RECENT ELECTRICAL DISCOVERIES AND APPLIANCES, WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, ETC.
It is said facts are now being discovered and physical theories
developed the ultimate result of which may be the explanation of the
mysterious phenomena presented by the corona of the sun, the tails of
comets, the aurora, terrestrial magnetism and its variations, nebulae
and the zodiacal light. First, these facts are being established in
connection with the pressure exerted by light which was pointed out by
Maxwell and deduced by him from his electro-magnetic theory of light,
which is, that when a pencil of light impinges perpendicularly on an
opaque object, it produces a pressure on the surface of that object.
This pressure is determined by the condition that if the object were set
in motion with the velocity of light and the force against it kept up,
the power to keep up the pressure would be equal to that carried by the
ray of light.
Second, that particles smaller than atoms, called corpuscles or ions,
are thrown off with high velocity from the intensely heated bodies. The
sun, they claim, being such a body, it follows that such ions must be
shot out from it. On this theory it is held that the explanation of a
comet's tail is simple. The comet evaporates on the side next to the sun
and, there being no pressure to hinder its expansion, it begins in
flying off in all directions. It condenses into very minute particles
which, by reason of the impulsion or pressure of the sun's rays, are
thrown in the opposite direction from the sun.
My explanation has been, without all this detail, that it was the same
law of electric repulsion which drove the comet off and prevented it
falling into the sun, which also drove the comet's tail in an opposite
direction from the sun.
This solution of the comet's tail does not solve the greater one of the
repulsion of the comet itself. The pressure of the electric ions or
corpuscles might force the tail away, but a greater electric force from
the sun drives off the comet.
Prof. J. J. Thomson and Arrhenius, a Swedish physicist, have by
experiments discovered and elaborated the manner and principles on which
the ions or corpuscles operate. Arrhenius discovered that these ions
were conductors of electricity and why, and Prof. Thomson discovered
each corpuscle had the same electric charge as an ion of hydrogen, and
that each must be smaller than a hydrogen atom--in fact only a
thousandth part of it.
And here for the first time in the world's history science tells us
there are bodies smaller than an atom--a thousand times smaller than an
atom. We are told an atom is a thousand times smaller than the particles
of invisible air we breath; now we have an ion a thousand times smaller
than the atom. Surely the scientists have at last reached my theory of
the fourth state of matter which I call the electro-magnetic. In fact
these ions or corpuscles may be electricity itself or the atoms of
electricity which science has at last discovered. And streams of these
infinitesimal ions may constitute the swift and invisible currents of
electricity which produce all natural phenomena. Prof. Blake, of the
Kansas University, says: "Crookes called his cathode streams the fourth
form of matter, but first to-day is such a state proven. Now, we must
recognize at the beginning of this twentieth century a new form of
matter. We have to deal with negatively charged particles so small that
they have free paths of motion even among the atoms of substances."
As electric currents have free paths of motion even among the atoms of
matter, these ions or corpuscles must be one form of electricity and
must be both positive and negative, though the negative ions attract the
most attention. I am glad to find science coming to my conclusions as to
the fourth state of matter. But instead of calling it electric ions,
electrons or Thomson corpuscles, it should be named electro-magnetic
ether. It may be that science has at last discovered what electricity
is, and that it consists of these infinitesimal corpuscles. Prof. Blake
says: "These ions or corpuscles shatter into charged gases the molecules
of gases and ionize the gases and make them conductors of electricity;
they raise gases to incandescence and make them light-giving sources;
they form nuclei about which matter will aggregate and condense; they
seem to explain some of the most stupendous and perplexing problems in
cosmic physics--such as the cause of the sun's corona, the spread of the
comet's tail, the source of the meteors, the fantastic play of the
auroras, whence the electric displays of our atmosphere, the after-glow
of the setting sun, and the why of the zodiacal light."
He says the corpuscles seem to be solving the big problems of the
heavens, and adds: "The corpuscles become luminous when impinged upon by
electric waves; and waves of light, which are electro-magnetic
disturbances, must move them, and light will be produced and be
scattered in all directions as if reflected from minute particles of
ordinary matter. This may account for the glow of the nebulae, and the
zodiacal light. These corpuscles, being admitted into the moist air of
our earth, form nuclei of condensation and drops are formed; and the
growth of the high, fleecy clouds finds its beginning around these
corpuscles. They also strike our equatorial region; there they are
influenced by the earth's magnetic forces and deflected towards the
poles, and near the poles they reach gases dense enough to become
luminous by their impact and show the fantastic colorings of the aurora.
