The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

by Geo. W. Warder

This all tends to prove the inhabitability of all suns and worlds. Prof. Huxley put himself on record as believing in intelligent organic life in other worlds, in the following vigorous language: "Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the assumption that amid the myriads of worlds scattered through endless space there can be no intelligence as much greater than man's as his is greater than a black beetle's, is not merely baseless but impertinent. Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities in ascending scale, until we reach something practicably indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience.

"If our intelligence can in some matters surely reproduce the past of thousands of years ago, and anticipate the future thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the limit of possibility that some greater intellect even of the same order may be able to mirror the whole of the past and future."

This is a masterly statement that demolishes Alfred Russell Wallace's little arguments like a trip-hammer would an eggshell. Ruskin also saw much good in the idea of life in other worlds above us, "in creatures as much nobler than ours as ours is nobler than that of the dust."

When once the unity and universality of force and electric life are made clear, and spirit and psychic life in their immortal destiny are made manifest, as thinking creatures we are led upward to a larger development of life and power, dominated by a supreme intelligence we call Deity, Infinite Goodness and Spiritual Father. Then we remember that he has assured us in the sacred oracles, that "we shall be with Him and shall be like Him," and that there are many mansions in the skies.

Our scientists tell us there are living creatures so small and so numerous that it would take millions of worlds like ours to support a human population equal to the number of these creatures that can live and move in one cubic inch of space. Some of these multiply at the rate of one hundred and seventy thousand millions in a hundred hours. And I say every one is a tiny electric machine.

The electric currents that built our world from invisible atoms and evolved the complex substances of which it is composed, and the myriad forms of organic life that exist on its surface will fill other worlds with countless forms of organic life. For in the great electro-magnetic sea we call ether and space, in which all things float or exist, and which permeates all form and substance, there is a boundless reservoir of electric life which will blossom into infinite grades of physical organisms wherever the surface of suns, planets and satellites have living environments of soil, light and electric currents. Even the soil of our earth maintains life because it is living matter itself. And some forms of life will exist without light or soil. This is the electric universe in solution, the life-giving sea of all form and substance.

Oh, what a miracle of wonders! From this marvelous reservoir of life, force and substance each created thing draws the elements of its growth and existence. And each draws from the same source that which its nature requires. The oak draws from the same soil and air as the hickory, the rose, the apple tree and the poison ivy. But the oak converts all the substance it gathers into the natural fibre of the oak, the hickory into the natural fibre of the hickory, the apple tree converts it into the luscious fruit of the apple, the rose into the delightful perfume which regales our senses, and the poison ivy converts the same air and soil into deadly poison.

This is the marvel of electric law and energy. How does it do it? It does it, I contend, by the law of magnetic currents under the control of organic affinity. The Bible states this law in a little different form when it says God caused every tree and shrub and created thing to bring forth seed of its kind. Man, like all nature, also draws from one common intellectual and moral reservoir. And while some draw inspiration and goodness, others draw poisonous evil, or, rather, convert the good they draw into evils. And each brings forth of its kind.

I do not believe with Prof. Newcomb that, "in order that a race may be renewed it must die like an individual." Or that the Creative Power, after destroying our earth, "will await with sublime patience the evolution of a new earth and a new order of animated nature."

The Creative Power has surely as much sense as an ordinary man, and no man builds and perfects a fine piece of machinery, or a magnificent mansion to tear it down, that he may "wait in sublime patience" the building of another to take its place. We should give God credit for ordinary business sense in the construction and preservation of the universe, which generally seems to be denied Him by His thinking creatures.