirling through frigid ether. He will look upon it with wonder and inspiration as a vast self-controlling, life-evolving, varied but unchanging unity, a perfect whole—a vast electric organism of omnipotent power and eternal existence. He will regard electricity as the finger touch of Deity that makes the world go round, that marks out the orbits of suns and the pathway of constellations, and guides them in their mysterious courses to their eternal and inscrutable destiny.

CHAPTER II ELECTRICITY PRODUCES ALL THE PHENOMENA OF NATURE

I contend that electricity produces all the phenomena of nature—that it is the ever active agent in evolving visible forms and substances whose results are known as laws. Man is the most perfect enfoldment of nature's electric laws, and the world and the universe are the universal expression of electric life and energy.

Man and all the visible forms of creation are woven from invisible ether by electric forces, and, as man's will and thoughts are the governing force of his electric organism, so simple and universal are the laws of nature that the will and thoughts of Deity, by electric energy, are the controlling law and force of the universe, and the ultimate cause producing all causes, all creations, and all tangible forms.

The natural world is the product of matter, and force and all matter is one matter represented by the invisible atom, and all physical force is one force, being the varied manifestations of electric energy. For the natural world is the spiritual unfoldment made manifest by electric power.

Therefore all the varied phenomena of nature, the revolution of the earth on its axis and in its orbit around the sun, the brilliant light and governing power of the sun, the circling stars, the blazing comet, the shooting meteor, the gorgeous rainbow, the luminous aurora, and the dazzling corona are all expressions of electric power. The lightning in the cloud, the reverberations of thunder, the ebb and flow of the tides, the wind currents in the air, the swaying of the forest, the variations of heat and cold, the falling of snow, the rain drop and the dew are all electric manifestations.

You cannot raise your arm, lift your foot, or move your body except by electric energy. You cannot see or hear or feel or taste or smell or exercise any of the functions of the body without bringing to your aid the electric force which permeates all forms and substance. Electricity creates the mystery of physical life and provides the food and sustenance necessary to its growth and development. Electricity works the miracle of digestion and assimilation and converts inert matter into blood and bone, tissue and muscle, and organizes man's body into an electric machine, and runs it as truly and perfectly by electric energy as the electric motor or generator is run by electricity. Man draws his electric life currents from the air into the lungs as a great electric reservoir, there it purifies and energizes the blood and sends it as an electric fluid and circulating magnetic current through every part of the body, causing the heart valves to pulsate with measureless force and the human machine to throb with intense life and power.

The heart throbs and pulse beats of man's body are but the rythmic whir and vibrations of the human electric machine. Man makes electrical machines of wood and glass and metal, but nature makes them of flesh and blood and of all matter and substance. Nature, the all-wise and mysterious necromancer, makes nothing but electric machines from the infinitesimal atom to the self-luminous perfected dynamos—the suns and stars. All things that exist are electric generators or electric creations of marvelous construction, power and utility; and all expressions of form and power, all visible objects, and all the varied phenomena of nature are produced by electric-magnetic energy.

Franklin and Faraday, Harvey, Morse and Edison, by their discoveries have taught us that as the potter and the clay must come together to form the rudest vessels, so creative electric force must touch every sensitive atom in organic being; and keep the wellsprings of life constantly flowing through all life forms. There is no unfolding of bud and blossom, tree and shrub, without the coming and going of electric life-giving sunlight and earth light. They pervade all bodies of matter, whether world spheres or seed germs, and hold communion with all atomic centers of sensation in all living organisms. Atoms seek their electric affinities, life-forces and life-forms touch each other by the grasp of magnetic attraction and repulsion, and these give personal sensations and vital forms of being.

Through the medium of electricity, material and mental forces meet together upon the plane of human consciousness. This is nature's method of communication between the material and mental within the human brain, which has been a puzzling and difficult problem of physical science. The language of the senses is a universal language that has its foundation in invisible forces.

There is a unity between the light and the eye that indicates their origin in the same lines of force that now give sight to the brain life. In the ear, there is evidence that the electric vibratory currents of force producing sound had a companionship with the electric life-germ in which the ear had its beginning. So all organs of sense possess unmistakable evidence of having proceeded out of those electric forces that are unseen and imponderable. The knowledge of these is the story of the Garden of Eden, incorporated into the life of every intellectual being. All the evidence of the senses comes from electric telegrams from without or within man's physical organism. Seeing and hearing are wireless telegrams from the ether without, and feeling, smelling, tasting, are wired telegrams running along the nerves of man's body and communicating with the brain—the seat of intelligence—and the reasoning soul.

