The last few years have been remarkable for the diligence with which scientists have scrutinized every phenomena of nature, and the abundance of new facts which have rewarded their researches.

They have also been remarkable for the changes in scientific opinions, which usually are so gradual as to be imperceptible, but which have recently taken on the speed of the earth's solar revolution in their transition from the old to new theories.

The vast body of scientists are seldom a unit in the acceptance of any theory, even of the most fundamental nature. And where there is such diversity of belief each student of nature is ent.i.tled to form his own opinions and beliefs.

But the most pitiable and unfortunate of the one-sided scientists are those who would banish logic from the realms of physics, and who regard a deduction or a theory as an enemy of science; who heap scorn on a.n.a.lytic reason--the highest gift of Deity to man--and who deem the tabulation of dry facts without causes the only purpose of science. Who want science fenced in with a stone wall and separated from religion and philosophy, and the earth cut up into sections and labelled astronomy, chemistry, geology, and so on ad infinitum; as if nature knew anything about astronomy, chemistry or geology, or ever considered anything but the unity and harmony of the whole universe, which includes science, religion and philosophy, one and inseparable, as G.o.d and nature are inseparable.

Mr. Cope Whitehouse, a New York scientist, says of present science: "The only fact established beyond doubt regarding suns and planets is their revolution on their axes, and this is all that is needed to generate light and heat. They are arc dynamos, and each in turn transmits what it receives to its neighbor on the circuit." This is well stated and shows that nine-tenths of the accepted facts and theories of science are mere guesswork, founded upon conjectures of some eminent scientist who was accepted as authority a hundred years ago. And the standard scientific works have propagated them as scientific facts.

It is a fact apparent to all well informed students that astronomy, physics and chemistry at present are in a chaotic condition--that nearly all the scientific facts and theories established for two hundred years are now in a state of uncertainty and are virtually overthrown by recent discoveries.

The recent discovery of radium seems to overturn the rock-ribbed scientific theory of the conservation of energy, and raises many new questions in regard to the nature of light and heat.

Lord Kelvin, recognized as the highest authority, says: "It threatens to overthrow the doctrine of the correlation of forces." If the scientists would accept the electric theory of creation, its explanation would not be so difficult, for radium seems to be a bundle of electric ions or corpuscles which have the power of drawing electricity from the atmosphere, like a miniature dynamo or a galvanic battery, and thus continually renewing itself, so that there is no loss of power and no shrinkage in size or bulk. The scientists may soon be forced by radium and other natural phenomena to accept the electric theory--that electricity and not gravity is the one and only fundamental force in nature.

The recent discovery of the three lines in the spectrum of hydrogen, discovered by Prof. Pickering, of Harvard, may upset the whole theory of the seventy-three elements set forth in our books of chemistry and said to const.i.tute all the elements of the universe. It may prove they are not elements, or at least not primary elements at all, and finally drive the scientists to my theory that there are only three primary elements in the universe, and they are spirit, electricity and matter. That the so-called seventy-three elements are only different combinations of two of the original and primary elements--matter and electricity--and are what Hersch.e.l.l said they looked to be--"manufactured articles."

Prof. Pickering was the first to a.n.a.lyze lightning with the spectroscope and show that hydrogen is a compound substance made up of lines belonging to at least three chemical elements. This recent discovery was a great surprise to scientific men. And it was confirmed and doubly proven by the spectrum in the new star, in the constellation of Perseus, known as Nova Persei, which also shows in the hydrogen there the same lines consisting of at least three chemical elements.

This is new proof by high authority that oxygen, hydrogen and all the so-called elements are--as I have contended for many years--only compound substances, and justifies Prof. Serviss' statement in the New York Journal, that these facts "may revolutionize science and reconstruct chemistry."

The marvelous increase in brilliancy of the star Nova Persei last year, and its sudden shrinkage, all within a few days, and the same being observable almost instantaneously upon the earth, when that star is 3,400 light years distance from the earth according to the accepted speed of light, which is 186,000 miles a second, unsettles the whole question as to the speed of light. It tends to prove that light is instantaneous, as Prof. Wright says gravitation is.

No less an authority than Prof. Simon Newcomb calls the scientific world's attention to this phenomena, and shows it throws doubt on the long-accepted theory as to the speed with which light travels. In his address before the Astronomical Society, December 29th, 1902, he says: "There is an inadequacy in the speed of light to explain the phenomena.

We are forced to the conclusion that there exists in the universe a cause susceptible of transmission with a speed many times that of light."

What cause exceeds the speed of light, which is deemed the swiftest thing in the universe? We know of none. What was it surprised the scientists and came to us with many times the supposed speed of light?

