Prof. Langley, in his address at the 1902 session of the American Association of Science, stated that, "up to 1872 it was almost universally believed that there were three different kinds of energy—actinic, luminous and thermal—represented in the spectrum;" but he affirmed: "There is only one radiant energy which appears to us as actinic, luminous or thermal, according to the way we observe it.
"Heat and light are not things in themselves, but different sensations in our bodies, or different effects in other bodies. They are merely effects of this mysterious thing we call radiant energy." He thus sustains my position and the electric theory of creation, which is, that there is but one universal and ultimate energy which he calls radiant and I call electric energy, and which are the same thing.
It is said that an Italian physicist wrote in 1843: "Light is merely a series of colorific indications, sensible to the organs of light, or vice versa; the radiations of obscure heat are veritable invisible radiations of light." This Langley, by his elaborate researches, more refined and complex than all preceding ones, proved to be true. Since so orthodox a scientist as Langley has proven there is but one energy, the other scientists may stumble over it awhile and then accept it, because he is high authority.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in the "Electrical World," of February 21st, 1903, sustains the electrical theory strongly. He says: "All matter is electrical in its nature. The difference between one kind of matter and another lies in the physical and chemical properties of the atoms; but the difference between the atoms is merely due to the difference of the electric grouping of the atoms."
He holds that the Thompson corpuscles are all electric. Thomson's theory is that negative electricity is matter. Lodge holds that all matter down to the ultimate corpuscle is electricity or electrical substance. Thus I am sustained by the highest most recent authority.
Prof. E. L. Larkin, of the California University, said recently: "The earth has a permanent charge of negative electricity, and the atmosphere is positive. The surface potential is therefore very near zero. This permits electro-magnetic waves from the sun to act with unabated energy." Prof. Lucien I. Blake of the Kansas University said in a recent lecture: "All atoms of matter are charged with electricity. All vital actions are always connected with electricity."
I could fill a volume with recent statements of scientists showing that electricity produces all the phenomena of nature, all of which they have learned in the last few years, while as a pioneer in this field of thought I have been trying to propagate these electrical theories for many years.
Every year new facts are discovered showing that electricity is the cosmic, evolving, ultimate and only force in nature and the universe is a vast electric machine or organism moved by electric currents of measureless force and power. The earth revolves around the sun, the sun gravitates around some siderial center in motion like itself, and myriads of suns and planets with their countless population move with many times the velocity of a cannon ball. Stars that seem tranquil and motionless in the heavens are projected through space with a velocity of one hundred to two hundred miles per second. The constituent atoms of our bodies move relatively with as much velocity as the stars in heaven. Motion—electric energy—reigns everywhere, forms everything, controls, handles and evolves all suns and planets, all physical life, substance and organisms in human experience and universal nature.
The electric rays of light from suns and stars of the most distant constellations dart their beams across the universe, and centuries after, the impulse of electric energy enters the human eye, and gives sense and vision to the soul. Thus the dynamic chains of electric light binds into living unity the realms of matter and mind, "through measureless amplitudes of space and time."
These electric currents are not only the source of all natural phenomena, but the sea of electro-magnetism from which they come is the reservoir of life, which stands back of all the myriad manifestations of physical existence, and is the great fountain of vitality from which all life must come.
What is electricity? Tesla says it is "invisible light," Atkins says it is "molecular motion," Fleming says it is "a spiral twist of the ether," but the best definition is given in the Scriptures where it says all things were made by the "word of His power." It is the word of creative power.
As the nebular hypothesis and gravitation explain nothing and show neither the primary elements nor the primary energy of the universe, we should go to the dual forces of electricity which do. As we have learned little more than a name from either, I think it is time to try another hypothesis. Walking single file in dead men's shoes for two hundred years is quite long enough.
I am willing to submit the following hypothesis as my conception of electrical creation and the true theory of the universe.
First—Creation was wrought out by the agency of electrical forces, operating on invisible elementary matter, controlled by the intellectual impulse of an infinite power.
Second—These creative cosmic forces, by condensing the suns and planets into vast magnets revolving in a sea of electro-magnetic forces, evolved the marvelous machinery of the universe.
Third—This machinery of the universe became self-propelling and self-sustaining by reason of the laws of motion, growth and evolution impressed upon it, or by the joint sovereignty of two equal, correlative forces: magnetism, a form of electricity maintains the sovereignty of attraction over matter in body, while electricity, another phase of the same force, maintains the sovereignty of repulsion over matter in space.
Fourth—For these reasons electricity is a universal power joining together the two kingdoms of the heavens and the earth—of matter in body and matter in space. And these forces in their unity of harmonious work can suffer no disturbance equal "to the dust in the balance."
Fifth—These floods of electricity and magnetism affect the least and the greatest, "directly as to mass, and inversely to the square of the distance."
Sixth—The sun and planets are vast magnets because they are held in charge of electro-magnetic forces in an immense magnetic field. These forces are not from these bodies originally, but these bodies are from these forces; and these forces antedate all forms of visible matter.
Seventh—The primary state of matter is the diffused etheric, invisible state, and the building of matter into body is the work of these forces when in charge of matter under organic affinities. Magnetic lines of force fix centres and build around such centres by drawing elemental matter from the radiant sea of space by magnetic energy, into globular forms that become growing worlds, drawing their power and increase of form from the sea of invisible matter in which they are fixed by their axis and orbit lines of motion and force, constituting them working electro-magnets.
Eighth—These electro-magnetic forces are the eternal cosmic forces of perpetual motion, ever working by the law of action and reaction, attraction and repulsion, and evolving world forms and animal and vegetable forms.
Ninth—The sun having grown from the sea of invisible etheric and nebulous matter by reason of these wonderful electro-magnetic forces into an immense magnet, larger than all the lesser magnets or planets of the solar system combined, holds them in the magnetic field of his sovereign power, and is, through the flowing currents of electricity, the creating, governing force in the solar system.
Tenth—These same electric forces are condensed into smaller magnets and electric organisms or machines, which form electric centres and build up all tangible forms of matter—human, animal and vegetable. And all visible matter is but the outer shell and visible garment of these invisible forces.
Eleventh—Without the floods of electric substance or power that come to us in the electric currents of the sun that flow in currents of strength through our bodies as they propel the inflowing and outflowing floods of atomic elements of matter, that are laden with incoming supplies of daily life and outgoing wastes, by attraction and repulsion, assimilation of food, respiration and perspiration, our bodily forms would perish or be wholly unfit for the dwelling-place of our spirits.