"Our atmosphere lies, then, like a great insulating sheet between
conducting layers--the surface of the ocean and the upper air. In the
ether of this intermediate insulating region electric waves may be set
up to be propagated as signals in straight lines in all directions. When
wireless telegraphy first reached out timidly into space, we all said
its currents would leave the earth's surface within a short distance,
for they went out from the earth's surface in straight lines; but as
they extended farther and farther they seemed to bend around the earth
and to follow its curvature. Hertz, who discovered the electric waves
which Marconi now so successfully uses in wireless telegraphy, showed us
in 1887 that conductors reflected these waves, and the ocean's surface
sent them back when they impinged upon it.
"Now, with upper air layers proven conductors, the electric waves must
be deflected from above as well and bent downward to follow the earth's
curvature."
And thus electric signals, silent but all pervading, will before long
circle our globe by their repeated deflections through this great
speaking tube around the earth. The mysterious negative corpuscles, more
minute than our smallest atoms, thus are themselves the very basis of
the practicability of wireless telegraphy, our latest invention. Nay,
more, may not these ions or corpuscles be atoms of electricity, and,
being a thousand times smaller than atoms of matter, impregnate them
with positive and negative force?
Inventors have been endeavoring to send messages over long distances
without wires ever since the first tests were made in 1896. Only
recently Marconi has succeeded in sending them across the Atlantic, two
thousand miles through the air.
The distance to which messages may be transmitted and received depends
on the amount of electric energy employed, the frequency of oscillation
in the radiating system, the length of the electric waves emitted, the
height of the perpendicular wires from the ground, the medium through
which the waves are propagated, the sensitiveness of the coherer or
receiver, and the precision with which the instruments are adjusted.
Long electric waves are radiated to greater distances than shorter ones,
and much depends on the syntonic system, or tuning of the instrument, so
as to communicate with any selected receiver to the exclusion of all
others.
An electric generator supplies the source of electricity for operating
an induction coil to transform the low pressure into an alternating
current of high pressure. This charges the wire suspended from a mast
and the wire leading to the earth to a sufficient potential to cause the
opposite charges of electricity to rush together, thus forming a spark
or disruptive discharge through a small air gap; as a result high
potential currents surge to and fro through the wires hundreds of
thousands of times per second.
These high potential currents radiate electric waves which are
propagated as light waves and spread out in every direction. It is said
the whole process of transmitting and receiving wireless messages is not
unlike to the emission of light and its reception by the retina of the
eye.
The reception of these waves is by means of a vertical wire similar to
that used in transmitting, the difference being the wires at the
terminals are connected with metal filings inclosed in a small glass
tube called the coherer instead of the spark gap. The electric waves
impinge on the elevated wire and are converted into electric
oscillations, which act on the filings, and an auxiliary circuit
registers the impulses on a ribbon of paper in readable Morse dots and
dashes. The higher the vertical or mast wires and the greater the number
of wires, the greater the wave length and the farther the distance
transmitted.
Marconi in his first Atlantic tests employed kites and balloons to carry
the vertical wire so that long electric waves could be obtained. Since
then he has carried his wires on high masts, as at Poldhu, Glace Bay,
and Wellfleet Station. The Marconi companies have equipped six stations
in the United States, five in Hawaii, twenty in Great Britain, one in
Belgium and one in France. There are eighteen ocean steamers, thirty-two
British-men-of-war and several Italian and American warships which have
Marconi installations. Marconi says: "There are thirty-five land
stations, twenty-one liners and eighty-five warships equipped with
Marconi apparatus. Land stations cost $1,000, and ship equipment, $700.
Trans-Atlantic stations cost $100,000 each."
Wireless telegraphy is the most recent miracle of electricity, and shows
it to be the cosmic energy of the universe. Science stumbled upon it.
And in the same way, Sir Wm. Crookes, in a recent interview, says:
"Science may some day stumble upon the soul. Men of science believe more
than they can express, spiritually as well as physically." He will not
prophesy, but said with ominous import: "If you had come to me a hundred
years ago do you think I should have dreamed of foretelling the
telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it. I use it every day, but
I don't understand it. Think of that little, stretched disk of iron at
the end of a wire repeating not only sounds, but words, and with the
most delicate and illusive inflections of tone which separate one human
voice from another."
