The Philosophy of Creation/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
NATURAL FORCES.
The Character Of Natural Forces Is Unknown,
And Substances Are Confounded With
Their Properties Because There
Is No Knowledge Of
Discrete Degrees.
The failure to discern the degrees of matter, and the consequent confounding of matter with its modes of motion, have prevented materialistic scientists from distinguishing and clearly defining natural forces. With the more recent development of materialistic reasonings, there has grown up a more strenuous denial of the existence of higher and lower forms of matter, and as a consequence there is an increased endeavor to explain all forces as the inherent properties of the one grossest form of matter. If the forces are of so high a character that the assignment of them to some form of ponderable matter is too absurdly preposterous, then they are relegated to the realm of the unknown or of the unknowable. Hence as materialistic science has become developed, it has shut the door that enters where the knowledge of causes resides, and has locked itself out in the outer court of visible effects. Having turned away from the realm of causes, it has become bewildered and lost in its search for causes where they are not.
The condition of the materialistic school of scientists and philosophers may be thus illustrated. If there is reluctance to concede, let it for a moment be assumed that nature is a series of effects deriving all its forces from a superior world wherein are the causes: then suppose the existence of the world of causes to be denied or regarded unknowable because imponderable; would not the present materialistic philosophy with its theory of Evolution, "innate aptitude," "fortuitous concourse of atoms," "survival of the fittest," "natural selection," "projected efficiency," and the like, be the inevitable result? But this is not an assumption. It is the true reason why there has been so deplorable a failure to offer an intelligible or definite explanation of nature's forces. On the other hand the discernment of discrete degrees provides a satisfactory philosophy.
It has been observed that creation descended and terminated in passive matter, to which creative forces descend, and where they commence to form things successively higher. The descending forces are not visible, while the ascending scale of created forms is seen by the material eye. Evolution follows creative forces down to ultimates, and there stops with the limitation of material sight. Thus originated Evolution, and other forms of materialism.
Heat Is A Form Of Activity.
Though it is not the purpose in this treatise to pursue principles in their application to the particulars of science, we may here consider a few illustrations that will aid in presenting the general laws.
It is now to be observed in particular what the common manifestations of natural forces are. Let us first consider what heat is; such heat as is produced by burning coal. A clear conception of this necessitates the reflection that coal is formed by the condensation of gaseous matter. The particles of gases and vapors are brought together through the agency of vegetation and various forces, and are reduced to a solid form. By the process of combustion the constituent particles are disengaged, whereupon they take the form of activity that is natural to the gases and vapors when in a high state of freedom. The activity continues until overcome by the resistance of less active matter. Such heat is therefore the natural activity of the loosened particles of condensed gas and vapor. The red glow of the coal is from the beginning of that activity. The flame is the partly decomposed matter wherein the particles are in a high state of disengagement, but not wholly freed. The radiated heat is the loosened particles having assumed their natural activity, or their activity communicated to proximate substances. The heat is not a novel substance let loose from the coal, nor is it a force acting apart from substance; but it is simply the natural activity of the loosened particles of the component gases and vapors, or the transfer of that activity to the molecules of the atmosphere.
Iron is white hot from the extended swing of its component particles, which occurs as the attraction between its atoms is overcome. When heated until it becomes a fluid, the tendency of the atoms to assume their natural activity is equalized by atomicity. Under a still increased heat the tendency of the atoms to assume their natural activity exceeds atomicity, and they pass of! in a gaseous form.
Heat derived by chemical combinations is explainable according to the same principle. One substance so acts upon another as to overcome partially or entirely the atomicity, whereupon the particles assume their more primary form of activity, great at first, but gradually equalizing with associated matter.
Heat derived from the sun is not an exception. The sun's flame is composed of particles of matter in a high state of vibration or gyration. The activity is communicated to the incumbent aura and ether, which transfer the activity to the planets about the sun. The vibrating particles of ether affect the particles of air and of earth, and give them a degree of motion, whence is their heat. In no case is heat other than a form of the activity of a substance.
The Origin Of Heat Is The Activity Of An
Atmosphere Interior To The Grosser
Forms Of Matter.
Having stated that heat is produced by the particles of matter assuming the activity that is natural to them, it now remains to account for the force that produces that activity; for, though the activity is natural to matter under certain conditions, the force that produces it is not, and can not be evolved from matter alone.