Man must have a connecting link between his mind and body and the things about him; and, as that connecting link and medium in man is electricity, so plain and simple are the laws of nature that God has no other medium between him and all material creations. Electricity therefore is both the creative governing energy of Deity over the universe, and the governing energy of man over all material things. God controls the universe as man controls his body—by electricity.

Man has five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling. These are all communicated to the soul or spiritual body by electricity. Man feels by the electric flashes that come from every part of his body, that tingle on his nerves, and beat upon the brain, and touch the garments of the living soul. He sees through the medium of the electric etheric waves of light that come from the vibrations of the air around him. By these swift electric flashes the infinitesimal rays of electric light enter the retina of the eye and touch the quick vision of the soul. He hears by the atmospheric waves of electricity that beat upon his ear drums. He tastes and smells by the same electric process; and his five senses are but the inward communication of outer surrounding conditions and substances to his spiritual perception by means of electricity. Thus the Creative Deity hears and knows, and by the same forces directs and sustains all things.

Man as an electric engine is far more efficient than any known engine in which there is a consumption of fuel. In general the amount of work a man does bears a certain proportion to the fuel he puts into his boiler. Plants also constitute forms of electric engines to embalm the sun's rays and use the products rejected by men and animals.

By the radiant energy of the sun, plants are able to decompose carbonic acid. They form storage cells in which a current of electricity decomposes the liquid into oxygen and hydrogen and form materials which again give electricity, motion and heat. The sun enables the plant engine to work. It also enables the man engine and animal engine, and world engine to work by furnishing them all with the electric energy and working power of the universe, that they may do their part in the ever living forces of cosmic life. The cells of protoplasm are infinitesimal magnets or electrical machines, all vegetables are but larger magnets, all animals still larger, till we get to worlds and suns, the greatest of them all.

All the radiant garments of creation in their varied colors of light and beauty that now appear to human vision are woven from the same garments of immortality that wrap themselves around the initial centres of magnetic attraction.

As the worlds were created by invisible electric forces under the guidance of the Omnipotent creative spirit, so the same electric forces are still carrying forward the work of their unfinished structures, and perfecting the unity and completing the harmony of creation. What we now call gravity is electric attraction and accretion that was commenced at the beginning of nature's work of creation, and which continues to be the occult force that secures the growth of a blade of grass, the unfolding of the tiniest seed with its inwrapt life-germ and the development of a world, and which brings us face to face with the creative force that was the starting point of "the beginning" and will be the culminating center of all ultimate perfected creation. This electric life energy touches each growing seed center as at the beginning it touched each growing world center and reveals the power and wisdom of creation in every evolving form of life.

The same electric radiate lines that give the parental image in the mirror by an instantaneous flash of light, give also the parental image in the germ-life that evolves a new paternity. While we cannot trace the lines of electrical union that are mingled in this new life, we are justified in affirming that electric and radiant matter must have bridged the chasm between the old lives and the new, between parental duality and the dual forces of electricity that produced a new germinal individuality. And the new life cannot be possible without the separate unfolding of two distinct organisms meeting in generative embrace, imparting a new seed-life. All germ-life has its beginning where positive and negative magnetic currents blend into unity.

The germinal life and the food supply of plant and animal fix the boundaries of its being. There can be no evolution of plant life into animal life. It is not scientific or rational; vegetable, plant and tree have no independent existence separate from the soil of the earth except as latent in seed form.

As all material organisms take on their organic form around electric or magnetic centers drawing their atoms from electrical currents, so all life-germs take their growth from the magnetic centers of their growing forms. Here in the field of electric forces is to be found the generative forces of organic matter—the mysterious births from all parental life. And the constantly revolving circle of periodic changes of growth and decay, of life and death, of seed beginning and seed producing—like sunshine and shadow, light and darkness—are opposite points in the circle of electric force and physical life. The growing and dying life-forms intervene between these two points of rest and renewal, of attraction and repulsion, of positive organism and negative diffusion of matter.

