that is, from the all-pervading Ether, our primeval home, the original form of Matter which fills space; the imponderable Ether in which the suns and systems float, having evolved with all that they contain from that very plasmic Ether. Again, all Matter having memory, and man being Matter grown conscious—a metaphysic for this would be the World as Memory rushing into Consciousness; but however that be expressed, man's idea of the Universe before he knows its true configuration or how it arose, is certain to contain some suggestion of the actual becoming of things; and that suggestion will naturally derive from subconscious recollections of impressive events in the history of Matter. In the history of the solar system after the unbegun period of its existence dissolved in the plasmic Ether, the first impressive event is electrical evolution, when the Matter of the sun and the planets overbrimmed solar space as a globular or spiral nebula. Every particle of earth was all luminous in that pristine light: the pen I write with, the paper I write on, my hand that writes, and my brain that instructs my hand. The next important event is the condensation and contraction of the nebula with the segregation of the planets, when all the chemical affinities, the energies of electricity and heat, radiative action, centrifugal and centripetal forces and the force of gravitation kept up for millions of years a war of the elements no atom of Matter can ever forget. The blood, the brain, the bones, the flesh, and the marrow, retaining an indelible impression of their placid existence in the unbegun Ether, of the diaphanous light of the nebula, and of the terrific time of infernal tumult when the solar system was evolved, suggested to man, when his highly developed consciousness begat a still unenlightened idea of the Universe, that splendour on high, his glowing Heaven of light, and that horror below, his fiery Hell of torment. This is pure poetry. Eloquence not being my purpose in this preface, I have expounded it in strict Matter-of-fact prose; but being Matter of Imagination all compact, a truer poetical form will be found in "The Testament of a Prime Minister." (pp. 98-100.)
Heaven and Hell, then, are subconscious recollections of the peace of the Ether, of the glory of the nebula, and of the condensation and contraction suffered by the Matter of which man consists during the millions of millions of years of the evolution of the solar system, perdurable experiences impressed on every molecule, every atom, every electron of the globe and of man; and when I invite the imagination of the world to take up its abode in the actual poetry of Matter, it is a true devolution I desire, comparable to the return of Matter through vapour and lightning into the all-pervading Ether.
III INTERLUDE
I styled the Universe a Memory rushing into Consciousness. It may also be called by as many metaphysics as there are properties and qualities in Matter, and in Matter's accomplishment, man—a Will to Happiness, a Will to Misery; a Will to be Hydrogen, fully developed in all the hottest stars; a Will to Love, a Will to Hate; a Will to be Lightning, into which everything devolves on its way back to the Ether; a Will to Live, a Will to Die; a Will to Beauty, the metaphysic of art; a Will to be the Ether, which everything was, and is, and will again be. I say this to remind the reader that all mental and spiritual qualities and properties are contained in the forms of Matter which become at last fully conscious in man.
There was truth in astromancy. Man, consisting of the same Matter as the stars, felt his kinship, and, being uninstructed, built up assiduously his judicial astrology to explain, what every atom of his body knew subconsciously, his identity with Sirius and Aldebaran. There was truth in alchemy, more truth than in astrology. The prime idea of alchemy, the transmutation of Matter, is absolutely true. Uranium, thorium, radium, have been detected in the act of secreting and producing other elements, which new elements, it is almost certain, change, possibly by way of hydrogen, into electricity—rapidly in the cases of uranium and thorium, very slowly in the case of radium—and from electricity devolve back into the primitive form of Matter, the Ether. And such is the history of all Matter: from the Ether through cycles of change back to the Ether. Man, being this transmutable, indestructible matter become conscious, had from the beginning the knowledge of these properties of Matter within him, and, while still uninstructed, conceived the ideas of the transmutation of metals by the philosopher's stone, and of the prolonging of life indefinitely by that same philosopher's stone dissolved into the elixir of life: the one idea, practically true; the other, a fantastic intimation of the indestructibility of the Matter of which man consists. There was truth in witchcraft and sorcery. Modern hypnotism can exhibit phenomena as wonderful as anything recorded of black magic or white; and I am certain when I remember the properties and qualities of the elements of which he is compounded, that there are other material powers in man awaiting discovery. I understand the list of human elements is correct as far as it goes: about some eighteen are given, including those that are barely traceable. I cannot conceive what further powers may be discovered in man; but I allow myself an interlude to suggest that there are other elements besides the current list in the Matter of which he consists.
