The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

Each receives the positive electricity from the sun, which it draws by reason of its negative polarity. He should know that twenty-eight currents of electricity may pass over the same wire at the same time, fourteen one way and fourteen the other way, and do not interfere with one another, and each go to their separate destinations. The sun may send a different electric current or vibration to each planet and nothing in the universe could prevent it from reaching that planet. It would pass through or go round any other planet or substance in its way.

Wireless electricity is founded on the basic principle that an electric current goes only to the opposite electric polarity and vibration which draws and attracts it or is attuned to it.

Prof. Serviss says: "If I examined this subject with a show of interest, it draws upon me sour and suspicious looks from my scientific friends." He should remember that all great truths have had to struggle with "sour and suspicious looks," ever since man began to investigate, and that we must look not to authority for truth, but to truth for authority.

He said, in the summer of 1901, the sun was a furnace and the black spots the open door of the furnace, and we would have four years of torrid heat on account of those black spots; but he proved himself a false prophet, like the rest. But he is not to blame; he only followed the old traditions and scientific authority, and they proved to be a broken reed on which he leaned. I mention him because he is an able and recent writer on astronomy.

That science is at present unintelligible and almost chaotic to the masses of fairly educated people is too true for superfluous argument. The old farmer's definition of bacilli is a fair sample of the nebulous condition of many minds on scientific subjects. He said they were "little critters from the back cellar that floated in the air, called germs in Germany, parasites in Paris, and microbes in Ireland." Many intelligent people deplore the prolific use of useless technical terms and dry statistics of most scientific works, and their use makes them exclaim with Portia, "My little body is aweary of this great world."

I find a very sensible editorial in the New York American of April 18th, 1903, entitled "Science Needs Another Interpreter." It says: "Science is moving too fast for the ordinary layman, who would like to keep pace with its theories and discoveries.... Chemistry and physics needs a man who will do for them what Huxley did for biology—a man who has not only a scientific mind but a literary capacity.... Vaguely the layman knows there have been all sorts of discoveries since the X-rays showed him there was a way of seeing through a grindstone.

"But he had the idea of X-rays only partially digested when science came on him with the cathode rays and crowned the confusion by discovering radium. With a mind dazzled by light rays that are invisible, and invisible rays that are not light, and bewildered by being told of a substance that gives off terrific energy without loss of bulk or power, he lays away the natural philosophy of his college days and reaches blindly for what the new men have written of these things.

"He is then confronted with what reads like a catalogue of fossil insects diversified by stepladder algebraic formulas, the mere parenthesis of which are enough to make a school teacher shudder. The wretched seeker after knowledge is confronted with measurements of light waves until sunbeams are powerless to illuminate the day. Similarly he gathers from the fugitive words he understands among the mass that has no meaning for him, that Prof. Loeb has been putting salt on eggs and creating sea-urchins, to the utter distraction of the rules of nature's game as he has learned them.

"Somewhere there must exist the man whose skill with the pen and whose appreciation of knowledge are equal to the task of acting as interpreter between scientists and the world.... The world is hungrier for knowledge than it is for amusement, and the sales of the books of the man who succeeds in making science readable will make the returns of even the most popular novelist small in comparison."

This splendid editorial states facts graphically and truly, and portrays the real condition of things. It shows a scientific chaos, which portends a transition state, and a rapid evolution from the old traditions to a new and more perfect science. Without meaning to be egotistic or to assume any superior knowledge, or to have any of the qualities suggested in the editorial, I am impelled to suggest that if there are persons befogged scientifically, if they will read The Cities of the Sun, I think their minds will be clarified on many points and many of the old scientific traditions will fade into the nothingness from which they came.