Twelfth—Our five senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling—that connect us with the world of matter are entirely dependent on electricity and the invisible etheric forms of matter that surround us everywhere and constitute the connecting ties, the invisible ligaments, that pervade and bind all forms of life in nature's wondrous harmony.
Thirteenth—The boundless fountain of infinite energy in atoms in body and atoms through measureless space are superior to any mere sun form or world form of visible expression of such energy. The floods of radiant electric energy that enwrap the sun and planets in orbital lines of omnipotent strength are to these bodies the everlasting fountains from which flow their upholding and evolving power and the conservation of force in their transforming energy.
Fourteenth—As all visible forms of matter are built from invisible elementary atoms, so the most efficient display of electric power finds its expression and source in the same elementary atoms. The electric power working in all atoms of matter gathered in planetary form, saturates such planetary bodies with electric energy, as the steel of the magnet is saturated with such forces, and reveals in the sun currents the source of all terrestrial power and organic life.
Fifteenth—The chemists claim to have discovered about seventy different elemental substances in matter, but they are not primary elementary substances; they are secondary, and caused by the marvelous electrical combinations of the two primary elements—atoms and electricity—and are what Herschel said they looked to be, "manufactured articles."
Sixteenth—The laws of magnetic attraction teach us that positive and negative polar forces, flowing oppositely between sun and earth, establish the bond of union between them, and the transmission of electric energy must be equal between them, and the flow through space at the low level of latent energy.
These two oppositely flowing floods of electric energy, under the great law of electro-magnetic attraction, pass through ninety-three million miles of radiant matter in eight minutes of time and enter the resisting atmosphere of sun and earth, their currents thrilling with energy at the high tension of opposite polarities beneath their atmospheric envelope. Thus the attraction known as gravitation, but which is electro-magnetism, pours a constant flood of light and heat upon both sun and planets, and thus the electric light and heat of the sun and planets evolved from their resisting atmosphere, and the contact of their positive and negative electricity, become creative potencies, deriving their vast power from each other, and from their environing space of virgin, imponderable matter, and thereby give life, motion and utility to all visible created things.
Thus we find that light, heat and vital force is created by the contact of the positive and negative electricity in the magnetic atmosphere of suns and worlds. That the electric affinities in matter proclaim an electric origin, and the invisible atom as the material basis of all material life; and by tracing their source to electrical and magnetic energy, we have reached the foundation upon which is built the eternal structures of the universe, and the bounds of all creation.
I contend that electrical creation confirms scientific evolution. In the beginning the elements assumed form when they came into such a state of electrical balance as enabled them to move in uniform order. The more perfect the order the more perfect the form. The crystal is fine proof of this, for when the elements composing it are all marshaled into perfect uniformity of action the crystal becomes a perfect structure well nigh indestructible. This principle of the crystalline formation of the elements is the basis of world building.
In a small volume entitled "Planetary Evolution," the learned author, who is too modest to give his name, says: "Atoms are absolute potentialities, creative rather than created conditions of the elements, and have the power of inherent energy or life motion. All tests show the atom remains the inscrutable source of creative power, and the basis of all chemical activity, and must be the basic principle of world building, life motion and life energy.
"In all the operations of chemical transmutations no material is lost and no power wasted, and, by the law of the conservation and correlation of force, both energy and material must exist as correlatives. This places the nature of matter upon the same basis as the origin of power. The transformation of force into material is impossible. Force follows the laws of motion, and atoms the law of form obedient to the lines of motion." This is well stated.
This author says further: "The atom has the power to assume form and create form, and matter and force cannot be transformed into each other." Then this power or force must come from electricity, the primary force in nature; and it has power to assume form and create form by reason of electric energy controlled by spirit intelligence. In planetary construction the first thing that meets our vision is the arrangement of the atoms in crystalline formation, which is the foundation of all planetary structure. The atoms in space continually change their relative positions and construct world forms and organic forms of beauty and power. They settle into globular spheres with all the precision of a trained army or a disciplined mass of life and energy, forming the crystalline masses that compose the primitive foundations of the earth.
Polarity has much to do with the phenomena of crystallization. The same author says: "Polarity is the result of the transverse lines in which the atoms move previous to their comparative arrest. The planet as a globe can have only two poles, but the crystal has as many as the lines of direction in which the moving atoms cross each other's path."
In interstellar space he affirms the atomic relations of the elements are undisturbed by any power that would tend to divert the atom from its movement in a straight line; force is transmitted from atom to atom without any effect upon its motion or change of equilibrium. The power of transfer is the basic principle of the electric current, and as long as the direction of the current lies in one of the lines of atomic motion the current passes without resistance and is imperceptible; but if it chances to meet in its pathway a line of force passing from atom to atom in a different direction, there is instantly a neutralization of motion and the arrest of each atom at the point of crossing which gives polarity, and the molecule is the result. In space the electric current is the first form of creative manifestations the atoms assume.
Electricity belongs to the atomic forces, has intimate relations with organic life, and gives us a key to unlock its mysteries. Electric energy plays such an important part in cosmic construction that without some knowledge of its nature it is impossible to explain the processes which are the basis of world building.
The crystal rock under microscopic examination shows the same beautiful figures and marvelous lines of arrangement that in winter the new fallen snow-flakes exhibit, and indicate that the lines of form are essentially the same that gave the planetary rock its forms of crystalline beauty and massive structure. And the beautiful snow that falls so gently upon the wintry lap of earth is one of the best representatives of creative power acting in the primitive states of formative forces. This tends to show that the earth began its formative period in extreme cold and not heat, for the formative lines of shape and force are the same in the crystal ice and crystalline snowflake as they are in the crystalline rocks of earth's primary foundations. And they all indicate the lines of electric energy and magnetic force in atomic activity and molecular formations, which are the beginning of all visible material creations.
The shaping of the molecules of the so-called cosmic elements by electric energy into crystalline form is the second great step in world building. While magnetism (the dual force of electricity) serves to hold the form-structure in more or less enduring relations, for the magnet has the power to radiate atomic force in circles and tends to draw the elements into form and hold them there. The electric force keeps the atoms always moving; the magnetic force keeps them or would keep them in atomic balance, or at rest, but electricity keeps magnetism always on the alert, and between the action of the two, or attraction and repulsion, all visible forms are evolved and dissolved.