It may be said, as in the case of burning coal, that the heat produced during combustion is in proportion to that employed in the original condensation of the gases into the form of coal. Though this is undoubtedly a true statement of a law, it falls short as an explanation of what heat or its origin is, for it offers no explanation of either. To say that heat is a force latent or stored in the coal, if permissible in loose description, will not pass as an explanation of what it is, for since heat is a form of activity, if latent, it would not exist; and to say that it is stored is conspicuously not true, for the storage of activity would be its suspension. The particles of the coal, or of matter in general, though their atomicity is overcome, have no power of themselves to spring into rapid vibration. Their activity is due to that of proximate substances or of atmospheres more interior than the gases of which coal and grosser matter in general are composed. The activity of the more interior atmospheres, which is constant, is communicated to grosser matter when the requisite conditions are furnished. The atoms of matter, being freed, respond to the pressure of forces belonging to superior substances, which in turn derive their activity from the still higher substances of the sun, and lastly through the spiritual world from the Creator. The substances of the spiritual world are perpetually energized and actuated by the Creator. Heat, like all forces, has therefore its first origin in the Creator, the primal fountain of every activity.
The Sun's Heat Is Due To Influx From The
Spiritual World.
The origin of the sun's heat is explained in the same way. The sun, composed of ethereal matter in a most pure and free state gathered about a center, because of its extreme purity and sensitiveness, is focal to the general influx into the spiritual world from the Creator. The activity that constitutes the Creator's life is communicated to the atmospheres of the spiritual world, to which the rarefied substance of the sun is sensitive and responsive. The influx from the Creator through the atmospheres of the spiritual world into the sun causes the particles of the sun's atmosphere to assume most complex and powerful activity or gyrations. From the sun's proximate atmosphere the aura and ether receive their forces and are actuated, which in turn act upon the earth and give to grosser forms of matter their natural activities and forces. Since the Creator formed the earth by means of the sun, putting forth from it successively lower atmospheres until they terminated in the dead matter of the terreous globe, the creative energy perpetually flows down the successive degrees, terminating in the earth as the ultimate, and thereby perpetually causing things to subsist and to exist. When the equilibrium in matter is disturbed, or when conditions are made favorable, that creative energy manifests itself in the endeavor to restore equilibrium, as in generated electricity.
In maintaining that the activity of the sun's particles, whence is its heat, is derived from the Creator through the spiritual world, it is immaterial whether or not there is combustion, or composition and decomposition, in the substances of the sun. Influx from the spiritual world into the sun, though accompanied by a species of chemical change, is still the primary cause of the sun's heat. The secondary cause is the species of chemical changes in the substances of the sun produced by that influx. Activity and subsidence, or chemical changes of a certain kind, do go on in the sun without the destruction of its substances, the same as in nature. The chemical changes that occur in the sun to produce its heat, light, and power no more diminish its capacity to undergo endless changes than the perpetual decay and reproduction of vegetable and animal forms in the earth decrease its ability to vegetate and to provide for new animal formations. In fact the reverse is true in the earth, for the greater the amount of decaying matter, the better is nature provided to reproduce. Life-force flows into the earth, creating and recreating from the materials already there provided to serve for all time. Likewise influx from the Creator through the spiritual world perpetually produces and reproduces heat, light, and power in the sun from materials there provided. Consequently, since there is no consumption or destruction of the sun's substances nor diminution of its capacity to undergo any chemical changes essential to the production of its phenomena, and since the activity of the sun's particles is sustained by influx from the Creator, Who as we have seen is eternal, the sun undergoes no loss, and can never fail in its supply of heat, light, and power. In the knowledge that the universe will never fall into chaos from the sun's expiration, or from the want of direction by intelligence and power, we are saved alike from the dogma of fanatical religion that the earth will "burn up," and from the superstitions of materialistic philosophers that the sun will "burn out." It may seem strange at first thought, and yet it is what maturer reflection would observe must needs be, that a morbid religion and a godless philosophy, howsoever much they may differ in the particulars of their reasonings, arrive at last at the same conclusion in ending the universe with "omnipresent death,"[1] and in the sum and substance of all their reasonings about nature are therefore in perfect harmony and accord.
Light.
