The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

The universe Ptolemy saw was different from that of Copernicus, and Newton's different from both, so my conception of the universe is different from that of Prof. Newcomb's. Imagination is a creature of education and converts knowledge into utility, and reasons from the known to the unknown, and is the telescope of futurity and the microscope of past centuries.

I am a great believer in imagination or ideality as the highest gift of Deity, and accept Napoleon's statement that "imagination rules the world." I believe no man can be a great astronomer without it, and the tallest and broadest enlightened imagination will naturally have the best conception of the complicated motion and grandeur of the universe. Tyndall in an address at Liverpool in 1870, said, "There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than to be employed. In fact, without this power our knowledge of nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistence and sequences; the soul of force would be dislodged from our universe; casual relations would disappear, and with them that science which binds the facts of nature to an organic whole."

This is nobly and truly said, for all progress is heralded by theorization; which is an intelligible explanation of things, and serves to relate cause and effect. It distinguishes the human being from the animal, the civilized from the savage, the wise and learned from the ignorant and foolish. Herbert Spencer said, "In the formation of a theory we have the highest condition of the human mind." And Holder, in his life of Darwin, says, "Darwin was greater than others, because he had the genius of scientific hypothesis." Therefore I am proud of Prof. Newcomb's hypothesis of the cause and manner of the death of the solar system, though I do not accept his theory or his conclusions. I am glad he is not one of those scientists, who said in the New York Journal not long ago, that the only thing of value to science was the tabulation of facts. The mere tabulation of facts would be of as little value to the world without causation, theory and hypothesis, as the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

Let us see what the learned astronomer, Prof. Newcomb, says. He projects himself into the future and starts out by imagining that from the central observatory in the Himalayas, "Mars is signalling a dark star." This, he says, was after "the world had long been dull and stagnant." Now, I protest that this world will never become dull and stagnant, nor any part of this electric universe, but all will go on steadily progressing to more perfect conditions. Here is where our theories clash on the first sentence.

Then he proceeds to tell the kind of dullness and stagnation that existed. He says almost every scientific discovery had been made thousands of years before, and all inventions had been perfected, and everything went on as by machinery. The peace of the world was settled and the time when men fought and killed each other in war lay far back in the mists of antiquity, and the newspapers chronicled little but births, marriages, deaths and the weather reports. "Only one language was spoken the world over, and all gentlemen dined in blue coats with gilt buttons and wore white neckties with red borders."

Now I cannot accept this as a true picture of our earth at any time in its future, or the hypothesis of human stagnation as possible or probable. I do not regard the world's peace, and perfected machinery, and "blue coats with gilt buttons and white neckties with red borders," as evidence of dullness and stagnation. And I cannot believe the newspapers, whose proverbial energy is perennial, will ever get to the low ebb of stagnation he describes.

But to the more important points. Three thousand years before this time messages had been successfully interchanged with the inhabitants of Mars, and now this message of "a dark star" arrives from Mars, which excites the astronomers, and later the people, until the whole world is in a frenzy of terror, apprehension and despair, watching this terrible star, which continued to increase.

The people of Mars are also "in a state of extraordinary excitement," and our astronomers are much puzzled about the orbit of this dark star, many times the size of our earth. Then the Himalaya observatory sends out the startling announcement that, "the dark star has no orbit; but is falling toward the sun with great speed."

Then a professor in physics sees the dangerous possibility of its collision with the sun, and has an immense vault, which had been previously built for scientific experiments, a hundred feet under ground, stored with provisions, etc. In this safe retreat he hides himself and his assistants when the dark star strikes the sun, and the fearful conflagration of the sun and earth occurs. And when the sun and earth were burned up by the collision of the dark star with the sun, they, like Noah and his family, were saved from the general destruction. The description of the melting of the houses, stones and all combustible material on the surface of the earth, the anguish and despair of the thronging multitudes, and the destruction of the great city of Hatten, built on the ruins of the old city of Neeork, would duplicate the horrors of Dante's "Inferno." The illustrations are equally horrible and terrific, and both are calculated to shock the mind of the reader and retard mental composure and æsthetic culture.

He states, in the words of the professor, his theory, thus: "My theory is that if one of these dark objects chances to strike a star it bursts through its outer envelope and sets free the enormous fires pent up within." These pent-up fires within the sun, he claims, are going to blaze up more furious and be the cause of this dread catastrophe of ruin and death to the sun and planets. With all respect to this eminent astronomer, I insist, first, there are no pent-up fires in the sun. Second, no dark or light star, planet or globe can ever fall into the sun, because the law of electric repulsion in the sun will send it off, as it does the comets, in an opposite direction; besides this same law of electric repulsion will forbid any such object from coming into the solar system.