Mr. Spencer's definition is complicated, but his process is substantially correct. Yet he offers no explanation of this natural and universal process, while my electric theory of creation does, and makes his universal evolution and dissolution simply universal electric attraction and repulsion under the well-known laws of electro-magnetism. This is a great advance, a gigantic step toward the explanation of the universe. The simplest illustration in physics explains both theories. For instance, dry steam, he says, will condense to its liquid form, water by permitting the dissipation of its internal motion in the process of cooling, and a further dissipation of internal motion of the water will reduce it to a solid form, called ice. This he calls evolution, but he does not state what produces it. I say it is produced by electric attraction.
Then he says the mass of ice thus evolved from impalpable vapor may be set out in the sun and gradually melt, by the absorption of motion from the sun, into water, and a further absorption of like motion will convert it into invisible vapor. This he calls dissolution, but does not explain it. I say it is the result of the law of electric repulsion.
He speaks of the absorption of motion. I contend there can be no absorption of motion, but only an absorption of that which produces motion, which is electric energy, from the sun—the electric heart of the solar system. Motion, I contend, is not a cause but an effect, and all physical motion is the result of electric energy. And to say with Tindall, that light and heat is a mode of motion is to state an absurdity, for motion is the result of some force operating on matter. It is not a cause but an effect produced by a cause.
I explain force and "the redistribution of matter and force" as the product or the result of the universal laws of electric attraction and repulsion, which control atoms, suns and worlds and all matter in body and space.
Mr. Spencer offers no explanations and relegates all to the convenient dumping ground of the unknowable. What he calls "The realm of the unknowable" I call the electro-magnetic sea of ether in which all things exist and from which all things are evolved, which is the imperceptible elements of the universe in solution. This I claim is the fourth form of matter, the invisible primary essence of all visible creations.
I state his law of the redistribution of matter and motion in this way: An increase of electric energy produces an accelerated motion of the molecules of a body or substance, and, if continued, tends to its dissolution by electric repulsion; while an increase of magnetic attraction decreases the activity of its molecules and tends to integration or solidity of form or substance.
There is no such thing as heat in reality; heat is accelerated motion, a sensation caused by the increased activity of the molecules; while cold is the absence of motion or heat.
Mr. Spencer has described a general indefinite process as "the redistribution of matter and motion," but he has revealed no natural law, or fundamental explanation of natural phenomena. Every important question leads him to a stone wall which he does not try to scale or penetrate, but labels the "Unknowable."
A learned philosopher who has spent his life endeavoring to instruct others should not fall back into the convenient ditch of the "unknowable."