Kitabı oku: «The Universe a Vast Electric Organism», sayfa 15

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

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

The world moves; knowledge increases, and science is gradually broadening her conception of the harmony and endurance of the universe. The theory of dead matter and blind force has been relegated to the obsolete and discarded past, and been replaced by the recognition of ever-present life and infinite grades of consciousness.

The vast and varied factors in nature's problems of eternal destiny point to our sun and earth as a present existing and unending reality. Nature builds up, tears down, and reproduces her organic forms on the surface of planetary globes, but she does not destroy her great sun magnets and world magnets in the same manner, as many of our scientists think. There is a great difference in the powers and functions of suns and planets and the creeping things on their surfaces. Suns and planets, after they have attained their matured and balanced powers, are immortal, and creating, enduring and perfected organisms; and, like man in his immortal spirit, they have attained to eternal life, and neither death nor ruin can ever come near them. Suns and worlds in their electric energy have the powers of creation, and as the creator is always superior to the created, they should not be judged alike. Therefore the changing and transitory nature of many things on the earth's surface is no proof that such will be the earth's destiny. On the contrary, every ligament of force and power in this electric universe is pledged to secure the continued and endless duration of our sun and solar system, including our earth. And timorous humanity should no longer shrink in horror at its prospective wreck and ruin.

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

 
Sweep on and ever while the cycles roll
Thou wandering orb of luminous sod!
Thou blazing banner of the mighty God!
From Creation's center to its farthest pole,
Speed on and on in thy unknown track;
But the hand that send thee can draw thee back,
And teach thee the way when thy footsteps stray,
As He doth the wanderer.
 
 
Like a silent thought from Creation wrought,
Thou speakest a language weird and strange
Of the breadth of space and the speed of change,
And the wondrous dream that the ages taught;
That from star to star and from sun to sun
The soul shall pass while the cycles run
Renewed in its youth, gleaning wisdom and truth,
God's wisest wanderer.
 
 
The living shall die, and the dead shall live,
And the mystery deepens on every hand,
And the worlds shall stay, and the soul shall stand,
And a lesson of truth shall all things give.
And a mystic touch hath a world to a world
And the banners of God are ever unfurled
In creation's face teaching truth and grace
To the wanderer.
 

CHAPTER XVI
ARE ALL SUNS AND WORLDS INHABITED?

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

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

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

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

Then when the crystalline rocks and metals were settled into a crystalline globe throbbing with electric power, vegetation came and the electric life-cell was formed as the first step towards organic life. Then came the formation of nerve tissue as the basis of form structure and the evolution of microscopic life which developed under electric energy into all forms of animal existence which now inhabit the earth. These were all formed and perfected through ages of response to the varying electric currents of life-giving power.

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

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

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

Moses and the Bible were inspired or they could never have shown so clearly the nobler creation of man, and his inherent sovereignty over the world, and dominion over all the animal creation. I like that statement, "And God said let us make man." Electricity was the word of His power, the creative agent of His will, which is the law of nature. It could create a sun, a world, a universe; it could give sense and feeling to insensate dust, and evolve and fashion man's body as a house suited for his earthly habitation, but it could not furnish a tenant or evolve a soul. The God-father and the God-mother alone could do this, and make man a spiritual and eternal being.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When once the unity and universality of force and electric life are made clear, and spirit and psychic life in their immortal destiny are made manifest, as thinking creatures we are led upward to a larger development of life and power, dominated by a supreme intelligence we call Deity, Infinite Goodness and Spiritual Father. Then we remember that he has assured us in the sacred oracles, that "we shall be with Him and shall be like Him," and that there are many mansions in the skies.

Our scientists tell us there are living creatures so small and so numerous that it would take millions of worlds like ours to support a human population equal to the number of these creatures that can live and move in one cubic inch of space. Some of these multiply at the rate of one hundred and seventy thousand millions in a hundred hours. And I say every one is a tiny electric machine.

