ARE ALL SUNS AND WORLDS INHABITED?
Are all suns and worlds inhabited? This has been a puzzling question to
the astronomers, who have had various opinions on the subject. From the
laws of electric creation, as I understand them, the affirmative answer
seems reasonable and natural. But as we cannot visit these suns and
worlds in the flesh, my answer must be formed from the operations of the
laws of electricity as applied to this planet.
Prof. Newcomb says astronomers have no means of knowing as to the
inhabitability of distant orbs any more than other persons, and that we
can only reason cosmologically on the subject, and, reasoning thus, he
thinks only the earth and possibly Mars are inhabited.
Prof. H. H. Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford, England, in the
Fortnightly Review of April, 1903, in combating Alfred Russell Wallace's
theory that our earth is in the center of the universe, and the only
inhabited world, says: "Why should not any one of the suns possess
planets as well adapted as we are to develop high forms of organic
life?" He seems to think no valid reason can be given why there are not
many inhabited worlds as favorably situated as ours to produce and
maintain organic life. And I fully agree with him, and go a step
further and say there are many reasons why nearly all suns and worlds
are inhabited. Reasoning from electric law and cosmological facts, our
world, and its laws, forces and creations, should be a fair sample of
the laws, forces, and creations of all worlds and planets. This is in
accord with universal chemistry, which teaches that the same laws and
substances exist throughout all the realms of space.
In reasoning on the formative period of our world, we found the electric
current to be the first form of matter and force, or the first form of
creative manifestations in space. These currents antedate all suns,
worlds and visible objects. We also found that all visible forms of
matter were the aggregation of billions of invisible atoms, and all
visible matter and forms were simply the outer garment and scaffolding
of these invisible electric forces; that force follows the law of
motion, and atoms the law of form obedient to the lines of motion. The
second step in planetary construction was the arrangement of the atoms
into crystalline formation, due to opposite currents of electrical
motion, and to atomic balance. This produced the rock-ribbed foundations
of the earth and solidified it into a vast magnet of marvelous force and
power.
Then when the crystalline rocks and metals were settled into a
crystalline globe throbbing with electric power, vegetation came and the
electric life-cell was formed as the first step towards organic life.
Then came the formation of nerve tissue as the basis of form structure
and the evolution of microscopic life which developed under electric
energy into all forms of animal existence which now inhabit the earth.
These were all formed and perfected through ages of response to the
varying electric currents of life-giving power.
Then the animal form evolved a brain, and acquired the sense of feeling
and sight and hearing by reason of the electric currents that impinged
on the sensitive tissues of the brain, and animal instinct was slowly
and gradually developed and the animal organism raised to the highest
grade of the perfected mammal. All this was done under electric law by
magnetic energy. Then the Creative Deity said, "Let us make man." And it
is likely He took a perfected mammal, enlarged his brain-pan, stood him
erect to front the stars, and breathed into him an atom of his own
spirit, "and man became a living soul." The psychic power of glowing
thought and reasoning mind, inspiring hope and heaven-bound love, and
truth, and language, music, poetry, and dreams of heaven, were implanted
as a celestial fire in his deathless spirit. This is man,--the soul, the
spirit, the divine, eternal spark of Deity himself--not the body; that
is merely the overcoat of atoms for the spirit, the temple for the soul,
the house in which it dwells.
It will be seen from the foregoing that electricity is the creative,
evolving force of the universe, the word of omnipotent power, the
creative machinery of suns and worlds. That it creates suns and worlds
and all animal and vegetable organisms, that it can evolve all forms,
and give animal instinct as the result of balancing the experience of
one sense with another through long ages of experience.
But it cannot create mind, soul or the spirit of Deity. It could not
create man as a psychic being. It could organize his body, but it could
not confer on him a soul. Electricity does not rob God of power; it is
his creative machinery, and the right hand of His power, and, guided by
His omnipotent will as the law of nature, it can and does evolve suns
and worlds and all organic life. But not spirit-life--not man.
Moses and the Bible were inspired or they could never have shown so
clearly the nobler creation of man, and his inherent sovereignty over
the world, and dominion over all the animal creation. I like that
statement, "And God said let us make man." Electricity was the word of
His power, the creative agent of His will, which is the law of nature.
It could create a sun, a world, a universe; it could give sense and
feeling to insensate dust, and evolve and fashion man's body as a house
suited for his earthly habitation, but it could not furnish a tenant or
evolve a soul. The God-father and the God-mother alone could do this,
and make man a spiritual and eternal being.
Now, I argue that if electricity created this earth with all its complex
elements and organic forms, it also created all suns and worlds and all
the machinery of the universe by the same process, and has endowed every
rolling sphere in space of sufficient size and power with vegetation,
and all the varied forms of animal organism. Is not this a rational
conclusion, since it has been demonstrated by universal chemistry and
spectroscopic analysis that all laws, force and substance are the same
in all suns and worlds and throughout the universe? Is it reasonable to
believe that the electric currents and magnetic energy of our earth
could evolve billions of billions of little living creatures which
float in the air thicker than motes in a sunbeam, that swim in the
waters so abundant that there are millions in a raindrop, that penetrate
all vegetable and animal substance and organisms, that course through
the veins of our bodies by the billion, and eat our food for us that we
may digest it better; yet in other suns and worlds produce no such
results? I cannot think so.
The animalculæ are so small that Ehrenburg estimates that five hundred
million of them exist in one drop of water one twelfth of an inch in
diameter; that not only the blood, but the flesh and muscles are also
composed of infinitesimal lives, each cell possessing a distinct life of
its own.