They are the results of the great electric system of attracting and repelling currents of magnetism that are as fixed in their lines of force and order of work as the rocks at the foundations of the mountains. In fact, all that is strong and abiding in matter rests upon these currents of energy, and all of life is dependent upon the constancy and perpetually pulsating flow of the unseen electrical potencies of creation. Life is a universal unity, as light, heat, electricity and polarization, which evolve it, are unities. The order of ascending life organism is from the simple to the complex; from the lowest plane of rock formation the series is upward; from the lowest form of vegetable life it is up to the highest, and in the animal life upward till the crowning work is reached in the thinking animal we call man, who is more than a thinking animal.

To each ascending form there is an endowment of self-perpetuation by parentage and seed fruitage, which involve the electro-magnetic condition of germ life. Thus by electrical forces plants build within each other and form others by elementary atoms, with power of self-propagation, bridging the life-gulf between silent atom and living organism as if they were the material work of some spiritual builder.

Thus by electrical forces nature builds all human and animal life-forms and organisms. The primary atoms of matter have their home in the electro-magnetic forces and are evolved from them into the material organisms of creation. When the electro-magnetic origin of light, heat, physical life and so-called gravitation is fully accepted and their dynamic energy traced to its potential body, we have reached the strength of primary forces and the unending circle of electrical potencies.

This brings us to the border land of creative work, to the mysterious sea of all life-giving forces, and the universal basis of all existing creations.

Here spirit, matter, and electricity—the three great basic entities of creation—work together in full accord in evolving and fashioning all material growth and material structures. In natural growth protoplasm gives the material conditions of life without which there could be no food supplies.

They contain grouped elements of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon out of which living structures are reared. Life is dependent upon food supplies of matter, which supplies must be raised to radiant conditions by electric forces to secure its assimilation into living organic forms. Life, therefore, like light, seeks through magnetic action a radiant plane of matter where it can reveal its working presence. Upon such a plane all forms of life come to birth from a common parentage—from electric force and radiant matter, each form endowed with personality, and powers of reproduction that make them factors of life and growth upon the radiant plane of creative potencies.

Prof. G. F. Wright of Oberlin says in a recent article: "Evolution does not solve the mysteries of the universe. It simply pushes them one step further back. The mystery of the acorn is greater than the mystery of the oak, for it has compressed in it all the 'power and potency' of the oak. It is no explanation of a chick to say it is hatched from an egg. The wonder and the mystery is simply carried back to that infinitesimal point in the egg which conceals within itself the power of producing the feathered biped with all its marvelous instincts and adapted organism." I hold that the infinitesimal point in the egg and the acorn is its electric center of life-force, or magnetic core, which, under the law of organic affinity, develops by nutrition and respiration, which are electric processes, into the chick and the oak. He says: "So, of all the processes of nature, man's vision sees only the surface. We do not see causes but only effects. We plant a seed, and all that we see is that under certain conditions it springs up and produces the blade, then the ear, and last the full corn in the ear. No one knows how it comes about that two seeds which look alike under the same conditions produce different colored flowers and different qualities of fruit. The beginning of everything is a mystery. If one affirms that things have no beginning he but increases the mystery. The difficulty with all theories of evolution is to get a starting point. The time was when philosophers could speak of the universe as eternal. The geologists fifty years ago could do so, but the demonstration of the conservation of energy has put an end to any such easy-going speculation."

All this is well stated and very true, except that by treating all things as electro-magnets, drawing positive and negative atoms or ions from air, food and water, we see how by nutrition and accretion animal and vegetable organism may be evolved by the law of magnetic attraction and organic affinity. This is the only rational solution and is in accord with all the processes of nature and with the conservation of energy. Elsewhere I have endeavored to explain how, by the constant renewal of matter and electric energy in the sun and in space, the universe may be eternal and no waste or deterioration occur and, while always changing, is virtually changeless.

Newton in his theory of gravitation discovered one phase of electric energy, and his law of gravitation is in reality simply the law of electrical attraction. But he never knew the cause of it and never discovered the other and dual phase of electric energy—the law of electrical repulsion, he never even suspected it. For he held that the balancing force of gravitation of the other planets kept each planet from falling into the sun, which it otherwise would have done under the law of gravitation, which says large bodies attract smaller ones. This position was untenable, as I have shown in "The Cities of the Sun."

