The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

Then the animal form evolved a brain, and acquired the sense of feeling and sight and hearing by reason of the electric currents that impinged on the sensitive tissues of the brain, and animal instinct was slowly and gradually developed and the animal organism raised to the highest grade of the perfected mammal. All this was done under electric law by magnetic energy. Then the Creative Deity said, "Let us make man." And it is likely He took a perfected mammal, enlarged his brain-pan, stood him erect to front the stars, and breathed into him an atom of his own spirit, "and man became a living soul." The psychic power of glowing thought and reasoning mind, inspiring hope and heaven-bound love, and truth, and language, music, poetry, and dreams of heaven, were implanted as a celestial fire in his deathless spirit. This is man,—the soul, the spirit, the divine, eternal spark of Deity himself—not the body; that is merely the overcoat of atoms for the spirit, the temple for the soul, the house in which it dwells.

It will be seen from the foregoing that electricity is the creative, evolving force of the universe, the word of omnipotent power, the creative machinery of suns and worlds. That it creates suns and worlds and all animal and vegetable organisms, that it can evolve all forms, and give animal instinct as the result of balancing the experience of one sense with another through long ages of experience.

But it cannot create mind, soul or the spirit of Deity. It could not create man as a psychic being. It could organize his body, but it could not confer on him a soul. Electricity does not rob God of power; it is his creative machinery, and the right hand of His power, and, guided by His omnipotent will as the law of nature, it can and does evolve suns and worlds and all organic life. But not spirit-life—not man.

Moses and the Bible were inspired or they could never have shown so clearly the nobler creation of man, and his inherent sovereignty over the world, and dominion over all the animal creation. I like that statement, "And God said let us make man." Electricity was the word of His power, the creative agent of His will, which is the law of nature. It could create a sun, a world, a universe; it could give sense and feeling to insensate dust, and evolve and fashion man's body as a house suited for his earthly habitation, but it could not furnish a tenant or evolve a soul. The God-father and the God-mother alone could do this, and make man a spiritual and eternal being.

Now, I argue that if electricity created this earth with all its complex elements and organic forms, it also created all suns and worlds and all the machinery of the universe by the same process, and has endowed every rolling sphere in space of sufficient size and power with vegetation, and all the varied forms of animal organism. Is not this a rational conclusion, since it has been demonstrated by universal chemistry and spectroscopic analysis that all laws, force and substance are the same in all suns and worlds and throughout the universe? Is it reasonable to believe that the electric currents and magnetic energy of our earth could evolve billions of billions of little living creatures which float in the air thicker than motes in a sunbeam, that swim in the waters so abundant that there are millions in a raindrop, that penetrate all vegetable and animal substance and organisms, that course through the veins of our bodies by the billion, and eat our food for us that we may digest it better; yet in other suns and worlds produce no such results? I cannot think so.

The animalculæ are so small that Ehrenburg estimates that five hundred million of them exist in one drop of water one twelfth of an inch in diameter; that not only the blood, but the flesh and muscles are also composed of infinitesimal lives, each cell possessing a distinct life of its own.

Binet describes man as a colony of protozoans; and according to these two biologists he is a walking Chinese Empire, when you consider the microscopic beings in his body. Besides our bodies and those of vegetable and animal organism that are thus honeycombed and flooded with animalculine life, there are countless millions floating in the air, swimming in the water, and buried in the dust of the earth.

So that organic life is everywhere present on the earth, in invisible or visible form. And the invisible forms of life of the earth everywhere surpasses the visible forms millions of millions of times. Just as the invisible matter in the world and the universe surpasses the visible countless billions of times. Thus the natural, spontaneous production of life and life forms in myriads everywhere on this earth emphasizes the reasonable hypothesis that they are evolved on all suns and planets.

This shows the unity of matter and life. Wherever there is matter there is electric energy and life-force, which evolves infinite grades of life-forms. Prof. Buchner asserts that "spectrum analysis has brought about the highly important conviction of the unity of what is to us the visible universe." And Prof. Shaler of Harvard declares, "the unity of life is the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century." The infinite diversity in nature first fixed the attention of investigators; now its infinite unity is the marvel which excites their wonder and admiration. Now the unity of matter, force and physical life are accepted by the ablest thinkers.