The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

Flammarion says: "Science in revealing the plan of the universe will show that the moral universe is based upon the same plan, that both worlds form but one world and that spirit governs matter. The same laws rule everywhere and make the vast universe a unity. All the ages of the past and future are one with the present, and thinking beings will live eternally through successive and progressive transformations. Everything progresses toward supreme perfection. The material world has but an apparent existence, and the reality underlying it is a force imponderable, invisible and intangible." Man is apparently an animal, but he is not; that is the visible side of his nature and is deceptive.

All he beholds is apparent. The reality is something altogether different. The sun seems to revolve around the earth, and the earth seems to stand still. The reverse is true. We dwell upon the surface of a body revolving in space and projected with a velocity seventy-five times greater than the speed of a cannon ball.

We hear a harmony of sweet sounds which charm our senses. The sound does not exist; it is an impression made upon our sense of hearing by vibrations of the atmosphere which themselves emit no sound. Without the auditory nerve and brain there would be no sound. In reality there is only motion in the ether.

The rainbow expands its radiant circle, the rose and lily sparkle in the sunshine; the green fields and golden grain diversify the landscape by their vivid colors. But there are no colors; there is no light; there are only undulations in the air that set the optic nerve vibrating. The sun warms and fertilizes, the fire burns, but there is no heat, only the sensation of heat. Heat, like light, is only the result of motion—invisible, all-potent, supreme. Here is a solid iron joist sustaining tons of enormous weight, yet the joist is composed of molecules which do not touch each other and are in continual motion. What constitutes the solidity of this bar of iron? Not the atoms that compose it; but the cause of its solidity is molecular attraction, the invisible force of magnetic attraction.

The present scientific theories have only been apprehended by the brightest intellects within the last half century, and would have been a conglomeration of absurdities to the wisest men of the world a century ago. So, written revelation had to use the language and symbols understood by the ancients. And it seems that scientific evolution is constantly struggling for new terms to express new ideas and discoveries.

Some scientists believe it impossible for the terrestrial being to attain a complete knowledge of the truth because he has only five senses, and a multitude of the phenomena of nature remains unknown to his mind because he has no means by which to reach them. Just as if we should be unable to see if deprived of the optic nerve, or to hear if deprived of the auditory nerve. Our terrestrial harp may be wanting in many chords which prevent us from catching the perfect harmony and truth of the universe. It is said the smallest magnet can more easily than Newton or Leibnitz discover the magnetic pole, and the swallow has more knowledge of the varieties of latitude than had Columbus or Magellan. But whatever our experience, it is a part of the book of God and nature.

Flammarion says: "No one who is aware of the progress made in the exact sciences of to-day can pretend to be a materialist. The psychic atom, the principle of the human organism would be immortal, like atoms everywhere, if scientists were to admit the fundamental axioms of chemistry. But it would be superior to atoms, and be conscious of its existence. Can the soul partake of the character of electricity? We conceive that it exists as force that survives the dissolution of the body."

I conceive the soul controls electricity, which is the right hand of its power, and the tongue of the spirit, and survives in conscious power "the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." "Whither does the soul go?" asks the same author, and he answers "to other worlds. Yes, living principles of force can transport them from one world to another." I agree with him. I believe they go to other worlds, and the other worlds are perfected sun-worlds. We must not think that the soul belongs to some supernatural world. There is nothing that is not in nature. Nature is unceasing progress. It is only a few thousand years since terrestrial humanity emerged from its chrysalis state of being. Yet certain spirits have attained transcendent power, and humanity has produced a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Hugo, a Newton, and a Milton. We live in reality among the stars.

We are inhabitants of the skies. Life, light and eternal progress to perfection is the final end and purpose of the universe. Every thinking man feels in his moral and psychic nature that he is linked to justice, truth and Deity.

Maeterlinck, the Danish philosopher, sustains this thought in his latest work when he says: "Though nature appears unjust and nothing authorizes us to declare that a superior power rewards or punishes here or elsewhere, it is none the less certain that an image of that invisible, incorruptible justice we have vainly sought in the sky or the universe reposes in the depths of the moral life of every man. It will not add to or take from our wealth, it will bring no immunity from disease or lightning, it will not prolong one hour the life of the being we cherish; but if we have learned to reflect and to love, it will establish in heart and brain a contentment that shall still be inexhaustible and noble.