The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

It is like getting back to anti-Copernican times to have Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, in his flights of speculative astronomy, say that, "our solar system is central in the universe and that this earth of ours is probably the only planet on which humanity has been developed." In a recent article he undertakes to establish this ancient fallacy. It is very doubtful whether the universe has a general center, but if it has it should be plain to our learned astronomer that as our system is moving through space in a straight line at the rate of 420,000 miles per day it could not occupy a central position very long. The only means we have to judge of the inhabitability of other worlds is by analogy, which is the foundation of all scientific hypotheses. The likeness in form, substance and electric power of suns and planets to our own world leads to the natural conclusion that all suns and worlds are inhabitated. In fact any other assumption is contrary to all cosmological reasoning and all analogy to be found in universal nature. Nature nowhere bestows vast substance and power without commensurate results of life and growth, and it is reversing all the laws of reason, analogy and cosmic experience to hold to the contrary. We must give up this egotistic assumption that our little world is the only living world in this vast universe, or that it is only one of a few living worlds.

There are no dead worlds or planets or burning suns in this electric universe, and we are not "the only pebble on the boundless beach" of creative worlds. We have the same electric fire in our bodies that is in the sun, and it neither burns us nor causes us to shrink up annually, as the scientists say the sun does. It is not the consumer of life, but the giver of life, and the continual life energy of the universe.

During a recent eclipse of the moon, Prof. W. H. Pickering, of Harvard Observatory, ascertained that the bright spot around the crater Linne on the surface of the moon grows considerably larger when deprived of the heat of the sun. For many years it has been noticed that the Linne area has been gradually changing and many theories regarding the causes have been advanced.

Prof. Pickering is inclined to the belief that it is hoar frost or ice. This tends to confirm my theory that the moon has an atmosphere and some moisture which is mostly hidden in its perforated volcanic surface.

Alexander Young, an astronomer of Laport, Ind., announced on February 20th, 1903, that, "from observations made by him, he is confident that the sun is inhabited; that with his instruments he has seen on the sun's surface mountain sides with great and precipitous rocks which glow with prismatic colors, mingled with the greenness of perennial vegetation."

I was not expecting this scientific proof so soon, but I am satisfied that the inhabitants, the mountains and the perennial vegetation are there; and if he has succeeded in magnifying the rays of light from the vast openings in the sun's photosphere sufficiently he can and did see them.

I am a firm believer in the inhabitability of the sun, and that it is a perfected, self-luminous world—a world like our world, only vastly larger and more prolific in life and power. As it is the source of all life and power to the planets, it must be the creator of all life to its celestial inhabitants.

Profs. Proctor and Herschell seem to believe that most of the heavenly bodies are inhabited. Sir Wm. Herschell went so far as to contend for a time that the sun was inhabited or inhabitable because, he said, the heat of the sun was in its photosphere, which was far out in space and many miles from the sun's surface, and that there were cool clouds and layers of atmosphere, he thought, between the heat and the sun's surface which made the body of the sun cool enough for animal and vegetable life and human habitation. He changed his mind, however, in a few years and held the heat of the sun was too hot to allow anything in nature to keep such excessive heat from its surface, and besides, the law of the conservation of forces just coming into scientific prominence then forbid it.

Prof. Proctor, says: "I adopt the principle of Sir Wm. Herschell that analogy is the chief and the best guide for the student of astronomy. That general resemblance of structure indicates a general resemblance in the purpose which the celestial bodies are intended to subserve is evident when we compare the stars with our sun or with each other. Some time or other those worlds have been or will be the abode of intelligent creatures seems to be a fair conclusion from what we know of their structure."