It was light, only light. Then this "inadequacy in the speed of light"

came on double-quick time, and proves that light can travel many times faster than the scientists for two hundred years have declared it could. And this eminent scientist, with cautious diplomacy, does not directly attack the accepted speed of light, but says "there exists a cause" that produces a greater speed than light. But as only light came, did the "cause" bring it or did it come with its own velocity? If a "cause" or unknown force brought it, then we have a new force in nature which the scientists must reckon with. So they must accept the alternative and either change the speed of light or deal with a new and unknown force.

In addition to the above complications, Prof. J. J. Thomson, discovered (1901), the electric ions or corpuscles which is considered a new form of matter and force.

The discovery of these electric ions or corpuscles a thousand times smaller than atoms has produced utter confusion in the scientific world, and outside of the electric theory of creation they can make no possible explanation of them.

The fact is, the scientists are on an island of doubt, in a sea of uncertainty, scanning with telescope, microscope and spectroscope the ocean of foggy knowledge and dubious a.s.sumed facts to find a port of safety.

Their attempts to fix the specific gravity of the sun, and the sun's burning up and shrinkage as its source of heat, and the heat as the life of the planets; their treatment of heat as an ent.i.ty and substance, when it is merely a sensation; their reliance on the spectroscope to indicate heat in distant suns, and their accepting gravity without a cause or an explanation, show the blind for centuries have led the blind in extravagant guessing.

But since they have seen an electric battery and an arc light, they should be ashamed to ever declare "the sun is hotter than any terrestrial furnace," or that it is hot at all. The arc and incandescent lights are object lessons they ought to study, for they will see almost an exact representation of how all light, heat and vital force are created on suns and planets.

They will see two wires, one positive and the other negative, brought together or so near together that in order to complete their electric circuit they must pa.s.s through a little s.p.a.ce of resisting air, which is a non-conductor, and then they burst into light and moderate heat. In the same manner the positive and negative currents of electricity of the sun and earth, without wires, come together in our atmosphere, which is near the earth's surface a dense resisting non-conductor, and in order to complete the circuit they burst into light, heat and vital force and give life and energy to all animal and vegetable organisms. But the heat must be and is generally moderate, as no vegetable or animal life can exist in excessive heat. And as excessive heat means ruin and decay, therefore no burning sun can furnish light or give life and growth to any planet.

Prof. Simon Newcomb, the learned astronomer, says: "The sun is not a solid body, but must be liquid or gaseous, at least at its surface." He gives this singular reason, therefore, that "the sun's rotation at the equator is completed in less time than at a distance on each side of the equator."

I question both the fact and the sufficiency of his reasoning on this point. According to his own statement, the sun revolves at its equator 4,000 miles an hour, or over a mile a second, while it revolves very slowly near its poles and virtually is not in motion at all at its poles.

This rapid motion at the equator and slowness of motion near the centre of the sun is calculated to deceive the eye and make it think it completes its rotation at its equator in less time than at a distance from it, looking down along the slope of the sun's vast circ.u.mference.

This is no evidence, for we see only the moving clouds of light on the outer rim of the sun's atmosphere, ten to twenty thousand miles or more from its surface, and they seem to and do complete their rotation a short time sooner. This they naturally should do. How frail and uncertain is the argument based on such doubtful and a.s.sumed facts?

Thus these wise astronomers claim from this slim, unreliable evidence and the a.s.sumed excessive heat of the sun, that the sun is not a solid body at its surface. Yet the same author rejects this same evidence--that Jupiter is not a solid body--in the following language: "The difference in the time of Jupiter's rotation at the equator and in middle lat.i.tudes is, so far as we yet know, about five minutes. That is to say, the equatorial regions rotate in nine hours and fifty minutes and those in middle lat.i.tudes in nine hours and fifty-five minutes, a difference amounting to 200 miles an hour, a seemingly impossible difference were the surface liquid. We cannot a.s.sume this to be the case without more observations than are yet recorded, as no well defined law of rotation in different lat.i.tudes has yet been made out." Thus this learned astronomer will not a.s.sume for Jupiter what he a.s.sumed for the sun, and weakens and destroys in Jupiter the very same arguments he used to prove the sun was not a solid body at its surface.

This same learned astronomer--and I mention him because he is high authority and has written the most recent work on astronomy--says that, "under the enormous pressure of the earth, continually increasing to the center, the matter composing the inner portion of the earth is compressed to the density of a metal. If the earth were composed of a fluid or even of a substance which would bend no more than the hardest steel, such a motion as that of the earth upon its axis would be impossible."

I accept this as a very reasonable conclusion, and hold the same rule applies to the sun, and that the sun's "enormous pressure, increasing to its center," would compress its inner portion to the density of a metal; and that the sun could not revolve upon its axis and retain its rigidity as it does unless its inner or central portion was as rigid as steel.

And this necessarily means that its surface is about as solid as that of our earth.