Mr. Peter Cooper Hewitt, says the Electrical Review, has invented a new
apparatus which it is said will make a revolution in the method of
sending wireless telegraph messages. The device consists of a glass
globe about ten inches in diameter, having two tubes containing mercury
sealed in the bottom of the vessel.
This apparatus acts, as a powerful and effective interrupter and takes
the place of the spark gap now used in discharging the condensers for
setting up electrical waves. It enables powerful, rapid and continuous
oscillations to be set up in the antenna, or sending mast, used in
transmitting wireless messages, and not only enables messages to be sent
over very great distances with ease, but permits secrecy to be
maintained, which heretofore has been impossible.
The operation of this device depends upon two new phenomena in physics
which Mr. Hewitt has discovered in the course of his researches. The
first is the resistance of the mercury in the apparatus to a passage of
current until a high potential has been applied; the second is the
disappearance of this resistance after this high voltage has been
reached.
The effect of these two phenomena is to permit a condenser to be charged
to a high potential and then, by the disappearance of the resistance of
the interrupter, to discharge it very rapidly. The result of this action
is to set up violent and rapid current impulses in the circuit
containing the condenser, and thence in the sending wire. The current
impulse, being very powerful, will enable messages to be sent to great
distances, and as the number of oscillations per second can be
controlled, this permits of selective signaling. The number of impulses
can be made very high--above a million a second. The device is
inexpensive and durable. It is considered a great contribution to
wireless telegraphy and establishes it on a commercial basis, and
selective signaling is solved and trans-Atlantic transmission will be
easy.
Radium is a rare metal recently discovered, having remarkable qualities
and very difficult to obtain. It is a constituent of pitchblende, which
is found in many places, but only in a small way. So far all that has
been procured has come from a mine in Cornwall. A ton of pitchblende
carries about 15½ grains of radium and it is very difficult to extract.
A grain is estimated to be worth $200,000 and a kilogram is worth about
$2,000,000. There is only about one pound of radium in the world. It is
estimated to be worth $1,000,000.
Radium was discovered by M. and Mme. Curie, in France, after they had
familiarized themselves with the remarkable properties of uranium and
polonium. Radium has many curious and inexplicable qualities. It
continually emits heat and light without combustion, without chemical
changes of any kind, and without any change in its bulk, appearance or
molecular structure, which remains identical after many months.
It is so powerful in the energy it constantly hurls forth as to entail
many dangers in handling it. Sir Wm. Crookes says in describing it:
"Probably if half a kilogram were in a bottle on that table it would
kill us all. It would most certainly destroy our sight and burn our
skins to such an extent we could not survive. The smallest bit placed on
one's arm would produce a blister it would take months to heal." It also
emits electrons with a velocity so great that Prof. Crookes estimates
"one gram is enough to lift the whole of the British navy to the top of
Ben Nevis, and I am not quite certain that we could not throw in the
French fleet as well."
It has such surprising properties that Lord Kelvin was moved to say of
it that, "it threatens to overthrow the correlation of forces," which is
the rock-ribbed, foundation postulate of science. It seems already to
have unsettled the accepted theory of light, and after the experiments
of the Russian scientists who are now investigating it, Profs.
Mendelief, Yigooff and Borgruan, the result may give us new scientific
theories and a new nomenclature.
Radium tends to confirm my electric theory of creation, it also seems to
aid the Thomson corpuscles hypothesis, and will open the way to new and
important discoveries.
My opinion from very brief thought on the subject is that radium is in
its nature a form of electric energy solidified, and may be a bundle of
Thomson corpuscles or electrons combined and solidified by some process
not yet understood. It is in the nature of an electric dynamo, and draws
its constant supply of electricity from the air. It is plain that it is
an electric substance and manifestation, for, as Prof. Crookes says, "it
emits electrons with a velocity so great one gram would lift the British
navy to the top of a mountain, and he is even willing to throw in the
French fleet." If he were not a great scientist, I should say he was
exaggerating like an amateur. Radium is at present a great scientific
puzzle. It seems to destroy the present theory of light and the
conservation of energy and the so-called attraction of gravitation by
reason of its marvelous energy and wonderful qualities.
But I stand with the scientists on the doctrine of the conservation of
energy and the correlation of forces, and do not believe radium
seriously threatens it, though Lord Kelvin had much reason to say so;
and it is a puzzle yet unsolved as to how it maintains its energy
without diminution of its force and bulk. I see but one explanation, and
that is, that it renews itself constantly by drawing electric energy
from the air, as a battery or dynamo draws it, and thus retains its
marvelous power unimpaired.