Newton thought that an apple was attracted to the earth because the earth was larger, and that any larger body would attract a smaller one. But I hold that size is not what controls attraction; it is electrical conditions. An amount of substance from the sun would have more attracting power than the same amount from the earth, because the sun has more electrical power. A lodestone has more attracting power than the same amount of ordinary substance. A pound of iron has no attracting force until it is magnetized; then it will lift many times its weight. So size, weight, or gravity is no test of attracting power.

I therefore repudiate the law of gravity and adopt electricity, with its dual force of action and reaction, attraction and repulsion, as the supreme cosmic evolving force of the universe, creating all light, heat and life and producing all the varied and wonderful phenomena of nature.

I hold that by the law of electric energy the sun is not a thermal or heating engine as the astronomers proclaim, but is an electric generator and is not hot, and that the sun's rays, neither where they originate or where they act are hot, but they come to the earth as cool currents of electricity, which generate heat near the earth's surface by coming in contact with an opposite electricity and the resistance and friction of its atmosphere. Proof of this is found in the snow-covered peaks of the tropics and the glaciers of the torrid zone.

I have waited six years for objections to the electric theory of creation and have found only one recently stated. This first and only objection is that electricity is a derivative force.

Prof. G. F. Wright, of Oberlin, in an article in the Chicago Record, Dec., 1902, says: "Many of the speculations concerning the unlimited use of electricity overlook the fact of its derivative origin. Electricity is but transformed force. It is not a producer of force but a consumer of force. It merely directs the force to its specific end. The electricity which propels and warms the street cars of Buffalo, and furnishes power to its small factories and illuminates its streets is merely force diverted from the Falls of Niagara; in other words, it is transformed gravitation."

True, but gravitation is simply electric attraction, and the electricity that propels, lights and warms the cars is electric attraction diverted from the Falls and used on the cars. It is not derivative force, but the original and only force—electric force transferred from the Falls to the cars.

But Prof. Wright himself destroys his own argument when he says: "In other cases the electricity is derived from the heat of consuming coal, while the coal is the product of the sun's rays, chemically sealed up in the coal deposits of the early geological ages. Indeed it is easy to see that all the available force in the world is the product of the sun's rays." In this we fully agree, for I say the heat of the coal and the heat of the sun is electricity. The sun's rays, which he says "is all the available force in the world," is electricity, and the sun is the great electric heart of the solar system. Thus we differ only in terms. While he whips electricity around the stump, and says it is a new thing every time he turns a corner, I say it is the same electricity, without any change, and proves the oneness of the universe as a vast electric organism.

Thus our great scientists befog themselves. Now that Langley says there is only one radiant matter, and light, heat and chemical changes are all one entity, perhaps he may change his view. I have tried to convince these crosseyed reasoners that all force is one force and all matter is one matter, and the scientists are now coming to that conclusion steadily.

Prof. Wright says again: "The strength and warmth of all animal bodies is traceable to carbon, and whenever we move a limb or walk, the power to do it is obtained by the consumption of carbon." Well, I say carbon is one form of stored electricity. He says: "The ox feeds upon the grass which is collected or grows through the influence of sunlight," and I say sunlight is electric currents from the great electric dynamo, the sun.

He says: "The nebular theory is faulty," and I agree with him. He says: "Gravitation is an utter mystery that has baffled all scientific explanation," and I agree with him, and go a step further and affirm that there is no such thing as gravitation and never was. Newton discovered one of the dual forces of electricity, which I call universal electric attraction, and called it gravitation.

He says: "So far as we can see, gravitation acts instantaneously, and Newton gave up the problem of defining it, and said he had no explanation except to say God so made it." This is true, but Newton knew nothing of electricity or his great intellect would likely have discovered the truth and named and explained it as electric attraction.

Newton discovered an imaginary force, an idea, a dream, "an occult force," as Leibnitz called it. Newton had an imagination which the scientific plodders who have come after him lacked. They have dug in the dirt, while he sailed through azure seas, and linked suns and worlds together by a mere sweep of the imagination, without any explanation or conceivable cause, and called it gravity. He might just as well have called it ponderosity.