Light, considered solely on the natural plane, may be defined as that energy or activity in nature which, acting upon the organs of sight, renders objects visible. Apart from the mind, light is the activity of the ether, the universal medium of light, caused by the sun, or other matter, being in such a state as to actuate the ether. It is obvious that the term must be used in this sense generally. Yet in relation to sight, light is something vastly more. Light in its mental aspect, or as a form of sensation, is due to the influx of mental light into the organs of vision when they are suitably affected by the activity of ether. This is considered more fully under the next topic.
Sight Is From Mental Light Inflowing And
Meeting The Impressions Made Upon
The Eye By The Activity Of Ether.
Sight is the perception of forms by means of light. Objects are seen by means of reflected rays of light, which have undergone modifications made by the reflecting body, whereby an image is impressed upon the retina. Mental light flows down into the organism of the spiritual eye, and meets the activity of ether which ascends by means of the natural eye. Thus the spirit is enabled to see on the plane of nature through the natural eye. Mental light, or spiritual light, is the light in which the mind sees. It is the light of the understanding. All natural sight is from the understanding. The eye can not see of itself; nor can the ear hear, the hand feel, the nose smell, or the tongue taste of themselves. It is the interior life of man, the life of the spirit, which is the life of the will and understanding, or of the affections and thoughts, that has sensation of the things in nature through the organs of the body. The body is simply an instrument by means of which the spirit reaches down into nature to perceive her forms and qualities. Therefore when the spirit is withdrawn from the body, the body has no sensation; yet the spirit continues in the exercise of all its faculties and senses on the plane of its own organization.
That sight is from the mind's light flowing down into forms impressed upon the natural eye is illustrated by objects appearing to one in a dark room and with eyes closed, after the light is extinguished; as when one sees the disk of a lamp-burner or the carbon of an electric light after the light is extinguished.
It is to be noticed that life always descends, and that things of consciousness have their origin in something higher. In seeking the first cause of seeing, we are led to this beautiful truth and wonderful provision of the Infinite Wisdom in the creation of man; namely, that, in fact, it is the Lord who sees, because it is He alone who lives, and that He has so created things that He can give man to see, and that it should appear to him as if he saw from himself.
The appearance is that the corporeal senses flow into the mind, and excite ideas there; for it seems that objects move the external senses first, and then the internal senses. But in every case this is a fallacy, for externals, which are gross, can not flow into internals, which are purer and spiritual. The senses of the spirit dispose the corporeal senses to receive impressions according to their quality, and so perceive through them. Such is the relation between the senses of the spirit and those of the body that the senses of the spirit instantaneously adapt those of the body to receive impressions, and to act as one with them. All sensations that come by means of the sensory organism flow in from things internal. The internal sensations are proper to the will and the understanding, which do not have that sense characteristic of the corporeal senses, but the sensations of the will and the understanding are turned into such when they flow into the corporeal organism.
Vision being primarily from mental light, an image upon the retina of one in a listless state may not be seen. That there be distinct vision there must be the direction of that light, by means of which the mind sees, into the material eye, for the natural eye has no power of itself to see. It is the eye of the mind that sees through the material eye, and thus discerns objects in nature.
The power of sight chiefly depends upon two things, the strength, clearness, and perfection of the lens of the natural eye, and the force and direction of mental light. The intelligence of vision, other things being equal, is in proportion to the quality of intellectual light. Hence with the lower animals there may be superior visual power, but in their sight there is nothing of cause and effect or of reverence, and consequently less discernment; while with man these enter into sight and ennoble it in proportion to man's intelligence. This is why the sight of the artist is superior to that of the untrained, and why the spiritual man looking out upon nature does not see it as a profound mystery, for to him "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork."
Radiation.
Radiation of heat or of light is the communication of activity from the substances of which heat or light is predicated to other substances.
Conductors And Non-conductors.
Bodies are conductors or non-conductors according to their ability to take up and to transmit modes of motion; and transparent or opaque respectively as they transmit or are impervious to the ethereal motion from which is light.
Color.
Color is due to the modifications of the influent rays of light, which is according to the contexture of the reflecting object, the reflected rays being thereby modified, and producing variation in color according to the laws of light and sight.
Space And Time Are Attributes Of Matter,
But They Are Not Matter Itself.