I hold that energy, like matter, is a substance and can neither be
created nor destroyed. It is impossible to create a molecule out of
nothing or to reduce a single particle of energy to nothing. Energy,
like matter, can be changed from one form to another or from one place
to another, but all matter is one matter in its elemental form, and all
energy is from one original energy, which I hold to be electricity. All
matter is the aggregate manifestations of the invisible atom, and all
energy is the varied manifestations of the one ultimate and only force
in nature--electricity.
The transformation of energy, such as falling water, expanding steam,
heat, light, vital force, and so-called gravitation, are all from the
same electric elemental force, and this energy is without increase or
decrease and is known as the conservation of energy. The definition
given of electricity by Atkins in his work on electricity, which says,
"it is a molecular mode of motion," is an absurdity, for motion is an
effect produced by a cause, and all motion is caused by electric energy.
And the mode of motion is simply the manner in which the law of
electro-magnetism operates. Thus there may be an electric law yet
undiscovered by which a substance like radium may draw electric energy
from the air and keep its force and bulk unimpaired for many months, or
perpetually.
But radium raises many other questions affecting the nature of light and
heat, such as how such great heat and light can be condensed into so
small a compass and evolved with such wonderful power.
Prospecting for valuable metals by electricity has been recently
introduced in Wales with remarkable success. In the Cwnystwyth mines in
Cornwall new and valuable deposits of ore and blende were located. These
mines have been worked for over fifteen hundred years, and much of this
time the search for additional lodes has been going on; yet this
electrical device accomplished in a few hours what fifteen centuries of
search failed to discover.
By the electric method of prospecting a current of high
potential--30,000 volts or more--is employed to energize a piece of
ground supposed to contain mineral. The current is taken from the
terminals of the generating coil to metal rods or electrodes which are
pushed an inch or two into the earth. From these distributers the lines
of force spread out in both vertical and horizontal planes and may be
made to extend over an area of several miles.
Their presence is detected by means of a delicate telephonic receiver
connected with a second pair of metallic rods, which are stuck into the
earth in any desired position. When the receiver is silent or gives only
faint sounds, it indicates that the lines of force are deflected from
their normal course. This reveals the presence of metallic masses in the
earth, and, by moving the electrodes about, the position and area of an
ore deposit may be determined with considerable accuracy. In new and
unknown ground the operator would place his distributing electrodes
about 200 yards apart, and remove his receiving instrument to a distance
of half a mile or more. If his general knowledge of geological formation
led him to believe that the metallic veins, if there were any, would run
generally north and south, he would place his electrodes east and west,
and if he found the electrical distribution normal he might conclude
that the ground contained no mineral.
This remarkable electrical system for detecting the mineral deposits
beneath the surface of the earth will doubtless be tested and perfected
until man will be able without digging into the earth to ascertain the
mineral deposits at any point beneath its surface. It may not always
determine if they may be profitably worked, but in many mining regions
it will be a blessing, and save much unprofitable work and sad
disappointment.
Electrically heated cooking and laundry apparatus is now used in Germany
and other countries. And there are farms on large German estates which
are run by electricity. The Guednau farm in Eastern Prussia consists of
450 acres, and its dairy handles one thousand gallons of milk daily. It
is lighted by electricity, has an electrical churn and feed-cutting
machine, water-pumping apparatus, incandescent lamps, threshing and
grist mills, saw mill, automatic plough and electrical agricultural
machines, all run by charged batteries and a fifty-horse power
stationery engine moving two dynamos. Thus farming is made attractive
and free from drudgery, and is run like a machine by the electric
current. Electricity is used not only to run some farms, but also to
hasten and increase the growth of farm products by running wires a few
inches beneath the surface to energize the soil.
The Commercial Cable Company announce that their ocean cable connections
will be complete with Manila, in the Philippines, by the 4th of July of
this year, 1903, and that on that day they will telegraph around the
world in forty seconds. What a miracle of wonders! Fifty years ago the
speediest communication from point to point was by swift horsemen making
fifty miles a day. Now the round earth's antipodes is only forty seconds
apart by reason of electric appliances.
So wonderful has been the growth of electrical appliances and utilities
that Prof. H. B. Shaw, of the Missouri University, in a recent lecture,
said: "In twenty years the electric light industry has developed from
nothing to the manufacture of over 100,000 incandescent lamps per day.
