The Universe a Vast Electric Organism. Warder George Woodward
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Elihu Thomson, the great electrician, says: "Hertz proved that all luminous phenomena are in essence electrical. Wireless electricity is the outcome of Hertz's experiments on electric waves, and electrical conditions and actions are more fundamental than hitherto regarded."
William Ramsey, the distinguished chemist, says: "It is a primary assumption that atoms of elements or in certain cases groups of atoms are themselves electrified, and atoms possess positive and negative poles, and combinations ensue between such oppositely electrified bodies."
Mr. Francis Grierson, a prominent scientist of London, in a recent London periodical, says: "So far as we know electricity is the soul of visible form. What we call brain waves have an analogy to electric waves. The discoveries and inventions of the last ten years have made child's play of every previously known system of philosophy. The simple but amazing facts disclosed during the past five years, render the dreams, speculations and guesswork of the past absurd. The little we know in a practical way is more than all the philosophers of the past knew from Aristotle to Leibnitz."
Prof. Langley, in his address at the 1902 session of the American Association of Science, stated that, "up to 1872 it was almost universally believed that there were three different kinds of energy—actinic, luminous and thermal—represented in the spectrum;" but he affirmed: "There is only one radiant energy which appears to us as actinic, luminous or thermal, according to the way we observe it.
"Heat and light are not things in themselves, but different sensations in our bodies, or different effects in other bodies. They are merely effects of this mysterious thing we call radiant energy." He thus sustains my position and the electric theory of creation, which is, that there is but one universal and ultimate energy which he calls radiant and I call electric energy, and which are the same thing.
It is said that an Italian physicist wrote in 1843: "Light is merely a series of colorific indications, sensible to the organs of light, or vice versa; the radiations of obscure heat are veritable invisible radiations of light." This Langley, by his elaborate researches, more refined and complex than all preceding ones, proved to be true. Since so orthodox a scientist as Langley has proven there is but one energy, the other scientists may stumble over it awhile and then accept it, because he is high authority.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in the "Electrical World," of February 21st, 1903, sustains the electrical theory strongly. He says: "All matter is electrical in its nature. The difference between one kind of matter and another lies in the physical and chemical properties of the atoms; but the difference between the atoms is merely due to the difference of the electric grouping of the atoms."
He holds that the Thompson corpuscles are all electric. Thomson's theory is that negative electricity is matter. Lodge holds that all matter down to the ultimate corpuscle is electricity or electrical substance. Thus I am sustained by the highest most recent authority.
Prof. E. L. Larkin, of the California University, said recently: "The earth has a permanent charge of negative electricity, and the atmosphere is positive. The surface potential is therefore very near zero. This permits electro-magnetic waves from the sun to act with unabated energy." Prof. Lucien I. Blake of the Kansas University said in a recent lecture: "All atoms of matter are charged with electricity. All vital actions are always connected with electricity."
I could fill a volume with recent statements of scientists showing that electricity produces all the phenomena of nature, all of which they have learned in the last few years, while as a pioneer in this field of thought I have been trying to propagate these electrical theories for many years.
Every year new facts are discovered showing that electricity is the cosmic, evolving, ultimate and only force in nature and the universe is a vast electric machine or organism moved by electric currents of measureless force and power. The earth revolves around the sun, the sun gravitates around some siderial center in motion like itself, and myriads of suns and planets with their countless population move with many times the velocity of a cannon ball. Stars that seem tranquil and motionless in the heavens are projected through space with a velocity of one hundred to two hundred miles per second. The constituent atoms of our bodies move relatively with as much velocity as the stars in heaven. Motion—electric energy—reigns everywhere, forms everything, controls, handles and evolves all suns and planets, all physical life, substance and organisms in human experience and universal nature.
The electric rays of light from suns and stars of the most distant constellations dart their beams across the universe, and centuries after, the impulse of electric energy enters the human eye, and gives sense and vision to the soul. Thus the dynamic chains of electric light binds into living unity the realms of matter and mind, "through measureless amplitudes of space and time."
These electric currents are not only the source of all natural phenomena, but the sea of electro-magnetism from which they come is the reservoir of life, which stands back of all the myriad manifestations of physical existence, and is the great fountain of vitality from which all life must come.
What is electricity? Tesla says it is "invisible light," Atkins says it is "molecular motion," Fleming says it is "a spiral twist of the ether," but the best definition is given in the Scriptures where it says all things were made by the "word of His power." It is the word of creative power.
CHAPTER III
ELECTRICAL CREATION, BRIEFLY STATED. IT SEEMS TO SOLVE THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
As the nebular hypothesis and gravitation explain nothing and show neither the primary elements nor the primary energy of the universe, we should go to the dual forces of electricity which do. As we have learned little more than a name from either, I think it is time to try another hypothesis. Walking single file in dead men's shoes for two hundred years is quite long enough.
I am willing to submit the following hypothesis as my conception of electrical creation and the true theory of the universe.
First—Creation was wrought out by the agency of electrical forces, operating on invisible elementary matter, controlled by the intellectual impulse of an infinite power.
Second—These creative cosmic forces, by condensing the suns and planets into vast magnets revolving in a sea of electro-magnetic forces, evolved the marvelous machinery of the universe.
Third—This machinery of the universe became self-propelling and self-sustaining by reason of the laws of motion, growth and evolution impressed upon it, or by the joint sovereignty of two equal, correlative forces: magnetism, a form of electricity maintains the sovereignty of attraction over matter in body, while electricity, another phase of the same force, maintains the sovereignty of repulsion over matter in space.
Fourth—For these reasons electricity is a universal power joining together the two kingdoms of the heavens and the earth—of matter in body and matter in space. And these forces in their unity of harmonious work can suffer no disturbance equal "to the dust in the balance."
Fifth—These floods of electricity and magnetism affect the least and the greatest, "directly as to mass, and inversely to the square of the distance."
Sixth—The