Thus magnetism is the centripetal force, of planetary construction, and electricity the centrifugal power of planetary changes, and upon these two depend all the complex varieties of inorganic and organic forms that exist. And so long as they exist with their powers of atomic motion so long will world building and form building continue, and must continue through the æons of creative force.
The magnetic state of the earth, with the pulsating currents of electric force in the atomic and radiant form, plays a sovereign part in the economy of nature and makes the planet itself alive with creative force and evolving power.
To demonstrate electrical power in world building and the shifting relations of the elements in the planetary combinations, watch the electric plating battery at work. There you will see the atoms in the solution flowing towards the negative pole and depositing themselves in minute crystals upon the metallic surface, if the negative pole is a metal, and adhering with great pertinacity; the metallic crystals penetrate the crystalline surface of the substance to be plated in minute arms filling up the infinitesimal space, and the atoms in this process transfer their atomic motion in line with the electric force, and become arrested as in the primitive state when they formed the crystalline foundations of primitive earth. It will be found that the power or electric force required to plate one metal is just the same as to disintegrate it, and the electric force is a great solvent, while the magnetic force is a concentrating form-moulding world-building power. And these two forces evenly balanced perpetuate the universe. The fluidic condition of matter arises from molecular activity before the atoms have assumed the crystalline state, and all fluids are easily vaporized to invisible gases.
The primitive planet, in coming from nebula to crystalline form, had to pass through the fluidic state, because the electric atomic balance had not yet been acquired sufficient to produce solidity.
In this stage there could be no organic life; but the earth was enveloped in dense clouds of vapor, and there was no light for many ages, because the earth's surface was below the electric and atomic rate that produced light, and the dense gases and vapors floating around it and between it and the sun prevented the light penetrating its atmospheric pall of darkness.
But in that darkness and vapor and cosmic convulsions was going forward the processes of organic construction essential to fit it for the coming generations of sentient life. Night and darkness ruled, but chaos had no part, and never ruled in all the cycles of creative power. The direct currents of electric force and the circular currents of magnetic power swept through and through earth's molecular structure, ranging the atoms in all the lines of crystal perfection and spherical form, and laying the rock-ribbed foundations in geological stratas in the heart and center of a growing world.
The lines of electro-magnetic force at this period in the planet, with their circular spiral motion, would shape the world into a globular spherical form, and the elements in watery solution would almost come into crystalline firmness, and then an impulse of electrical power would throw them into restless agitation; and again they would respond to the grasp of magnetic strength and return to a state of partial arrest near the crystal condition, and again sway back to the electric primitive molecular state. But they could not get free from the lines of magnetic force which held them with giant grasp until they were incorporated into the foundation rocks of earth's solidifying sphere. And the centre of our planet became a vast solid crystalline magnet, and was never a fiery mist or molten substance.
Finally when the crystalline rocks were settled into a crystalline globe the life-cell was born as the basis of a new condition of planetary form. And in the dark waters where no light was, organic life under the law of creative electric energy began its work upon the planet. The life-cell is the resultant of electric-magnetic action.
During this period of primeval "darkness upon the face of the earth," the resistless electric waves of the sun were beating upon the cloud-enwrapped surface of the planet, but its light had no power to penetrate its cimmerian gloom. And the earth was sending back its pulsating magnetic currents to the sun, and both were evolving themselves into giant dynamos of marvelous electric power—giving and receiving electric currents of positive and negative polarity of wonderful life-giving potency. Gradually the earth solidified into a vast magnet of crystalline rock and metal and like the magnetic core of a steel magnet of vast extent and power, it drew millions of meteors from space.
The internal electric forces in volcanic convulsions were upheaving islands, continents and mountain ranges, rending the rocks and crystalline strata in the contracting crust of the earth, amid lightning flashes and resounding crashes of thunder, like the fabled Titans in primeval battle. It was a contest of the giant forces in their elemental power baptizing a world in the fires of creative and creating energy. The planet was shaken by magnetic force and torn and agitated by electric storms. Gigantic boulders were dislodged from the surface and ground into powder against each other, making soil for coming vegetation and marking out the pathway of the rivers and valleys. It was the adjustment of elemental forces, the night of ages in whose depths and womb of viewless power conscious life originated by electric energy under the evolving law of evolution as the will of Creative Deity. And the mountain ranges following the lines of axial direction of the two poles upon opposite sides of the planet began to slowly rise above the surrounding waters, and lifted their mighty crests above a world floating in surging waters, and darkness, except as it was lit up by lightning gleams of electric power. It may be that during this stage of the planet was laid the foundation of all the distinctive types of life-force, including the cell forms that lay at the basis of living structure, the plant forms and the living forms of animalcular life that float in the ocean below and mists above. All of which had their home and birth in the dense darkness that covered the face of the deep.
It was the formative period of elementary life, and the descendants and successors of that mighty host of living beings have to this day to lay the foundations of their being in similar conditions of darkness. Creative energy in its first stages of living form operates in dense darkness, and the first life upon the planet began and perfected itself in the age when midnight gloom enveloped the globe. "The Supreme Power," says the author of "Planetary Evolution," "wrought out its purpose with no eye to discern its workings and no helpless ignorance to dictate what was needed to make a world." The deep-sea soundings show that life still exists there without the aid of sunlight and that there is no limit to the domain of organic life. And the necessity exists even at this age for darkness during the formative processes of embryonic life.
All microscopic life embodies the essential characteristics of activity and form that distinguish many of the distinct types of animal and vegetable life. The mould that gathers upon decaying bread is a great forest when sufficiently magnified. The wiggling animalculæ in the stagnant water is but a prototype of the writhing serpent of the Brazilian forest. In these two types of minute organic being we see the first stages of life in planetary formation. And the induced electric energy on the animalculine organism compelled it to both growth and activity, and, obedient to that principle, it added cell to cell in any direction that that electric energy in that form sought relief, thus producing different types of organic structure. The influence of the pent-up currents of electric energy was destined to have a moulding power upon the higher types of organic life, for their influence upon the living form soon became manifest in the construction of nerve-tissue, which is the basis of all animal structure, and the beginning of all embryotic form, and is essentially the same in all organic life.