Ninety-five per cent. of the street railways in this country are
electrically operated. Yet this industry was cradled in Kansas City,
Mo., only about twenty years ago."
This was when I first had my attention drawn to electricity, for I saw
the building of that line on East Fifth street, in that city. That and
the lighting of the gas by an electric flash from a human body caused
me to investigate electric phenomena and formulate the electric theory
of creation.
Prof. Shaw said: "The latest development in long distance power is in
California, where ten thousand horse power is transmitted two hundred
miles from where it is generated with a loss of only ten per cent. of
power in the line. Ten thousand horse power is sufficient to raise a
million tons two inches per minute."
What a miracle that such power can pass along a wire no larger than a
child's finger, and exert such force two hundred miles from where it is
generated! Nothing but the invisible creative cosmic force of the
universe could accomplish such a seeming miracle.
But some scientists are so irrational as to say this force is merely the
pressure, twist or whirl of the ether, when it is plain that if the
ether were as rigid as steel it could not exert such force and power.
And as to it being a derivative force derived from the coal, wood or
sun, it is plain it is the same force and the original, ultimate,
creating evolving and only force in the physical universe.
There has been much labor and money expended in endeavoring to perfect a
balloon or airship, which would be safe and could be directed through
the air at will in any course desired. Electricity has been used as the
steering power and aluminum, because of its light weight, for the
frame-work. The French especially have given great attention to what
they call the dirigible balloon, but no great amount of success has been
achieved and, in my opinion, never will.
In the very nature of things, no safe airship can ever be built. It was
not intended that man should travel or carry burdens through the upper
regions of the air. First, because the law of the earth's electric
attraction forbids it. Second, because the sudden and powerful wind and
electric currents that pervade the upper regions of the atmosphere are
sure to bring ruin and death, sooner or later, and no human power can
prevent it.
The balloon or airship is only a dangerous toy which can be useful
perhaps in times of war to spy out the enemy, but utterly useless
otherwise, and which means death in a very short time to all who risk
their lives in its treacherous power.
There have been two recent and striking examples of this in the case of
the two distinguished experts in Paris who thought they had built
airships that could overcome the powers of nature, and while proudly
exhibiting them to their family and friends were hurled to a sudden and
fearful death.
The many deaths and narrow escapes from these useless and dangerous toys
make it almost certain that no sane man would risk his life in one of
them, though there were a thousand at his command free of expense.
Of all the useless follies on which inventive genius and money have been
expended, the airship is the worst, because if millions of the most
perfect ones the imagination of man can conceive were built and offered
free, no prudent man would risk his life or his goods in their
treacherous care. The powers of nature, and what the ancients called the
demons of the air, forbid that the airship should ever be anything more
than a dangerous toy for reckless persons, who wish to jeopardize their
lives.
Great efforts have been made, much money expended and many lives lost in
futile attempts to find the North Pole, which when discovered may appear
like any other ice field, mountain glacier, or snowdrift of the Arctic
Circle. But the thirst for knowledge and the love of adventure and
exploration where no financial reward can be expected is creditable to
humanity, and shows that the love of knowledge is sometimes above that
of sordid gain. The struggle for two centuries has been to reach the
North Pole, and it has been approached as near as 700 miles; but recent
reports indicate that conditions are more favorable for reaching the
South Pole; and a French expedition outfitted this year for the North
Pole have changed their destination to the South Pole. One or both poles
are likely to be discovered in a few years.
There have been many scientific expeditions to various parts of our
globe for astronomical observations. One recently sent to Chili from the
Lick Observatory should command especial interest since its object is by
the study of the southern stars to ascertain where the earth and the
solar system is going. We know our sun system is moving swiftly towards
the north, in the direction of the stars Vega or Alpha Lyra, at the rate
of more than forty-three thousand miles an hour. Each year we are more
than three hundred million miles nearer these stars, unless they also
are in motion in the same direction. The southern stars have been
studied much less than the northern stars, and the testimony of both is
desired to determine the direction of the mysterious voyage of the sun
and its family of worlds through the unexplored regions of space.
We have been watching the stars in front of us for many years, and will
now give some attention to the stars in our rear to confirm or disprove
many astronomical hypotheses.