It is necessary to introduce here only a brief and general idea of space, and consequently of time. Space has its origin in the fixity of substance, and, with time, belongs wholly to the material world. Neither space nor time is proper to the mind, nor to the spiritual world; for affection and thought, which are of the mind, are entirely above the limitations of either. Space and time came into existence with the creation of the natural world, yet they are not imponderable matter, as Hegel suggests. The particles of spiritual substances being condensed and becoming fixed, whereby matter is created, introduces space, and the duration of matter introduces time. Space is neither a form of activity nor a substance, but simply an attribute of extension proper to a world of fixed and inert matter.
That space and time are not proper to the mind, nor to the spiritual world, may be observed from the reflection that they are not attributes of thought and affection. Neither space nor time is a measure of affection or thought. Affection and thought act alike through short and long spaces. In the mind, or in the spiritual world as distinguished from the natural world, state takes the place of time, and differences of state exist in the place of spaces. To illustrate; the natural life of a man may be said to be threescore years and ten. This is a measurement made in the terms of nature apart from the states of the mind. From a mental or spiritual standpoint the life of a man is infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, and maturity, or a succession of states. Though a man's life, from the natural standpoint, may be considered to be composed of a number of years, in reality it is a long series of successive states. The time of life is the state, and the time gone through is the difference of state that exists between infancy and maturity. While one is passing through the succession of states from infancy to maturity a fixed rising and setting sun and a fixed earth, making the circuit of the ecliptic, mark off his life into divisions of days, months, and years, and so clothe the state and its succession of qualities with time. Therefore the mind and the world to which the mind properly belongs are above space and time, they not being attributes of it, but solely proper to the material world of fixed matter. So space and time clothe the mind and the spiritual world as an external garment, and are distinctly beneath them as attributes of matter.
Consequently in the spiritual world where there "shall be no night," when "the sun shall no more go down," and "there shall be time no longer," states and changes or differences of state take the place respectively of time and space.
Motion.
Motion is the relative change of place among bodies or particles.
FORCE.
Force Is Never A Substance, But It Is The
Effect Of The Motion Of A Substance.
Force is never a substance, but the measure of motion, or of the endeavor of substance to assume motion or a certain condition. The difficulty encountered by materialistic scientists in clearly distinguishing between matter, force, and motion, is readily accounted for. Having perceived that certain forces are of too high and complex a character to be attributes of the grosser forms of matter, they could not attach them thereto; having denied the existence of the higher degrees of material substance, they are precluded assigning them there; and perceiving that there can not be activity apart from substance, they could not explain them as modes of motion, consequently they have covered their errors in the only manner left to them, namely, by ascribing the majority of forces to the sepulchre of the unknown, as in such cases they are wont.
Force, which in every instance is substance in motion, or the effect of the activity of substance, has its primary origin in the vital action of the Divine Organism of the Creator. He is omnipotent, not that He can transgress His own laws or act against His own nature, but because all power in its beginning resides in Him, and there has its origin. The activity that is in Him is of so complex and high a character that every kind of force, natural or spiritual, unfolds out of it. Force in the Creator is infinite Love.
Natural Forces Are Derived From The Creator
By The Transformation Of Divine Force
In Passing Through Successive Discrete
Degrees Of Substance.
Forces in nature are derived from Love in the Creator according to the same principles that forces in the natural body come from the mind or will. In the Creator force is essentially human, for there it is Divine Human Love. The activity of His Love is communicated to the spiritual atmospheres and to the spiritual world in general, where it, through the organism of the spiritual world, becomes spiritual force; thence it is communicated to the natural world, where through the organism of the natural world it becomes natural force.