The electric currents that built our world from invisible atoms and evolved the complex substances of which it is composed, and the myriad forms of organic life that exist on its surface will fill other worlds with countless forms of organic life. For in the great electro-magnetic sea we call ether and space, in which all things float or exist, and which permeates all form and substance, there is a boundless reservoir of electric life which will blossom into infinite grades of physical organisms wherever the surface of suns, planets and satellites have living environments of soil, light and electric currents. Even the soil of our earth maintains life because it is living matter itself. And some forms of life will exist without light or soil. This is the electric universe in solution, the life-giving sea of all form and substance.

Oh, what a miracle of wonders! From this marvelous reservoir of life, force and substance each created thing draws the elements of its growth and existence. And each draws from the same source that which its nature requires. The oak draws from the same soil and air as the hickory, the rose, the apple tree and the poison ivy. But the oak converts all the substance it gathers into the natural fibre of the oak, the hickory into the natural fibre of the hickory, the apple tree converts it into the luscious fruit of the apple, the rose into the delightful perfume which regales our senses, and the poison ivy converts the same air and soil into deadly poison.

This is the marvel of electric law and energy. How does it do it? It does it, I contend, by the law of magnetic currents under the control of organic affinity. The Bible states this law in a little different form when it says God caused every tree and shrub and created thing to bring forth seed of its kind. Man, like all nature, also draws from one common intellectual and moral reservoir. And while some draw inspiration and goodness, others draw poisonous evil, or, rather, convert the good they draw into evils. And each brings forth of its kind.

I do not believe with Prof. Newcomb that, "in order that a race may be renewed it must die like an individual." Or that the Creative Power, after destroying our earth, "will await with sublime patience the evolution of a new earth and a new order of animated nature."

The Creative Power has surely as much sense as an ordinary man, and no man builds and perfects a fine piece of machinery, or a magnificent mansion to tear it down, that he may "wait in sublime patience" the building of another to take its place. We should give God credit for ordinary business sense in the construction and preservation of the universe, which generally seems to be denied Him by His thinking creatures.

If Creative Wisdom has the power to build worlds, He has also the power to preserve them; and, having that power, to allow them to go to decay or be destroyed would be the perverse folly of a malignant demon, not a beneficent Creator. The same is true of the destruction of a race. To create, build up, enlighten and perfect a human race, and then destroy them and their perfected world, would be a greater crime than it is possible for man or devils to perpetrate. I have a better opinion of Deity, a nobler conception of His justice and goodness than that. I believe in a God who cares, not the modern God of the atheistic majority, as Mr. Walker says, "who does not care." A God who does not care means anarchy and chaos. It means the obliteration of all law, all moral forces, all religious conceptions, all stability and consistency in the government of the universe. Why, the very air we breathe, the sunshine that gives life, the regular and constant return of day and night, of seasons, years and months, proclaim a God who cares. Every smiling human face, every generous impulse and noble thought, every worthy deed, every fragrant flower, waving field, and golden harvest testify to a God who cares.

But what of the "red claw" of the tiger. What of the big fish that eat the little ones, or the destruction of life by flood and storm, or human trials, sickness and death? Are these things consistent with a God who cares? They may be. The tiger devours to appease his hunger, the big fish eat the little ones for the same purpose, and both obey the law of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest. These two laws are necessary to preserve the life of their kind, and perfect their species for the benefit of mankind. It seems a sad spectacle to see the strong destroying the weak, but it is in the earlier stages of existence the only way under the law of evolution to preserve and improve the best of each species, and is a kindness and a blessing in the end.

As to the destruction of life by flood and storms, these are nature's efforts to preserve the equilibrium of her mighty forces, and where a few are injured, millions are benefited and blessed. And as to man's sickness and tribulations, they are one-half imaginary, and a half of the other half are the result of their own folly in the violation of the laws of health, and the remaining one fourth are disciplinary for the purpose of developing character, which is an ample reward and compensation.

As to death, it is as painless as going to sleep; it is the dread of death that hurts. And if it is the transition process, as millions believe, by which souls drop their brief tenement of atoms, and soar on tireless wings to celestial realms, then it is not a curse but a blessing, especially to the aged and decrepid, for whom life has no charms.

Will man never cease slandering the good Deity, and libeling the beneficent Creator of all good? With most people the fault is not with the world or controlling providence and Deity, but in themselves. They make their own world in their own mind and then find fault with it as if it was a reality.