All attempts of science to formulate a theory of the source of life end in an abstraction. To teach that life originates in a germ leads to an analysis that shows the germ is a compound form itself, and one of the stages of incipient life. The advocate of the cell as the primitive source of life soon discovers that the cell is the result of chemical forces that have not yet arrived at the germ state, and that both the germ and the cell are but successive stages of life development, and we must go further back into the realm of the invisible electro-magnetic forces for the true source of physical life. Here the untrained intellect is bewildered and is unable to discern any relation of force beyond the physical senses, and science and reasoning causation must explore the invisible realities, and realms of force beyond the physical senses, which requires the highest order of mental training. It is in the mental realm, the realm of spirit and electricity, that we must seek the solution of all the higher problems of life and destiny.
In the spermatozoa of the male is the first evolution of the organic life of the planet. It is the electro-chemical combination of elements in which the primitive cell was formed, and in nature's corresponding environment it goes steadily forward through all previous stages until perfected in form, and becomes a miniature production of its parent structure. It thus unconsciously followed the forces and elements of the parent organism whereby that parent organism came into being from its parent, and so on backward for generations and ages. And in order to perfect the power of sex to the highest degree and preserve the life of the race, there was a differentiation in the embryonic state, whereby one organism, the male, became the power to preserve the energy, while the other, the female, became the environment to perfect the form.
This was no miracle, but a response of the organism to the waves of electric power in the planet, which at times and conditions would be more positive or negative in their electric energy. For all the elements of life and the universe animate and inanimate are sexual, male or female, positive or negative, in their natural relations.
The higher types of life are almost wholly dependent upon the arrangement of the cells on a high electric tension, and the early forms were almost wholly of nerve-tissue structures, and the primitive animalculæ followed the law of differentiation and were able to construct muscular fiber and bone formation, and became the fish and reptiles that inhabited the ancient seas.
The processes of planetary formation are resultants of electrical action among the elements that form the planet, and here is the true field of scientific research for the knowledge of causation as expressed through world construction. To the chemist and electrician belong the task of explaining the processes of world building as well as the secrets of life itself, and they must be found in the laws that control the electro-magnetic ether that permeates all atoms and space.
In the paleozoic age there were surging tides of electric energy through the planet itself, producing induced currents in all the forming bodies upon its surface. And these primitive currents swept the cell-formations into lines parallel with their lines of force the same as crystallizations, and as they were floating in circumambient water, the cells took the form of tissue structure, forming organs that followed the crystalline law of self preservation, and, in response to changing electric currents, throwing out new cell-structures.
Nerve tissue is the highest form of atomic balance that is visible, and the true basis of form structure that has vitality to meet the shifting electric currents. The tiny cells joined themselves to form new structures to respond to the electric waves, while the lower magnetic induction of the planet sent its power over the new tissue to hold it in form so that the organism could be partially permanent in form in its new environment. In this manner the organism grew and expanded from the primitive animalcular nerve type to the consolidated, firm tissue that enabled it to hold itself from dissolution under adverse conditions and planetary changes. The action of electric force in building secondary forms with a magnetism of their own is one of the most wonderful exhibitions of nature.
And now comes a startling result of this type of energy that has called living organism into being from the lower grades of atomic life. The cells that have formed themselves around a central point, as in the crystalline state, begin to quiver and vibrate with a strong rapidity that defies all power of restraint. In them is to be seen a new relation of the elements that grade still higher in the scale of atomic action. They have risen in the power of sensitiveness above the plane of receptive response to the swaying currents of the earth, and begin to send out currents of their own. Those currents penetrate the whole system with strange energy, and the organism begins to respond with new expressions of power. It moves with reference to the currents that it creates itself, and we have the first type of creation with a brain center governing the whole system.
That brain tissue is the result of the action indirect of the electric energy that is sweeping the planet in ceaseless lines of force and power. It sends its induced currents upon all the forming host of animalcular life floating in the dark waters, and some begin to grow brains.
The cellular structure ranges itself in line with the positive and negative polarity that made the crystalline form of the world a globe, and from that living cell-battery go out the currents that control the form by the inward force that ever after is to witness to the power of constructive energy to create living beings with sentient power to regulate and control their own destiny.
Meanwhile the surging tides of electric energy are forcing the continents upward, and the fish that swim in the paleozoic seas find the waters receding and himself part of the time on the land or in the mud and shallows, and the growing organism, from generation to generation becomes adapted to each condition of life on land and water. Then comes to pass the raising of the organism from the fish to the reptile by the influence of electrical induction and change of environment. Then also comes the growth of plant life, and the marvelous varieties of vegetation in the form of tree and shrub and grass. Upon the land, half submerged, the vegetation that had its rootlets in the former ocean bed grew from sea weeds into rank grasses and ferns, the types of which are seen to this day in the dense forests and jungles of the tropics.
In the early period of the paleozoic age the molusks, polyps, and marine plants were evolved without any reference to light whatever and depended on the sense of feeling to provide for the necessary food supplies to maintain their organism.
We have in the night-blooming cereus a flower that belonged in that epoch of the world's evolution when plants flowered and perfected their seed bearing in the dark. And in the salamander, beaver and hippopotamus a type of the amphibious animals of the early ages. We have in the bat a type of animal that flourished in the darkness of earth's formative period, and in the embryonic period of animal and man we find the beginning of the life processes in the darkness of the womb, and all seed of vegetable and plant must be buried in the darkness of earth before it can bring forth new life.
Every living structure on the planet takes form by the laws of nature's creative processes; and the secret unfolding of life structure to-day, however perfect at maturity, is a complete record of all the previous stages of formative growth in animal life, from the vertebra of the fish to the contour of the mammal and the man, condensed as to time during the period of gestation, but following the original lines of formative structure, power and principle.
This and all growth and evolution is the result of electrical energy under divine law and spiritual control. Electrical power is the great agent in arranging molecular compounds into all forms of animal and plant life as well as crystalline structures and world forms. The duplicates of plant life with the secondary crystalline forms are found in limestone caverns of the earth. There, in the dense stillness of eternal night, many forms that are seen above ground as plants and flowers are there wrought out in solid stone, as the crystalline limestone rock has arranged its molecular structure obedient to the same lines of form as the electric currents in the upper atmosphere follow in vegetable life.
Thus in the eternal nature of the atom and electric energy with their inherent potencies the Creator has abundant resources not only to make this planet, but also the countless worlds of boundless space. And in the wonders of electrical potency in this planet alone He is constantly producing results that excite profound gratitude and reverence. At length when the clouds of darkness faded away and the atmosphere became translucent, and the glorious light of the sun—the great electric heart of our system of worlds—shone upon the earth, there was a new realm of infinite life and expression to lift the world and all organic life to a higher state of perfection.