Let us illustrate how the forces of Love in the Creator are converted into natural forces. Suppose the case of one desiring to be at a certain place. His affections form the will to go. He loves; that is he desires to effect a bargain, to view a landscape, or to see a friend. Suppose he chooses to go by boat and oar. His desire to be at a certain place leads him to go. Desire propels the oar. Desire or love in the soul acts within the mind. The activity descends, and operates upon the fluids within the brain and nerves of the body. The nerves act upon the muscles, and the muscles act upon the bones; thus the arms move the oars. The origin of the oar's movements is in desire or love. The force of desire is converted into nervous force, then into the force of the muscles, and thence is communicated to the oars. The origin of the force in the mind is the force of Divine Love in the Creator. Divine Love, in which are all forces, actuates the spiritual atmospheres wherefrom there is communication of its activity and forces to the interior substances of the mind. These forces come out and shape themselves in the mind as the forces of love or desire, which become physical forces in the organism of the nerves and of the muscles. Looking where the oar is just lifted from the water, an eddy appears. The force of the oar has formed a whirlpool. Through the organism of the mind, the body, and the instrumentality of the oar, Love-Force in the Creator became love-force or desire-force in the will, thought-force in the understanding, nervous force in the nerves, muscular force in the body, and lastly the force of whirling water. Since, as has been observed, the spiritual world is an organism composed of successive planes of discrete degrees like the mind, and nature is an organism composed of successive planes of discrete degrees like the body, the origin of all natural forces may be seen to be the force of the Divine Love of the Creator, for the force of His Love is communicated from Him to the spiritual world as it is communicated from Him to the human mind; and force passes from the spiritual world to the natural world, as it does from the mind to the body. The spiritual world is the soul of nature just as the spirit is the soul of the body, and it receives its forces from the Creator and communicates them to the natural world on the same principle that the mind receives its forces from the Creator and communicates them to the body. The relation of the spiritual sun, which in essence is the Creator, to the spiritual world is illustrated by the relation of the sun in nature to the natural world. And just as the body derives its forces and form from the soul, so the natural world derives its forces and form from the spiritual world.
The forces of Divine Love or of human desire are not brought down and out in material forms by the change of one substance into another, but through the transmission of activity or endeavor from one degree to another, to effect which the spiritual and the natural creations are suitably organized. Since the organism of the soul and the body is an image of the greater organism of the spiritual and natural worlds, and since they receive and transmit forces alike, the origin of all of nature's forces is fully illustrated by the origin of force in the body.
As creation took place there was a continual decrease in the activity and the expansion of substances until there resulted the ultimate, dead, and passive matter of the earth; and since the ultimate now reaches up to the Creator by successive discrete degrees, the activity of the Creator is carried down until it terminates in grossest matter, that internal things may subsist and be contained. This activity gives each successive plane its own endeavor to realize its use. In the mind that endeavor produces affection, thought, and all mental functions; in the soul it forms the spiritual body and its organs, each with its endeavor to accomplish its use; in plants it produces fruits and seeds; it forms the material bodies of animals, and operates their organs; in the earth it forms minerals; it gives every atom its properties, and imparts to matter an effort to vegetate. The florescence on windows and arborescence in dendrite are from that effort. This effort, which is from the Divine in ultimates, acts in seeds and in the roots of plants, whence they grow.
With this general description of the origin of natural forces, we may pass to the discussion of some of their forms in particular, which will also illustrate the general law.
Gravity Is The Activity Of The Aura.
Gravity is the force exerted by the activity of that interior atmosphere of the earth, which has been named aura. The offices performed by the sun necessitate that there be within and about it a purer atmosphere of higher character than the atmospheres that come down to the earth. The astronomer sees tongues of flame shooting out from the sun. These do not come down to nature; but they impart their activity to atmospheres that reach to the earth, and then subside. The intense agitation of the sun's immediate atmosphere is due to the sun being constituted of so rarefied and pure matter that it is nature's first clothing of the sun of the spiritual world. In the sun originates, through influx from the spiritual world, that activity which is communicated throughout the aura, a universally diffused substance, and manifested as the force of gravity according to the laws heretofore set forth. The drawing force of Divine Love, having passed through the successive degrees of the spiritual world, becomes in the sun and the aura the drawing force of gravity, the activity being of such a form and character as to move all objects toward a common center.
Attraction.
The force of attraction is derived from that of gravity. It is gravity's force received from the aura by particles or bodies of grosser matter, and is sent out again modified by the character of the receiving form. It has the general nature of gravity—that of drawing together. As it is the nature of the Divine Love of the Creator to draw all things to Him, and gravity, the derived force of Divine Love, draws things together, so the smallest particles of grosser matter, acting as from themselves, likewise draw together. Thence originates attraction. Matter, differing in kind, composition, and atomic structure variously receives the force of attraction, and manifests the acquired force according to the receiving form.
Chemical Affinity.
Chemical affinity, the tendency which atoms have in particular instances to unite in one body, is not a new force, but is the effect of the natural working of the forces of attraction. The force of attraction varying in different substances, when different kinds of matter are brought together and under favorable circumstances, the constant pull of the varying attractions causes a tendency to equalization and a consequent commingling of atoms, resulting in a new compound. This tendency, which is but a form of attraction, is called chemical affinity. The heat given off accompanying the formation of a new compound is due to the increased activity of the component atoms produced by the action of the forces of the different substances, and the consequent increased influx of activity from the interior ether and aura into the new and more sensitive conditions. Where heat, electricity, or other agencies are necessary to produce the conditions for the operation of chemical affinity, it is due to the necessity of freeing the atoms from consolidated conditions that they may respond to the forces of attraction.