Phillip Akinson, in his work on electricity, 1902, asserts that "energy manifests itself either in masses of matter or in small particles, called molecules, and thus we have two kinds—mass energy and molecular energy." But have we two kinds of energy? Mass energy and molecular energy is the same.

Mass energy is but the aggregation of molecular energy.

Large bodies attract small ones because they possess more electric energy. Gravity or weight is but another name for aggregate molecular electric attraction of the earth for everything upon its surface. The gravity or weight of a man is the pull or force with which the electric attraction of the earth holds him to its surface. In other words, the earth is a vast magnet, and man's body is a smaller magnet, and as the magnetic core of a steel magnet draws all metals towards its magnetic center, so does the earth magnet draw all things toward its center.

The same author states that, "the earth is a great thermopile generating electric currents by the difference of potential between its heated and cooled parts." In this I agree with him, but he only states one of a thousand ways to generate electric currents.

He says further: "Heat is believed to be a certain mode of molecular motion, and electricity to be another mode; but the nature of the motion of each has never been discovered." And I think never will, as long as the false notion prevails that heat and electricity are modes of motion. A mode of motion is nonsense, for motion is an effect produced by a cause—it is not a cause. And all cause of motion is electricity, and the mode of operation is the law of electro-magnetism.

There is no difference in the law or the mode of operation of electric currents in a volcano, in a cloud, in the earth, in the sun or planets, in an electric light, or in a man's body. The same law exists and the same natural results follow when one lights the gas with a flash of electricity from his finger, as when a meteor blazes, a comet flares out in space, or a sun becomes luminous. The same force that man causes to run along a telegraph wire, or through a telephone circuit, or which runs a street car line, or is taken by the brushes from a revolving dynamo, is the same force and operated under the same law or mode of force as the electric life-giving currents that come from the sun constantly in an omnipotent tide of power.

Prof. Thomson says: "The earth is generally found to be negatively electrified, and is insulated in its atmosphere, being in fact a conductor touched only by air—a strong insulator."

He says further: "The quality of non-resistance to electric force of the interplanetary ether being considered, the earth, the atmosphere and the surrounding medium may be regarded as constituting respectively, the inner coating, the dielectric and the outer coating of a large Leyden jar charged negatively."

Prof. S. P. Thomson in "Electricity and Magnetism," says: "Gilbert made the discovery that the compass points north and south because the earth is also a great magnet. Faraday said: 'All matter is in a magnetic condition.' Sir Oliver Lodge says: 'The idea that magnetism is a whirl of electricity is as old as Ampere. Perceiving that a magnet could be initiated by an electric whirl, he made the hypothesis that an electric whirl existed in every magnet.'"

Maxwell announced the proposition that electro-magnetic phenomena and light phenomena have their origin in the same medium and are identical in nature. Hertz, by actually producing, detecting and controlling electric waves, caused the discovery of wireless electricity. And it is by the wonderful wireless telegraphy of light that man is put in communication with every considerable body in the universe, including even the invisible. By it the goings on in Sirius and Algol, Orion and the Pleiades are reported across enormous stretches of millions of millions of miles of space. And by the vibratory motion of the invisibly small, all things are revealed; the infinitely little has enabled us to conquer the inconceivably big. I hold seeing and hearing are the simplest examples of wireless telegraphy.

Elihu Thomson, the great electrician, says: "Hertz proved that all luminous phenomena are in essence electrical. Wireless electricity is the outcome of Hertz's experiments on electric waves, and electrical conditions and actions are more fundamental than hitherto regarded."

William Ramsey, the distinguished chemist, says: "It is a primary assumption that atoms of elements or in certain cases groups of atoms are themselves electrified, and atoms possess positive and negative poles, and combinations ensue between such oppositely electrified bodies."

Mr. Francis Grierson, a prominent scientist of London, in a recent London periodical, says: "So far as we know electricity is the soul of visible form. What we call brain waves have an analogy to electric waves. The discoveries and inventions of the last ten years have made child's play of every previously known system of philosophy. The simple but amazing facts disclosed during the past five years, render the dreams, speculations and guesswork of the past absurd. The little we know in a practical way is more than all the philosophers of the past knew from Aristotle to Leibnitz."