While the world, like an enormous battery, had in itself enough energy to hold the planet in its spherical form and to stimulate to activity the secondary forms of life, had not the sun come into more vigorous activity with its electric life-giving energy the earth could not have gone above the primitive forms of life. With this greater influx of power from another sphere of causative energy, the dark age of animality passed and the monstrous types faded out, and in the place of them the world began to bear a class of beings that could reflect the power and principles of light and beauty. And under the pulsations of the sun's electrical and magnetic energy the earth started on its marvelous career of organic growth and development.
The sun, as an immense electrical reservoir battery, must radiate in all directions its electric vibratory power over the surging elements in its own environment and from thence through electric atomic transfer to bodies in space. So that whenever a body was in direct line with the magnetic centers of the sun, the arrest of the electric current and atomic motion coming from the sun's center by another magnetic center, as the earth or any other planet, would instantly change the rate of the environment of the planet magnet to a grade of intensity that would give light and heat. In this manner light, heat and greater vital force was born upon the earth, when its dark clouds lifted and its atmosphere became translucent, so that the sun's electric currents could affect the earth through electric transfer. Thus the influx of external light upon planetary life was positive and marvelous, introducing a new power upon the forming organic life in the vegetable and animal world, and working great changes in all organic structures. And in response to this new power the eye began to form and a new and distinct organ of sense was perfected. It was slowly developed at first, for the light radiated from the sun penetrated the mists of earth dimly, for it was almost midnight gloom in some sections and dusky twilight in others.
So far I have said nothing of excessive heat, for the earth began in excessive cold. But as the earth magnet or dynamo increased its electric power it increased its heat.
We now come to the dawn of instinct or rationality in the primitive types of life. There we find a basis for the first principles of instinct or animal rationality in the balancing of one sense by the exercise of another, and the combined results of the two. Seeing and feeling gave a higher type of brain power, and raised that organ to a higher grade of perception and a newer type of intelligence.
Then another faculty added its powers to the sense of sight and feeling, for the atmosphere in which the reptilian tribes were living half the time or more were sending out sound waves which touched the nervous filaments of the central battery of the brain, and as the eye had formed to respond to the waves of ether caused by the electric currents of the sun, so a new organ began its formation in response to the incoming waves of power the atmosphere brought to the brain-cells, and the ear began to gather in concentric circles around the brain-center, and a new sense—that of hearing—was formed. Thus there was an additional increase of the power of perception or instinct. Thus were evolved all types of animal form and animal instinct. They were the result of electric energy, sense perception, and long ages of growth, comparison and environment.
Then came man, the highest type of animal organism. Man may have passed the successive changes and transmutations of form that the shifting vibratory rates of the planet responded to in the long period of world building. He may have attained to the grade of animal activity as a mind of the highest order in bodily form before he received the spiritual powers and intellectual force which he has exhibited all along the ages, after all animal forms had battled with the elements in the struggles to keep in equilibrium between the surging tides of electrical dispersion and magnetic concentration. Certain it is man holds his own by virtue of his steady rise in mental power which has no limit of evolution in the present stage of physical life and psychic life. And there are no known boundaries of his power to penetrate all mysteries and explore all conditions of existence "wherever being has laid foundations, or law is working out the problems of infinite destiny." Man came as a spiritual creation.
Many scientists discard the religious or Mosaic concept of a special creation of man and a divine revelation, and hold that the revelations of science are the only revelations of God that the world can regard as reliable.
I cannot agree with them that man was evolved from the animal creation. I hold he was a special creation, as Moses says he was; but that special creation was not his body—that may have been evolved from the lowest forms of animal life through many ages, and is no part of the real man. It was woven by electric law and energy as an overcoat of atoms for his earthly habitation. Man's body is not man, but the house in which he lives for a time, the earthly temple of the soul. Moses affirms this when he says "God breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul." It is the breath of God, the atom of Deity, the living soul that constitutes man, and that was a special creation. This I have discussed at length in "Invisible Light." I hold no law of evolution could bridge the gulf between man and the animal creation. The fixity of brute instinct, and the boundless expansion of mental and psychic force in man forbid such a conclusion and confirm Moses, who says he was made lord over the earth and all animal creations. Man has three bodies—a spiritual, an electric and a physical body. Animals have only two—an electric and physical body. And both the electric and physical bodies of men and animals came from the same source and are governed by the same laws. Animal instinct is not spirit, is not a part of Deity, it cannot dream of God or heaven, or comprehend the universe or weigh suns and worlds.
It knows only the electric impulses of the material senses and reasons from these alone, and, by balancing one sense by another, attains an experience which in time becomes an automatic habit or force of nature under the law of its electric organism. It feels all sensations, like hunger, passion or fear, as an electric impulse on the sensitive tissues of the brain and responds from natural habit. It does not think, reason or soar into the boundless fields of ideality. It cannot feel the spiritual touch of human souls, or the divine impulse of God and love, of music, poetry, language, art and religion, as does the human soul.
Man is as much above the animal creation as the animal is above the vegetable and the vegetable above the mineral.
We have seen that the mineral is created by aggregations of atoms solidified under the law of magnetic attraction and brought to rest by balanced forces into crystalline form, and thus incorporated into the foundation elements of the earth magnet. They are simply electric and atomic forces and atoms balanced and at rest. They have no organic existence. Vegetable life, which is next above them, have organisms, and are sun engines breathing in nitrogen and giving out carbonic acid or oxygen to sustain animal life. The vegetable organism furnishes food for all animal life.
There can be no evolution of plant life into animal life. It is not scientific to search for such an irrational order of development. Vegetable, plant and tree in their organic life structure, never become animals. They have no independent existence separate from the sun's rays and the earth's soil except as latent in seed life. Cut off the sun currents from their leaves and the electric earth currents from their roots, and they are at once weakened and destroyed.
Animals are a higher order of life which have an independent existence in atmosphere and water—electric elements—separate from earth dust, and which evolve and give forth in their own organism the electric instinct and impulse which controls their own actions and habits.
They have no psychic or intellectual force, and can never be evolved into human souls or organisms. Man is as far above the animal creation as the heavens are above the earth. He is not the descendant of a monkey or any other animal creature except possibly in his bodily organism. He is a soul and belongs to the Spiritual Kingdom of God.