Atomicity.
Atomicity, considered as the property possessed by a substance for combining with another in definite proportion, or as the number of bonds possessed by a substance for combining with another in definite proportion, or as the number of bonds possessed by a substance, is attraction or chemical affinity operating in particular in the atom. Atomicity is but the way that chemical affinity acts in the atom. As the substance and form of the atom, as well as the force of atomicity which it exerts, must be affected to a greater or less extent by many forces in nature, as those of electricity, magnetism, the atomicity of other substances, and the like, the force of atomicity variously appears; although attraction, from which it is derived, is relatively uniform. It is possible for atomicity to be such because the aura or gravity imbues the atom of matter grosser than itself with force so that the atom acts as of itself on its own plane, and variously manifests the appropriated powers.
Capillarity.
Capillarity, that force by which fluids are elevated or depressed upon the immersion of a solid, is not a distinct force, but ordinary attraction operative under certain conditions. It is due to the fact that the molecules of the fluid lie loosely and are in a state to respond to a slight force. The fluid ascends the sides of an immersed solid because the attraction between the particles of the solid and of the fluid is stronger than the attraction between the particles of water for themselves. Mercury is depressed because the attraction between the particles of the mercury is stronger than the attraction between the mercury and the immersed solid.
Cohesion.
Cohesion is the attraction between the molecules which form the mass. Its great strength, as in brass and other solidified bodies, is due to the ability of the component particles to receive and to appropriate the power of attraction, and to the form of the constituent parts whereby they interlace and lock.
Adhesion.
Adhesion is chiefly distinguished from cohesion by its taking place between surfaces brought into contact.
Osmosis.
Osmosis, the passing of liquids through a porous partition and their diffusion, is due to the capillary attraction in the pores of the partition, and to the attraction which exists between the particles of the fluids. The force of attraction, varying with different fluids, seeks equilibrium, and attains it by diffusion.
The fact that attraction, chemical affinity, atomicity, capillarity, cohesion, and osmosis are but the derived and modified forces of gravity suggests the unity of all forces. The undefined perception of the close relation of all forces has led to the frequent assertion of their unity. This class of forces, being derived from gravity, has its unity in gravity.
Electricity Is An Activity Of The Ether.
There is yet a class of forces, comprehending electricity and its derivative activities, that has not been considered. Those of the ultra-materialistic school, in their attempt to explain what electricity is, regard it as a "condition" of the grosser forms of matter. The electrification of the amber or the glass tube obtained by friction, so far as any explanation is offered, is said to be due to the condition of the amber or of the glass. The assumption that electricity is only a condition of gross matter not only fails to account for and to explain its phenomena, but it is so foreign to reason that no definite conception of the subject can be formed from such a standpoint. The assumption is so intangible to thought that no language is adequate for its expression, hence there is a resort to a nomenclature which diametrically contradicts the assumption. They speak of the "amount" of electricity, "collecting" electricity, "charged" with electricity, the "motion" of electricity, "storing" electricity, and the like. Yet every one knows that if electricity is simply a condition of matter there can be no such thing as "amount" of condition, "collecting" condition, "charged" with condition, "motion" of condition, or "storing" condition. Yet these terms would be proper if electricity were regarded as a substance, or a force proper to a distinct substance. The implied contradiction arises from thinking properly when following the light of intelligence that flows into the eye of the mind, that electricity is really something; but when thought is led by the eye of the body, because the higher substances can not be seen, their existence is denied. Thus the sight of the material eye contradicts the sight of the mind. When the light of the material eye is followed to the exclusion of the light of the mind, which is intelligence, materialism ensues, and culminates in "total ignorance," which is total mental darkness; for the eye of the body does not receive the light of intelligence, but only the light of nature, whence is naturalism and materialism. If our materialistic philosophers would think as accurately as at times they speak, they would experience no difficulty in arriving at a consistent and satisfactory philosophy of causes.