It is like getting back to anti-Copernican times to have Dr. Alfred
Russell Wallace, in his flights of speculative astronomy, say that, "our
solar system is central in the universe and that this earth of ours is
probably the only planet on which humanity has been developed." In a
recent article he undertakes to establish this ancient fallacy. It is
very doubtful whether the universe has a general center, but if it has
it should be plain to our learned astronomer that as our system is
moving through space in a straight line at the rate of 420,000 miles per
day it could not occupy a central position very long. The only means we
have to judge of the inhabitability of other worlds is by analogy, which
is the foundation of all scientific hypotheses. The likeness in form,
substance and electric power of suns and planets to our own world leads
to the natural conclusion that all suns and worlds are inhabitated. In
fact any other assumption is contrary to all cosmological reasoning and
all analogy to be found in universal nature. Nature nowhere bestows vast
substance and power without commensurate results of life and growth, and
it is reversing all the laws of reason, analogy and cosmic experience to
hold to the contrary. We must give up this egotistic assumption that our
little world is the only living world in this vast universe, or that it
is only one of a few living worlds.
There are no dead worlds or planets or burning suns in this electric
universe, and we are not "the only pebble on the boundless beach" of
creative worlds. We have the same electric fire in our bodies that is in
the sun, and it neither burns us nor causes us to shrink up annually, as
the scientists say the sun does. It is not the consumer of life, but the
giver of life, and the continual life energy of the universe.
During a recent eclipse of the moon, Prof. W. H. Pickering, of Harvard
Observatory, ascertained that the bright spot around the crater Linne on
the surface of the moon grows considerably larger when deprived of the
heat of the sun. For many years it has been noticed that the Linne area
has been gradually changing and many theories regarding the causes have
been advanced.
Prof. Pickering is inclined to the belief that it is hoar frost or ice.
This tends to confirm my theory that the moon has an atmosphere and some
moisture which is mostly hidden in its perforated volcanic surface.
Alexander Young, an astronomer of Laport, Ind., announced on February
20th, 1903, that, "from observations made by him, he is confident that
the sun is inhabited; that with his instruments he has seen on the sun's
surface mountain sides with great and precipitous rocks which glow with
prismatic colors, mingled with the greenness of perennial vegetation."
I was not expecting this scientific proof so soon, but I am satisfied
that the inhabitants, the mountains and the perennial vegetation are
there; and if he has succeeded in magnifying the rays of light from the
vast openings in the sun's photosphere sufficiently he can and did see
them.
I am a firm believer in the inhabitability of the sun, and that it is a
perfected, self-luminous world--a world like our world, only vastly
larger and more prolific in life and power. As it is the source of all
life and power to the planets, it must be the creator of all life to its
celestial inhabitants.
Profs. Proctor and Herschell seem to believe that most of the heavenly
bodies are inhabited. Sir Wm. Herschell went so far as to contend for a
time that the sun was inhabited or inhabitable because, he said, the
heat of the sun was in its photosphere, which was far out in space and
many miles from the sun's surface, and that there were cool clouds and
layers of atmosphere, he thought, between the heat and the sun's surface
which made the body of the sun cool enough for animal and vegetable life
and human habitation. He changed his mind, however, in a few years and
held the heat of the sun was too hot to allow anything in nature to keep
such excessive heat from its surface, and besides, the law of the
conservation of forces just coming into scientific prominence then
forbid it.
Prof. Proctor, says: "I adopt the principle of Sir Wm. Herschell that
analogy is the chief and the best guide for the student of astronomy.
That general resemblance of structure indicates a general resemblance in
the purpose which the celestial bodies are intended to subserve is
evident when we compare the stars with our sun or with each other. Some
time or other those worlds have been or will be the abode of intelligent
creatures seems to be a fair conclusion from what we know of their
structure."
Deity does no irrational things, nature is always logical and
consistent, and where there is such vast resources of substance and
power bestowed, as in our sun and the eighteen millions of suns of the
universe, it was not for the purpose of making bonfires and blazing
furnaces of them. But they were created for vaster, more perfect
theatres of intelligent life and activities. Besides, burning them up
could bestow no benefit on the planets; the heat could not reach them,
and if it could it is only a sensation, and sensation cannot produce
vegetable or animal life, or control the earth's motion.
One of the greatest of modern discoveries is that heat is not a
substance but a sensation, produced by electric currents. So that
eighteen millions to one hundred millions of suns do not need to be
burning up to furnish electric currents to their planetary worlds. And
our sun is not burning up thirty quintillions cubic feet of itself
annually, and a hundred millions of suns many a thousand times larger
than ours are not burning up a thousand times more of themselves, as the
astronomers claim, and the whole thing is a great absurdity and
superstition.