The scientists say there are three kingdoms in nature—mineral, vegetable and animal. I say there are four—mineral, vegetable, animal and man, or the spiritual Kingdom of God. Man is a soul or spiritual body which is from God and a part of God. He can think, reason, aspire, analyze, and soar into the psychic realms of the spiritual world and commune with angels and Deity, and is a spirit monarch of the universe.
And his longing, heaven-bound nature cries out to Deity: "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our souls are restless till we rest in thee!"
The vegetable has the elements of the mineral, with a material organism added; the animal has the elements of the mineral and vegetable with a material organism and an electric body and instinct added. The animal may possibly live hereafter in his electric body or secondary form. Man has the elements of the mineral and vegetable, the material body and the electric body of the animal, and added to all these he has a psychic or spiritual body, which links him to Deity, and makes him the epitome of all creation, the child of God and the universe, and the sovereign of eternal life, love and destiny.
The recent discovery of a man's skull at Lansing, Kansas, found sixty feet below the earth's surface, under many stratas of rock formation in the ooze at the bottom of a sea that existed in the glacial period, shows a cranial or brain development equal to the average man of the present day. This skull, estimated by scientists to be from thirty to forty thousand years old, with such a splendid head formation, shows conclusively that man was never evolved from the animal creation, but is a separate and superior being above the animal, and lord over all the animal creation.
This Lansing skull is one of the greatest discoveries of the age and confirms man's high lineage and ancient residence on this revolving planet, and supports Moses and the Bible.
Also the recent discoveries in the ruins of Ninevah, Babylon, Nipur, and other ancient cities of Asia Minor, and also in Egypt, reveal written leases and other documents eight thousand years old, which show that man has possessed superior knowledge and intelligence from the earliest periods of the world's history, and tend to support the biblical theory that man was a special creation, and not an evolution in his psychic nature from the lower animals.
Man and human history, while complicating, does not alter the real force and nature of evolution. While it is said "the history of the world is the biography of great men," yet if Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, Frederick the Great, William the Conqueror and other great men were eliminated, it would have had little effect in disturbing the steady onward course of the world's development.
Great men are the images, symbols and instruments taken at random by the constant and mighty forces of their age and times which stood behind them and swept them onward in their great careers. They were the pens of Fate used in her writing, the weather vanes of destiny which turned the way the currents and tides of invisible forces were blowing.
Humanity of the past and present is not final but progressive. Man's marvelous discoveries in science, his aesthetic culture and spiritual growth makes the future of the race the most persistently fascinating question of the age.
Man is not a mere animal, but is one with Deity, and a part of that unseen spiritual power which directs the stars in their infinite courses, gives electric brilliancy to the all-dazzling sun, paints the dawn and the aurora, colors the gorgeous wings of the butterfly, and guides insensate matter to do the will of Omnipotence.
My claim that man is an electric organism is confirmed by Professor Loeb and Dr. Mathews in their recent experiments at the Chicago University.
"Electrical charges in the atoms of the bodily tissue are responsible for all the active phenomena of life. In other words, electricity is the basis of life." This is the sweeping conclusion with which Dr. Jacques Loeb amazed the physiologists gathered in their last annual meeting at the Chicago University.
Hitherto it has been taken for granted by men of science that the food we eat nourishes us by furnishing the tissues and muscles of the body with thermo or heat energy. This, according to Professor Loeb, is totally wrong. Instead of the food furnishing the muscle with heat energy, it supplies electrical energy, which, after being converted into mechanical energy, is responsible for all the muscular contractions and organic processes of living organisms.
He has arrived at this conclusion after many years of intricate and difficult experiments along the line of reproduction of animals, of determining the effect of salt on the heart-beat and its rythmic motion, and on other muscles, and of the destructive processes at work in the eggs of simple unicellar animals. They have been the means of determining the answer to the one great question, "What is life?" and he regards all his previous discoveries subsidiary to this one. He received his first hint of this new theory of life through the fact that electricity is able to affect protoplasm in a more universal and effective way than any other form of stimulus. And he drew the inference that if electricity is able to affect protoplasm in the form of currents, it ought to do so in the form of ions, which is an electrically charged atom or group of atoms.
In experimenting to determine the toxic and antitoxic of ions on protoplasm, which is the basic substance of all physical life, he discovered that any one salt will act as a poison on the eggs of a sea urchin, but by adding one or more, or certain other salts, he found it was able to counteract the effects of this toxic effect. From which he concluded that the toxic and antitoxic effect of the salts were due to the manner in which its atoms are electrically charged.
He found that when a salt whose atoms are positively charged come in contact with the eggs of the sea urchin, they interfered with the life processes, while salts whose atoms were negatively charged stimulate contraction; and the presence of both positively and negatively charged atoms were necessary, and the phenomena of life is due to the play between the different charges of electricity in the molecules. The energy of foodstuffs and motions of the heart and other muscles of the body are not due to the production of heat, but to the chemical energy in electrically charged molecules.
He says: "A part of the chemical energy of foodstuffs is transformed into electric energy, which gives energy to the body. In one experiment I put a jelly-fish in contact with a solution of electrically charged substances, and it immediately responded by muscular contraction. I then put it in a substance that was a non-conductor and there was no response. In this way I concluded it was the electric charges which effected the muscular contraction, that a pure salt always acts as a poison to the egg, and in order not to have toxic effects it is necessary that the positive and negative electric charges should easily balance. A muscle is stimulated by electro-negatively charged particles, and prevented from contracting by electro-positively charged particles.
"I have experimented with eggs of different low forms of animal life, with single protoplasmic cells, and with muscles. Professor Mathews has shown that my results hold true for nerves. I took the eggs of the fundulus and found that after they were fertilized they will develop in sea water.
"In a sodium-chloride solution I found they will not develop, but by adding a trace of calcium as many eggs will develop as in the sea water. This is due to the electrically charged atoms of the calcium. Artificial parthenogenesis, or life artificially produced, has been of interest only as it leads me to learn how the electric charges of ions affect life phenomena. You can bring about parthenogenesis only by positive ions. I have come to two conclusions: First, rythmical contraction occurs only in the presence of electrically charged substances. Second, the efficiency of the charges depends upon the number of the charges or the different ions. Professor Mathews has arrived at a third conclusion, which is, that the negatively charged ions are those which stimulate, and the positively charged ions are those which hinder contraction."
