Deity does no irrational things, nature is always logical and consistent, and where there is such vast resources of substance and power bestowed, as in our sun and the eighteen millions of suns of the universe, it was not for the purpose of making bonfires and blazing furnaces of them. But they were created for vaster, more perfect theatres of intelligent life and activities. Besides, burning them up could bestow no benefit on the planets; the heat could not reach them, and if it could it is only a sensation, and sensation cannot produce vegetable or animal life, or control the earth's motion.
One of the greatest of modern discoveries is that heat is not a substance but a sensation, produced by electric currents. So that eighteen millions to one hundred millions of suns do not need to be burning up to furnish electric currents to their planetary worlds. And our sun is not burning up thirty quintillions cubic feet of itself annually, and a hundred millions of suns many a thousand times larger than ours are not burning up a thousand times more of themselves, as the astronomers claim, and the whole thing is a great absurdity and superstition.
CHAPTER IX AT PRESENT SCIENCE IS IN A DUBIOUS AND CHAOTIC CONDITION
The last few years have been remarkable for the diligence with which scientists have scrutinized every phenomena of nature, and the abundance of new facts which have rewarded their researches.
They have also been remarkable for the changes in scientific opinions, which usually are so gradual as to be imperceptible, but which have recently taken on the speed of the earth's solar revolution in their transition from the old to new theories.
The vast body of scientists are seldom a unit in the acceptance of any theory, even of the most fundamental nature. And where there is such diversity of belief each student of nature is entitled to form his own opinions and beliefs.
But the most pitiable and unfortunate of the one-sided scientists are those who would banish logic from the realms of physics, and who regard a deduction or a theory as an enemy of science; who heap scorn on analytic reason—the highest gift of Deity to man—and who deem the tabulation of dry facts without causes the only purpose of science. Who want science fenced in with a stone wall and separated from religion and philosophy, and the earth cut up into sections and labelled astronomy, chemistry, geology, and so on ad infinitum; as if nature knew anything about astronomy, chemistry or geology, or ever considered anything but the unity and harmony of the whole universe, which includes science, religion and philosophy, one and inseparable, as God and nature are inseparable.