The error of regarding electricity merely a condition of matter may be seen so clearly that there can not be so much as a doubt. Suppose, for the purpose, that electricity is a condition of matter. How, then, can the mere condition of matter, as that of a prime conductor or an electromagnet, operate on a body that is not in actual contact with it, as the prime-conductor does upon the pith balls suspended by threads, or as the electro-magnet does upon the iron filings? The condition of one body can not affect another body unless there is contact of substance or a medium of transference; yet electricity operates through as perfect a vacuum as can be made, without any perceptible variance. This could not be the case if electricity were merely a condition of gross matter. The secret cause of the insistence that it is a condition of gross matter lies in the endeavor to make materialism consistent with itself, for it assumes that matter always existed, at least in an unorganized form; but as organized matter now exists, and substances higher than ponderable matter and its gases are denied, the power to organize must be put in the preëxisting unorganized matter: thus the forces of electricity share the common fate of being regarded as inherent in gross matter, or of being relegated to the regions of the unknown; for if the position is not in all points held, materialism with its self-derived superstructure of false reason and conclusion must fall.
Again, to allow that there are ethereal substances distinctly superior to grosser matter from which matter was derived and wherein its forces originate, is contrary to Evolution, for Evolution does not derive creation from superior things working downward to the end that they may proceed upward, but from the lowest kind of matter struggling upward.
Though it is not the purpose here to explain the particulars of the phenomena of electricity, sufficient may be stated to indicate what electricity is, and something of its nature in general may be given.
All experiments show that electricity is the subject, and grosser matter the object, necessitating that it be something apart from the object of its action. Electricity is as a cause of which its manifestations in grosser matter are effects. Electrical apparatus is made as if electricity were a substance apart from the mechanism. Practically, as in the construction of the dynamo, it is never thought to arrange its parts so as to change the "condition" of the dynamo. The "collection" and "distribution" of electricity is that which is thought of, talked of, and designed. The urgent theorist can hardly suggest that the dynamo is constructed to change its own condition. The fact that electricity will operate upon a magnetic needle in a vacuum, precludes the claim that it is a condition of the needle transferred from the battery to the needle through the air. Communication with the needle must take place by means of a medium more subtile than the air. To explain the entrance of light into a vacuum, the ether is rightly supposed to be of so pure a character as to penetrate grosser matter. The same reasoning explains the operation of electricity in a vacuum and its passage from the sun to the earth. That electricity is the activity of a pure, subtile substance higher than the air and grosser matter, is consistent with all its phenomena, and is the only basis upon which explanations can be approached. It is not necessary to regard it as a substance other than ether, for the more the subject is investigated the more conclusive does it appear that electricity and ether are the same substance; or more accurately expressed, ether is a substance, and electricity is the name of one of its forms of activity. It is because ether is universally diffused and of so pure a character as to penetrate air, earth, and water that electricity may be called into action everywhere.
Ether is the medium of heat and light from the sun; but such heat and light are best explained as electrical effects of the sun's action; or, in other words, they are forms of the activity of ether.
Electrical phenomena are in many ways so associated with the sun's condition as to suggest that it is the great generator of electricity, as is instanced by the electrical disturbance of the atmosphere and the display of the aurora when the sun spots are numerous. It is the sun's forces that lift the waters from the earth in the form of vapor, and give rise to clouds, which being charged with electricity, as is evidenced in lightning, show that heat and light, which are but activities of ether, are intimately associated with electricity. The light produced by the arc lamp is to all appearance like that of the sun, though not so intense. Upon the analysis of a current of electricity, it is found to yield the three great constituents of the sun's influx into nature; namely, heat, light, and power. From the sun there comes the heat to warm the earth, the light to light it, and powers that work in and upon it, rotating it on its axis and impelling it on its orbit. A similar resolution of the current of electricity into its attributes is seen in the common street car, which receives from a copper wire a current of electricity that yields the light to light it, the heat to warm it, and the power to rotate its wheels. Further, it is the common perception of scientists, that electrical action has the same origin as sunlight, as evinced by the experiments from which such conclusions are derived.
Since the ether is a substance that can be so actuated by the sun as to yield heat, light, and force of an electrical nature, the economy of nature forbids that there should be two such substances, and shows that electricity is an activity of ether. The electrical apparatus is a device which actuates the atmosphere of ether after the manner that the sun does, producing analogous effects. Because the sun has electrical effects upon the earth, it is necessary that there be a medium through which its forces are communicated to the earth. This medium is universally acknowledged to be the ether. Then it is clear that the ether is capable of being charged with heat, light, and power and many natural forces that plant and animal life are dependent upon. Experiments with the Cathode rays give evidence of the varied forms of activity of which electricity or ether is capable.
