The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

The true way is to give up such abstractions as objective and subjective mind, for the mind is a unity, and learn to "think things together" and recognize the organic relation of the inner and the outer life and "explain the parts by the whole, and not the whole by artificially severed parts." This organic unity of mind in man is illustrated by the organic unity of the universe, which, under the electric theory of creation, is a vast electric organism bound together by invisible electric bands, where every atom has an individuality manifested and explained in the harmonious unity of an ever-changing but indestructible universe.

As man is capable of knowing all things, he cannot be identified with any of them, or if as an individual he is so identified, he has within him in his spiritual nature that which carries him beyond the limits of his individuality. In his inner moral life man is revealed to himself as a free-will agent, a great and self-determining being, conscious of being subordinated only to the law of duty, which is the law of his own reason.

That law, in spite of every outer pressure, he knows he ought to obey, and therefore knows that he can obey it. Thus man is both natural and spiritual; he is limited to a finite personality, yet possesses a universal capacity for knowledge and an absolute power of self-determination. Human reason with one voice seems to depress man to the level of an animal, and with the other voice proceeds to elevate him to the theatre of all life and being, as a "spectator of all time and existence," gifted with absolute freedom of will and conscious individuality. There is an identity which is below or above all distinction; and the universe is one through all its multiplicity and permanent through all its changes. The unity beneath all differences, the priority of the universal to all particulars, is necessary to the true conception of the organic unity of the world. All opposition of thought and things are relative oppositions which find a solution in the life and movement of the whole. In all the great controversies that have divided the world the combatants have really been co-operators. They developed truth and unity.

We do not see anything truly until we comprehend it as a whole, and see it in all its relations to the universe. Everything so far as it has an independent, individual existence at all is an organism. While conceiving the universe as organic, Hegel maintained that it "is not a natural but a spiritual organism." For the limited scope of a natural organism and its process cannot be regarded as commensurate with a universe which comprehends all existence, whether classed as organic or inorganic. Only the conscious and self-conscious unity of mind can overreach and overcome such extreme antagonisms and reduce them all to elements in the realization of its own life.

The natural universe, I contend, is an organism which includes nature, but manifests its ultimate or highest spiritual force only in the life of man. The universe as an electric organism obeys the higher supreme spiritual forces. It is said that "Hegel was only working out in the sphere of speculative thought what Christianity had already expressed for the ordinary consciousness." Nearly all great thinkers, I contend, reason forward or backward to the fundamental truths of the Bible, only expressed in a little different way, and which is the old familiar process in human history of "pouring old wine into new bottles." Hegel sought to show how an idealistic view of the universe and human life could be maintained consistently with the fullest recognition of scientific methods and results. This was an attempt at the reconciliation of science, philosophy and religion proceeding from the growing prevalence of that harmonizing spirit which seeks to do justice to the results of scientific investigation and at the same time give them a new and enlightened interpretation. In this he was right. The main conflict in philosophy as in religion has ceased to lie between materialism and idealism or spiritualism, but rather between Herbert Spencer's "Vague Consciousness of the Absolute," which he bids us worship, and that faith which enables us to pierce the veil of the phenomena and grasp the ultimate reality of things. Philosophy, therefore, is always toiling after the intuitions of faith as "cities of refuge." All philosophy can safely maintain that "what is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational." And all accord with man's highest inspirations of spiritual faith and hope. And the electric theory of creation is the most rational explanation of an organic universe evolved and controlled by natural law which is the will of Deity, whereby spirit intelligence controls by electric energy all the forces and manifestations of visible creation.

Herbert Spencer has done a great work for science. He has been a great champion and expounder of evolution, and the laws of the material universe. And while he has been a great agnostic on religious subjects it is because he is a spiritual non-conductor.

Man is like a wireless telegraphic receiver; he draws only that which corresponds to his nature and character.

Different men have different casts of mind and different natural aptitudes. Some are natural receivers of truths, and others are natural non-conductors of certain truths.

There are two eminent illustrations of this fact, it is said, in the immortal Sir Isaac Newton and John Milton, whose names are equally historic and illustrious for their learning and culture. For it is said that Newton could not appreciate "Paradise Lost," and Milton could see nothing in "The Principia." This was not to the discredit of either of these books, nor was it a reflection upon the technical learning of either man. Neither was attuned to the message which the other brought to humanity and it proves that in order to apprehend truth in any quarter a man must be sympathetically disposed toward it.