Therefore the sun cannot be molten or liquid at its surface, as the scientific guessers have prognosticated. As they have guessed wrong about nine-tenths of the time, this is one of the nine hundred bad guesses.

Lord Kelvin, our wisest scientist, a few years ago estimated that our earth, only fifty miles below its surface, was a molten ma.s.s of fiery metal. Now, Simon Newcomb says it has the density of metal, and is as hard as steel, and I think Lord Kelvin has changed his opinion and will agree with him.

Thus the h.o.a.ry-headed superst.i.tion that the center of our earth was a molten ma.s.s is pa.s.sing away, and it will be the same as to the heat, and molten condition of the sun--it will be relegated to the plutonian shades of ignorance and superst.i.tion.

Because there were numerous volcanoes, geysers and hot springs scattered over the crust of the earth and in some deep mines there were hot sections, the scientists jumped at the conclusion that the inner portions of the earth were a molten, fiery ma.s.s. This was to accord with their false theory of a red-hot molten sun, and their a.s.sertion that the earth had its inception as a fire mist, and rolling ball of white-heated gases. But the scientists have changed their theories rapidly in recent years. They are just beginning to discover that there are zones of heat and cold beneath the earth's surface just as there are above its surface. That there are electric currents of heat in volcanic regions and mineral and mining sections, and none in others, and even in the same mines there are warm and cold sections.

Take the Cornstalk mines in Nevada. A section 2,300 feet below the surface is very warm, while another section 1,200 deeper--being 3,500 feet below the surface--is very cool. Surely Lord Kelvin would now laugh at himself to think he made such a calculation of the heat of the earth and said it was a molten ma.s.s of fire fifty miles below its surface. And he even said it was so hot seven miles down in the earth that water could only remain or exist in a state of vapor.

Ye G.o.ds! When so great a prophet makes such mistakes, surely the little prophets that walk in his footsteps ought to "go 'way back and sit down," and cease talking about the heat of the sun.

They should quit telling us the Beneficent Creator is burning up 18,000,000 of his most magnificent and beautiful worlds to heat his little, insignificant planets. They estimate our sun burns up thirty quintillion cubic feet of itself annually, and 18,000,000 of suns are doing the same, making the equivalent of a world destroyed every year and a sun every decade.

These statements are so unreasonable and appalling they refute themselves. I mean no disrespect for these learned but misguided scientists who have for two hundred years built all their theories on heat, which Langley now says truthfully is nothing but a sensation. Thus they built the universe on a sensation, and to sustain the old traditions they want to keep it there. They said the earth began in heat, that it was a ball of fire a few miles below its surface, and the suns were great flaming furnaces burning up with quenchless fire. They made the Great Creator a fire demon and world destroyer.

If Prof. Parker's testimony is to be relied on, nine-tenths of them waste their time on useless calculations and data. They have a wonderful faculty of putting the horse before the cart. For example, Prof. Huston of Princeton, says. "Electricity is being constantly produced during the phenomena of every day life. It is produced by chemical action, differences of temperature, the motion of conductors and magnets and the various physical and chemical processes that occur during the life and growth of plants and animals." Now, this is misleading, because it states facts backward. It is not true that electricity is being produced in the sense he uses it by these phenomena. These phenomena are being produced by electricity. They are the manifestations of electricity. Electricity is the cause; they are the sequence or results, and he should say electricity is manifested by these things. The same author says: "The earth is to be considered as one huge magnet." This is very true, and as a great magnet does not need to be hot to generate electric life-giving energy, no astronomer ought to look at an electric light or an electric battery without blushing that he ever called the sun hot.

Electricity can be generated without burning coal or wood or the use of a furnace. The turbine wheels that are turned by the waters of Niagara Falls, without heat or furnace, can generate a hundred thousand horse power.

The placing of two or three pieces of metal one above another with a moist substance between them will create a voltaic battery. And mines of two or three kinds of metals or ores, when clay or any soft substance between them become moist, will create a battery that will tear up the earth for miles and produce a geyser or an earthquake.

Prof. Proctor agrees with Langley in rejecting the nebular hypothesis, when he says: "Under the continual rain of meteoric matter the earth, sun and planets are growing. And the formation of the solar system resulted from the aggregations of vast meteoric and cometic systems rotating through s.p.a.ce has greater support from what is now going on, and is far more satisfactory than the nebular hypothesis of La Place.

The nebular hypothesis affords no explanation of the strange variety of size in the planetary system, variations of inclination among the planets, or the retrograde and almost perpendicular motion of the satellites of Ura.n.u.s and Neptune. A general explanation of all these matters is at once suggested by their origin from aggregations of meteoric systems." This agrees with the electric theory of creation.