Albert Russell Wallace, in the Fortnightly Review of March, 1903, in a labored article of great length, undertakes to carry the world back a thousand years to the time when man thought the earth was the center of the universe, and the stars were little openings or golden nails in the crystal vault of heaven. He says we are at the center of the universe; that our sun system belongs to a constellation situated near the center of the Milky Way. This may be true, and it is not worth disputing, for if we are at the center now—as our system travels 420,000 miles a day—we were not there a thousand years ago, and in a few decades will be far away from it. As we keep moving all the time, and do not get off at this central station which he makes so much of, I see nothing gained or lost if it is true.

But in order to show that it is central, he must limit the universe and give its circumference, metes and bounds. This is an immense undertaking. If our universe is limited—and Prof. Newcomb thought so a few years ago, and held it was in the shape of a circle or disk, which was about thirty thousand light years in circumference if true, then the light from the distant stars have been traveling thirty thousand years in order to reach us, and they must be millions of miles from where they seem to be. Thus the center of the universe is constantly changing, and it would take omniscient wisdom to tell where the center is, and then it would not remain the center many hours. This would be true whether the universe is limited or unlimited.

Mr. Wallace says, "The supreme end and purpose of this vast universe is the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body of man." If he had said that was the supreme purpose of the earth, I would have agreed with him.

But since he makes man's development the supreme purpose of the universe and says all other worlds are uninhabited, I am forced to disagree with him. He says there are one hundred millions of stars and planets in the universe, yet he depopulates them all for man's benefit, and then fails to show how man can be benefitted, or for what purpose the almost countless orbs were created. In my judgment he proves himself a million of times wrong, and reaches the climax of unreasonable conjecture. I believe no astronomer will agree with him. None has yet appeared, though several of the most eminent have already expressed their dissent and surprise at his position. His reasons, to my mind, do not justify his conclusions, but prove the very opposite hypothesis.

He estimates there are one hundred millions of stars and worlds, and says they "are all composed of the same elements as the planets and solar system. Wherever organized life may have developed, it must be built up out of the same fundamental elements as here on earth." Now, I fully agree with him in that statement, which I contend shows clearly that these worlds are inhabited. For if they possess the same elements and are controlled by the same laws, they must produce the same results of organic life as appear on our earth; and his arguments about temperature, proportion of land and water, etc., do not affect the question. His conclusions brand the Great Architect of the universe as an incompetent and wasteful profligate, and is contrary to all analogy in human reason, to all law of proportion and compensation, and to "the eternal fitness of things."

The fact that our earth has the same laws, forces, and substances as other worlds and is swarming with its countless myriad forms of organic life; and that all the manifestations of nature's creative forces are prolific in the production of sentient beings, is conclusive evidence that abundant life exists on other spheres, and other worlds are not dreary wastes of burning plains and sandy deserts. The fact that the Creative Spirit built up man's body through ages of animal growth and perfecting bodily development, or modeled it after such perfected animal forms, and then breathed His own life and spirit into it, and made man a spiritual, eternal being like Deity Himself, is strong evidence that in other suns and worlds he has done likewise; and that they are the theatres of spiritual as well as of vegetable and animal life. God creates because He is Love and must have spiritual children as the objects of His affection.

This reason would cause him to people other worlds with the highest order of intelligent creatures similar to man. And the great planets, and great suns, like Sirius, Alpha Lyra, Vega and Alcyone, which are a thousand times larger than our sun, should possess beings of greater intellectual and spiritual faculties than our earth in proportion to their superior grandeur and power.

Thus the infinite wisdom and power of Creative Deity, and the laws and creations He has evolved on this earth, teach us that in other worlds and suns He has created other and numerous types of intelligent beings; and that living organic creatures of His bounty in all suns and spheres honor and adore His infinite goodness, power and love.

 
His suns and worlds are countless as the stars—
His jeweled finger-prints. Through chequered bars
Of light and shade all life is shadow of His breath—
An uttered thought. And law and change and death
His angel messengers. His spirit truth
Preserves the universe in fadeless youth.
 
 
The palpable Infinite! who can know?
Mind from a mustard seed to world, must grow.
The past, the emblems of His power hath wrought
Whose thought created first creating thought,
And veiled in mists above Olympian throne
We know the unknown God is God alone.