The rare gases recently discovered in the atmosphere, helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and the unknown members of that group, certain to be found—have these zero gases, as they are called, been sought for in man? Hitherto their story is a blank, as it is impossible to unite them chemically with any element; but they constitute one per cent. of the mechanical mixture of gases which we breathe. What are they doing, then, in the air? Nitrogen alone is a sufficient diluent of the necessary oxygen. Are these rare gases purposeless? I am intensely curious about them. Are there outcasts also among the elements? Are these gases dead elements? One of them, helium, is a transmuted emanation of radium. Is it the ghost of radium? Nitrogen, with which they are found mechanically mingled, is the element of fermentation and decay. One feels upon the brink of a notable discovery. These dead gases, these ghosts of elements herding with the vapour of dissolution, nitrogen, cannot be entirely ineffective. I hazard this poetical suggestion:—It is the presence of these incommunicable elements that maintains the mechanical mixture of the oxygen and the nitrogen of the air: were their ghostly frontier eliminated, the two main members of the atmosphere would unite chemically, forming protoxide of nitrogen, which is laughing gas. Great Pan! How close we are to that rare old fantasy, that the crack of doom will be a universal shout of laughter!
The names, affinities and energies of the elements of which man consists should be more secure in every memory than the alphabet and the multiplication table. This is a great part of my immorality, that, instead of a myth, children should be told, as soon as they begin to express their wonder, that they consist of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, kalium, natrium, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, silicon; that the principal human elements are also the principal constituents of the whole Universe, and that all the elements are forms of one substance. They should also be shown experimentally the qualities and properties of these elements; and gradually, instead of catechisms and the grammars of dead languages, obtain a knowledge of the poetry of evolution: a poetry that does not require to be taught or learnt; that requires only to be told and shown to be known, welcomed, and remembered, because it is already subconscious in the Matter of which we consist. Thus a child would know at once that there has been no philosophy, no religion, no literature hitherto; that there is nothing for him to learn; that every one must make for himself his own philosophy, religion, literature. All that chemists, astronomers, physicists, biologists, have discovered and suggested; all science and all its speculations—these things that do not require to be learnt, but only require to be shown to be known and delighted in, the child would soon furnish himself with; just as he would light-heartedly reject everything in the shape of system from Aristotle to Herbert Spencer, and all doctrine from Buddha to Christ, and from Christ to Nietzsche. The insane past of mankind is the incubus: the world is really a virgin world awaking from a bad dream. ("The Testament of a Man Forbid.")
These are some of the seeds of the new thing I bring, of the new poetry which the world will make, Matter brooding on Matter for centuries to come. Poetry is the flower of what all men are maturing in thought and fancy; I reap a harvest as yet unsown; I come a hundred years before the time—that time foreseen by Wordsworth, "when what is now called science, familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on a form of flesh and blood."
It is a profoundly satisfying thought that no serious pursuit of man, no cherished conception, however erroneous in itself, is ever based in error. Man is Matter, embodied sincerity, and cannot for any length of time concern himself with what is not. I have shown a new thing—that Heaven and Hell were memories of processes of evolution struggling into consciousness; I have reminded the reader that astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, and sorcery had, all of them, roots in Material facts, and I have pointed out that these pseudo-sciences and black and white magics were attempts of unenlightened but conscious Matter to reveal itself and its powers. I will now state the Material sources of the stupendous ideas of God and Sin.