Dr. Loeb's paper created a sensation among the assembled scientists, as also did that of Professor A. P. Mathews, on "The Nature of the Nerve Stimulation and Alteration of Irritability." "Dr. Loeb's discoveries have revolutionized the basic principles of physiology," declared one of the scientists. "A greater part of the text-books on this subject will have to be rewritten to accord with the results of these new views of life phenomena." And Dr. G. N. Stewart, who presided at the meeting, eulogized Dr. Loeb and said, "He has given us an insight into the mechanics of living tissue which we never before have had. He has brought forward the science of electro-physiology, which has hitherto been despised, but which will now be accorded a respectable position."
Professor Garrett P. Serviss says: "This discovery of Dr. Loeb and Prof. Mathews comes closer to the solution of the mystery of life than physiologists have ever before been able to approach, and is so fundamental and far reaching as to warrant the hope that we shall soon know what are the conditions and the limits of man's power to prolong his own life.
"The whole foundation of physiology and medicine may be reconstructed, and we may find that we possess a control over the phenomena of life more masterful than anybody has yet dared to dream. Briefly, it has been discovered that our nerves consist of what is called a colloidal solution—that is, matter resembling gelatin held in solution in water before it is jellied, and these colloidal particles in the nerves carry charges of positive electricity. When the nerve particles pass from the colloidal condition into the state of gelation, or become jellied, the nerve experiences a stimulation or becomes active. This is produced by the action of atoms or ions bearing charges of negative electricity.
"This explains the action of certain chemical substances when introduced into the human body, some of which tend to quiet the nerves and others to excite them. The nerve-quieting ions are those that bear charges of positive electricity, such as atoms of sodium, potassium, calcium and hydrogen, and tend to keep the colloidal particles of the nerves in a state of solution, so that the nerves remain inactive. The nerve-stimulating ions are atoms of such substances as fluorine and chlorine, which carry charges of negative electricity and cause the nerve particles to coalesce or become jellied, in which condition the nerve is active, the degree of activity depending upon the intensity of the stimulation. Death appears to be the result of the stagnation of the nerves, and this discovery may enable us to oppose the process that ends in death."
This throws a flood of light on other obscure problems, and offers an explanation of the effect of anaesthetics upon the human body. Anything that tends to keep the nerve particles in a state of solution quiets the nerves. Now, nerve particles are largely composed of fat, and anaesthetics dissolve fat. Hence anaesthetics produce the effect of positively electrified ions, preventing the nerve particles from coalescing and thus quiets the nerves. The action of whiskey in arresting the progress of snake poison is explained. The alcohol counteracts the coagulating tendency and keeps the nerves in a colloidal condition. It explains many other familiar facts, as why heat tends to quiet the nerves, and that chemical stimulation is identical with electrical stimulation, and solves the long standing puzzle of muscular contractility.
Dr. H. Preston Pratt, an eminent electro-therapeutic expert, says: "Dr. Loeb's experiments have demonstrated that electricity is life—that the entire human organism is controlled by electrical forces. The twentieth century will prove electricity and not salt is the real life-giving principle.
"If this force is taken away, life ends, and, in the same manner, if this force is supplied the result is the immediate stimulation of the organic life.
"The necessary elements of life are taken into the body through the air and food, and the entrance of the essential elements into the blood sets the human battery into operation, and it continues to operate as long as the electrical forces are supplied to the blood. The human body is of elements the same as a magnet and is built of smaller magnets or molecules." This I have contended for many years. He continued: "To show the connection between human life and electricity, take an ordinary battery of chloride of ammonia or salammoniac and study its workings. You will see that by the introduction of the element zinc the electrical current is found. The zinc is of positive polarity and so is the ammonia, while the chloride is electro-negative.
"The electro-positive zinc has greater electric affinity for the chlorine than the ammonia has, and consequently the ammonia is driven off and combined with chlorine, forming chloride of zinc. The result is the difference of an electric pull between the elements.
"All admit that the force of elements forms a part of the anatomic structure, and there must be electricity. When oxygen is taken into a body it excites the elements in the same manner as the negative chlorine attacks the zinc in the battery. The electrical circuit of the body is the circulating blood, and when the oxygen and the nitrogen are taken in through the lungs the electro-negative ions go in one direction. Sulphur and oxygen are electro-negative and the other elements of the blood are electro-positive; and consequently, when the nitrogen and oxygen of the air attack the blood through the medium of the air cells, we find that oxygen and sulphur pass in one direction, while the other elements which are electro-positive pass in the opposite direction. This action is electrolytic the same as if we apply a battery to the human body."
All this accords with my theory of electrical creation, and proves, as I have contended for many years, that man's body as well as the universe is an electric organism.
In my book "The New Cosmogony," published about five years previous to these discoveries, I laid down the broad proposition that nature or the Creator has never made but one pattern or type of a thing that exists, and that is the electro-magnetic. That suns and worlds, man and all animal and vegetable organisms, are electro-magnets. That electricity was physical life, and digestion and assimilation of food were purely electrical processes; while the five senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling—were all electrical manifestations, seeing and hearing being a form of wireless telegraphy.
That the electric combination of positive and negative atoms weaves the visible structure that envelops the soul. The electric elements from the lungs and stomach enter into the blood, and set the human battery in organic operation and create and continue human life. Thus the beginning of life is an electric process, and the source of life is augmented and continued by absorbing electric energy from the air we breath, from the food we eat and water we drink, and not by the so-called thermal or heat digestive process, but in the same way as we extract electricity from coal and wood—by a species of electric transformation or combustion, like feeding a flame from the oxygen of the atmosphere.
The body is not only an electric machine or organism, but the exercise of every function is an electric process. And the derangement of any function, which we call sickness or disease, is an electric derangement. Prof. Loeb and Dr. Mathews have shown how the body is woven of positive and negative atoms.
Prof. Lucian I. Blake, of the Kansas University, in his lecture, "Atoms and Their Electric Charges," shows how medicine affects the human body and how life could be started in an unfertilized egg by inserting an electric current. This was done by placing the white of the egg in a vessel containing salt, calcium and water, and turning an electric current into it. Life in this way can be raised to the fourth stage, he says.
Another interesting experiment was a comparison of the effect of electrical charges on the ferments of human blood, yeast, plant and platinum. The ferments mixed with water were placed in separate vessels, when the ions of each began to move about, causing bubbles to go to the top of the vessels. Ether was placed in the different vessels, and then a few drops of hydrocyanic acid, a deadly poison, were added. The ether, by having an opposite electrical effect to that of the acid, neutralized its effect.