It has been observed how the various forms of attraction have their unity in gravity. Likewise the forces of heat, light, and electricity have their unity in the highest substance of the sun.
In regarding the sun as the origin of natural forces, which are conveyed to the earth by means of the aura and ether, it may seem difficult for substances so refined as these to produce the effects attributed to them; but the difficulty is overcome, in the reflection that grosser matter receives all of its forces therefrom, and consequently that these higher substances not only act upon the body of matter, but they also rule as the forces that give matter its properties. For instance, it may seem impossible for an atmosphere so rare as ether to melt by its electrical forces a bar of brass, but it is not to be conceived that ether seizes the particles of the metal and tears them from mutual embrace as with a pair of pincers, but rather that it affects directly the metal's attraction and thence, as it were in an internal way, overcomes the cohesion; whereupon the particles become loosened, and form a fluid, a gas, or a vapor.
All kinds of electricity are the same as to substance, whether produced by friction, chemicals, or electro-magnets. They differ in their character according to the efficacy of the agency that disturbs the normal condition of the electrical ether, and calls it into action. While they are forms of the activity of the same substance, it would not be contended that the activity is not of somewhat different character in each: that of frictional electricity is the least free and therefore the weakest; that of chemical origin is more free and stronger; and that generated by the dynamo is the most free and the most powerful. Phosphorescent light is due to electrical disturbance caused by the nature of phosphorus.
Magnetism.
Magnetism is only another form of the activity of ether, whether it be in the artificial magnet or in the natural ore. The natural magnet derives its character from the metal being of such a nature as in a degree to receive and to transmit as from itself the general current of electricity that permeates the earth. The magnet derives its forces from the ether perpetually. The forces of the artificial magnet are due to conditions similar to those of the natural magnet being produced in the steel by artificial methods.
Whatever phenomenal properties ponderable or imponderable matter, whether discovered or compounded, may exhibit, in the last analysis they will be found due to the ability of such matter to receive activity from substance of a still higher degree, and to emit that activity transformed by its own organization.
Spiritual Force Is Within Natural Force.
Life flows from the Lord through the inmost into the intermediates or interior things, and through intermediates or interiors into the exterior according to the order in which discrete degrees succeed; and there life stops in the ultimate or exterior: hence it is that all interior things are present together in their ultimates. The successive order in which things come forth gives rise to simultaneous order, in which the inmost remains the center, the intermediates or interiors encompass the center, and exteriors or ultimates are the circumference. This is true not only in general, but in each particular thing. Since all interior things are simultaneously present in their ultimates, it appears that life is in the ultimate, or in nature and its material forms. From such appearances materialistic philosophy is constructed. Scientists have prosecuted research on the plane of continuous degrees of the ultimates, and they have thereby failed to penetrate to interior things of discrete degree. Consequently they derive life as not from the Lord, but from nature, of which they have no other idea than that it is something mechanical. While the fact is that all life is in interiors; and yet not in interiors nor in inmosts, but in the Lord Himself.
In a general view the Lord is the inmost and center, the spiritual creation is the intermediate, and the natural world is the outermost and circumference in which all prior things momentarily subsist in simultaneous order. In looking upon the arm of the workman as he labors, only a unit, the arm, is seen. But within the arm are numerous muscles, and back of these are myriads of nerves, fibers, and fibrillæ, and back of these are thoughts and affections with their countless forms; yet all these successively higher degrees act as one with every movement of the arm. Numerous as they are, superior as they are to the unit that the eye sees, they subsist simultaneously in it, and act as one by it. The arm can not move until the central point, the desire, acts. Nor can any power be manifested in nature that does not likewise come from its center, the Creator. Back of every force in nature, be it but the tiny capillary force, the forces of the planes higher than gross matter act; back of these the forces in all the degrees of the spiritual world are active, and back of these is the First Cause, the Creator, all interior things subsisting in simultaneous order in the ultimate, and acting as one with it. Until this is perceived, no one can have any idea of the wonders of creation other than as something that can not be understood or explained.
- ↑ Spencer, First Principles, 494-495.