All the Newton-La Place theories of gravitation and the nebular hypothesis are now called in question by our wisest astronomers. And one of them has pointed out two hundred instances in which gravitation is set aside and ignored in the motion of the heavenly bodies. Such instances as the runaway stars, the retrograde motion of satellites, the repulsion of comets from the sun, and so on ad infinitum. And as to the outer planets, Ura.n.u.s, Neptune, Jupiter and Saturn, being older than the inner planets and being thrown off first from the vast whirling sun nebula of La Place's imagination, all modern astronomers either call it in question or reject it, as a fallacy disproved by more recent facts and discoveries. It is reasonable to suppose that there are zones of electric energy in s.p.a.ce in each solar system which may help to hold and keep each planet in its...o...b..t, just as there are belts and currents of electricity in the atmosphere and outer crusts of earth and planets. And the sun may send a different kind of electricity to each planet and receive a different kind from each planet.

Abbe Moreau, the noted French astronomer, in supporting Col. du Ligondes, who opposes the La Place theory of the formation of the solar system, in a recent article, April, 1902, undertakes to show that Mars is not older than the earth, as held by the La Place nebular theory, but on the contrary is much younger. His arguments entirely demolish the nebular theory that the outer planets were thrown off in successive rings of nebula from the sun, and therefore the outer planets are the older. In addition, Flammarion seems to take the same position, for he says: "In Mars two moons revolve rapidly in the heavens in opposite directions, which seems to refute the nebular hypothesis." These all tend to support my electrical theories, and relegate the Newton-La Place theories to the shades of obsolete fancy and mistaken conjecture.

Flammarion also says: "The earth in its...o...b..t describes a spiral, and since its creation has never pa.s.sed twice through the same point in s.p.a.ce." This also supports my electrical theory of globular spheres and spiral motion in s.p.a.ce to accord with the laws of electro-magnetic energy. This spiral shape of the earth's...o...b..t, I contend, and not the tilting of its poles, creates the changes of seasons. Its poles seem to tilt or change because the earth pa.s.ses above and below the line of the ecliptic, and in its spiral circuit has the sun above the earth part of the year, when it is summer in the north temperate zone, and below it part of the year when it is summer in the south temperate. And the elliptical shape of the earth's...o...b..t is, I contend, caused by the sun being in motion, which lengthens the circle of the orbit in the direction the sun is traveling and causes the earth to be four million miles nearer it when it turns in front of it, and the same distance farther from it when it turns in the same direction the sun is traveling. It seems strange that no astronomers have thought of these things.

Sir Robert Ball said recently: "The most important advance in astronomy was Prof. Keeler's discovery of nebulae in such enormous numbers, and the fact that most of them were in a spiral shape." This spiral shape accords with the law of electro-magnetism and sustains the theory of electrical creation of suns and planets. Matter could not be gathered under any other law.

In addition to the contradictions and complications of science already mentioned, scarcely a fundamental principle or concept remains. One of the eternal indisputable postulates of science was that "two bodies cannot occupy the same s.p.a.ce at the same time." But that is exploded, and we know they do and we have proof of it every day. There are numerous instances; I will mention only one: Twenty-eight electric currents can pa.s.s over the same wire at the same time, fourteen one way and fourteen the other, and occupy the same s.p.a.ce and do not interfere with one another.

Scientists used to put great stress on solid matter, and their primary division of matter was into solid, liquid and gaseous. They have recently discovered there is no such thing as solid matter. What they termed solid matter is but the outer and visible sh.e.l.l of invisible forces. That not a single atom of matter touches another atom of matter; but there is a s.p.a.ce between them, and the atoms revolve around each other in very much the same way as the earth revolves around the sun, thus showing that the laws of electro-magnetism are the same in atoms as in worlds.

The scientists only discovered the non-solidity of matter since the use of the X-rays, and the Crookes tube, and they have been puzzled ever since to know what holds the atoms or molecules together in organized form. They undertake to say it is gravity, but gravity is weight, and atoms have no weight, and they are forced to look to electricity and magnetism to solve the question. And the electric theory gives the only rational explanation, which is, that all things are held together by magnetic attraction or cohesion under the laws of organic affinity. The molecules of iron, stone and marble do not touch each other, but their magnetic attraction is stronger than that of wood or hay; that is why they have more solidity, strength and endurance. Science said we could not look through a grindstone or any solid matter, but we can. We can look through men, grindstones, iron and brick walls, and if we could turn on sufficient electric power we could look through the earth and take photographs of Chinamen on the other side of the globe.

Prof. Serviss, in the New York Journal of October 1st, 1902, calls attention to "the remarkable growth of speculation concerning electric or electro-magnetic influences exercised over the earth by the sun and planets," and says: "They have been seized upon by astrological soothsayers to bolster up their pretended science."

As I have never taken any interest in astrology, but have taken great interest in the electro-magnetic power of the sun, I am surprised at the obtuseness that would undertake to blend them together when they have no scientific relation.