So, in the case of all poisons, if it be known whether the electrical effect is negative or positive to that of the blood ions, an ion producing an opposite electrical effect will counteract the poison. Prof. Blake says: "The reason ether prevents the pain of operations is because it stops the coagulation of the nerves. All atoms of matter are charged with electricity. All vital actions are always connected with electricity. All drug effects are brought about by electrical charges made with the meetings of the ions in the blood and those in the medicine."
How strongly does Prof. Blake sustain my theory when he says, "All atoms of matter are charged with electricity. All vital actions are always connected with electricity." He also shows how medicines affect the human body, how antidotes neutralize poison, why stimulants arouse electrical energy, and how narcotics stupify and deaden it.
Electricity, I contend, is the active, energetic and all-pervading ultimate force in nature, controlled by the still more refined and ultimate spiritual force. It is the medium and ever-active agent in evoking all visible forms and substances; the medium which produces all affinities and repulsions in matter, gyrating from the lowest to the highest elements and from globe to globe, and constitutes the invisible controlling element whose results are known as laws. Electricity is the guardian and executive of the invisible laws of nature. It is the suspension bridge spanning the darkness and chaos of space between suns and worlds.
Man is the product of the perfect unfolding of nature's invisible electric laws, and aggregate atomic elements; and unites within himself all the elements and forces of the combined and harmonious universe. He is an epitome of the universe and an atom of deity. His form, like all visible forms, is only the temporal combination of material substances woven by invisible electric force out of invisible ether. The thoughts of man's mind are the governing force of his organism. The thoughts of the Great Creative Mind constitute the laws of nature and the controlling force in the electric organism of the universe. Man is a Soul clad in air.
The results of these thoughts of deity are the vast expanse of the universe and varied forms of animate and inanimate nature; just as the result of man's thoughts are the varied structures, temples and works of art, constructed by him upon the surface of the earth. All things man creates are the representatives of his thought, the outward expression of his soul. He creates nothing but what is a living evidence of his previous thought or concept. All things tangible are the living evidence of a soul—the invisible soul or spirit of deity and man. All material things are the forms of God's thoughts or man's thoughts, which is the interior cause, producing tangible effects. For the natural world is the spiritual unfoldment made manifest in matter by electric energy. But I must not consume space by a repetition of these things. What the world wants is the truth, and we are discovering it at a very rapid rate. And if these theories are not the truth they are nearer to it than nine-tenths of the accepted truths of science.
The ancients knew little about their bodies, or the mysterious operations of physical life. They looked only at effects and the outside of things, and knew nothing of the invisible forces of nature. They regarded all the mysteries they could not understand as supernatural, as outside of nature, and produced by demons, wizards, necromancers, or their imaginary gods.
Their knowledge of their bodies was as limited as their knowledge of the universe, which they regarded as a little span of flat earth and bending sky; and they relied on incantations and prayers to restore the sick, and on the flight of birds and the entrails of beasts to reveal the mysteries of the future. They believed in obsession and deemed all sick, insane and diseased persons as possessed of demon spirits or devils, and their restoration to health or their right minds was called "the casting out of devils."
The ancients also believed every evil propensity was the prompting of some demon spirit that possessed the human body, and that there was as many devils as there were evil propensities. Mary Magdalene was possessed of seven devils, and the man who had more evil propensities than they could enumerate was said to possess a "legion of devils."
But the world is fast outgrowing the ignorance and superstition of the past and this is a fortunate and happy age in which to live. This is pre-eminently the age of electricity—of mind and invisible forces—as the past century was an age of matter. The whole world is feeling the electric thrill of a new life. New voices call us, new inspirations are in the air, new thoughts crowd upon the thinking mind. The reasoning soul catches whispers from the stars and celestial benedictions from the radiance of the sun. Man is a heaven-bound spirit in an electric body woven of dust and air, of infinite ether and eternal atoms, sifted through boundless space, and tossed from suns to worlds; and he is climbing to loftier spiritual heights and a diviner atmosphere.
The great men of the past had false ideals. They were the ambitious conquerors, who despoiled their own race and deluged the world in blood. Their thrones were built on pyramids of human skulls swimming in a sea of human blood and tears. Their triumphal march was heralded by the clanking chains of miserable captives, and the wailing cries of widows and orphans. For many ages human slavery, grinding poverty and abject misery were the common heritage of the despoiled masses who lived in hovels, were made food for cannon, or were sold into bondage for debt, while a few fortunate rulers reveled in luxury and swayed despotic power. Up to the recent centuries the chief vocations of men were the soldier and the priest—the one for slaughter and the other to appease the gods.
But the evolving ages have changed the ideals of the world, and liberty and justice are no longer a dream; but "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." The time is near at hand when the ideals of men will be so exalted and their consciences so alive to the demands of love and justice that no man of wealth can sleep in his luxurious home or feast on choice viands and know of any human creature or dumb animal suffering from cold and want without first ministering to their needs. This is the law of love written in every enlightened heart, as it is written in the books of the New Testament.
Men are beginning to learn that the greatest thing in this world is not wealth, with its pomp and pride, though it may bring a thousand comforts. It is not religion, with its glorious dreams crowned with the promised beatitudes of heaven, though martyred saints and prophets have given their lives to confirm its faith and hopes. It is not literature, with its gems of thought and flowers of divine fancy, which have charmed and inspired mankind from the days of Homer to those of Shakespeare and Tennyson. It is not science, with "learning's ample page," though she has transformed the earth, and produced a Gallileo and a Newton. It is not the wonders of mechanical genius, though we stand in awe before their marvels of grandeur and utility. It is not the beauty of inspiring art that lifts us to the altitudes of aesthetic joy. These are but the ideals and manifestations of that which is higher and greater, which is written in the soul of man as in a book.
Man is the greatest thing in this world—ah! in the universe next to Deity. He is the offspring of Omnipotence, the Child of the Sun, the inheritor of the universe. All suns and worlds, all life and space are the playgrounds of his activities. He shall dwell in the home of Deity, stroll in the garden of the gods, bask in the radiance of central suns, recline on the daffodil meadows and wander in the elysian fields of paradise. He is at home in the measureless expanse of all ether and space.
Wherever an atom vibrates or an electric current thrills, there he is the monarch of spiritual power, and can command the electric force that tosses suns upon their course and plays football with the stars. Man is no worm of the dust, he is the darling of the skies, the ruler of suns, the cherubim of celestial destiny clad in terrestrial ether and winged with the spiritual power of Omnipotence.