Binet describes man as a colony of protozoans; and according to these
two biologists he is a walking Chinese Empire, when you consider the
microscopic beings in his body. Besides our bodies and those of
vegetable and animal organism that are thus honeycombed and flooded with
animalculine life, there are countless millions floating in the air,
swimming in the water, and buried in the dust of the earth.
So that organic life is everywhere present on the earth, in invisible or
visible form. And the invisible forms of life of the earth everywhere
surpasses the visible forms millions of millions of times. Just as the
invisible matter in the world and the universe surpasses the visible
countless billions of times. Thus the natural, spontaneous production of
life and life forms in myriads everywhere on this earth emphasizes the
reasonable hypothesis that they are evolved on all suns and planets.
This shows the unity of matter and life. Wherever there is matter there
is electric energy and life-force, which evolves infinite grades of
life-forms. Prof. Buchner asserts that "spectrum analysis has brought
about the highly important conviction of the unity of what is to us the
visible universe." And Prof. Shaler of Harvard declares, "the unity of
life is the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century." The infinite
diversity in nature first fixed the attention of investigators; now its
infinite unity is the marvel which excites their wonder and admiration.
Now the unity of matter, force and physical life are accepted by the
ablest thinkers.
This all tends to prove the inhabitability of all suns and worlds. Prof.
Huxley put himself on record as believing in intelligent organic life in
other worlds, in the following vigorous language: "Looking at the matter
from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the assumption that amid
the myriads of worlds scattered through endless space there can be no
intelligence as much greater than man's as his is greater than a black
beetle's, is not merely baseless but impertinent. Without stepping
beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the
cosmos with entities in ascending scale, until we reach something
practicably indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence,
omniscience.
"If our intelligence can in some matters surely reproduce the past of
thousands of years ago, and anticipate the future thousands of years
hence, it is clearly within the limit of possibility that some greater
intellect even of the same order may be able to mirror the whole of the
past and future."
This is a masterly statement that demolishes Alfred Russell Wallace's
little arguments like a trip-hammer would an eggshell. Ruskin also saw
much good in the idea of life in other worlds above us, "in creatures as
much nobler than ours as ours is nobler than that of the dust."
When once the unity and universality of force and electric life are made
clear, and spirit and psychic life in their immortal destiny are made
manifest, as thinking creatures we are led upward to a larger
development of life and power, dominated by a supreme intelligence we
call Deity, Infinite Goodness and Spiritual Father. Then we remember
that he has assured us in the sacred oracles, that "we shall be with Him
and shall be like Him," and that there are many mansions in the skies.
Our scientists tell us there are living creatures so small and so
numerous that it would take millions of worlds like ours to support a
human population equal to the number of these creatures that can live
and move in one cubic inch of space. Some of these multiply at the rate
of one hundred and seventy thousand millions in a hundred hours. And I
say every one is a tiny electric machine.
The electric currents that built our world from invisible atoms and
evolved the complex substances of which it is composed, and the myriad
forms of organic life that exist on its surface will fill other worlds
with countless forms of organic life. For in the great electro-magnetic
sea we call ether and space, in which all things float or exist, and
which permeates all form and substance, there is a boundless reservoir
of electric life which will blossom into infinite grades of physical
organisms wherever the surface of suns, planets and satellites have
living environments of soil, light and electric currents. Even the soil
of our earth maintains life because it is living matter itself. And some
forms of life will exist without light or soil. This is the electric
universe in solution, the life-giving sea of all form and substance.
Oh, what a miracle of wonders! From this marvelous reservoir of life,
force and substance each created thing draws the elements of its growth
and existence. And each draws from the same source that which its nature
requires. The oak draws from the same soil and air as the hickory, the
rose, the apple tree and the poison ivy. But the oak converts all the
substance it gathers into the natural fibre of the oak, the hickory into
the natural fibre of the hickory, the apple tree converts it into the
luscious fruit of the apple, the rose into the delightful perfume which
regales our senses, and the poison ivy converts the same air and soil
into deadly poison.
This is the marvel of electric law and energy. How does it do it? It
does it, I contend, by the law of magnetic currents under the control of
organic affinity. The Bible states this law in a little different form
when it says God caused every tree and shrub and created thing to bring
forth seed of its kind. Man, like all nature, also draws from one common
intellectual and moral reservoir. And while some draw inspiration and
goodness, others draw poisonous evil, or, rather, convert the good they
draw into evils. And each brings forth of its kind.
I do not believe with Prof. Newcomb that, "in order that a race may be
renewed it must die like an individual." Or that the Creative Power,
after destroying our earth, "will await with sublime patience the
evolution of a new earth and a new order of animated nature."
The Creative Power has surely as much sense as an ordinary man, and no
man builds and perfects a fine piece of machinery, or a magnificent
mansion to tear it down, that he may "wait in sublime patience" the
building of another to take its place. We should give God credit for
ordinary business sense in the construction and preservation of the
universe, which generally seems to be denied Him by His thinking
creatures.
If Creative Wisdom has the power to build worlds, He has also the power
to preserve them; and, having that power, to allow them to go to decay
or be destroyed would be the perverse folly of a malignant demon, not a
beneficent Creator. The same is true of the destruction of a race. To
create, build up, enlighten and perfect a human race, and then destroy
them and their perfected world, would be a greater crime than it is
possible for man or devils to perpetrate. I have a better opinion of
Deity, a nobler conception of His justice and goodness than that. I
believe in a God who cares, not the modern God of the atheistic
majority, as Mr. Walker says, "who does not care." A God who does not
care means anarchy and chaos. It means the obliteration of all law, all
moral forces, all religious conceptions, all stability and consistency
in the government of the universe. Why, the very air we breathe, the
sunshine that gives life, the regular and constant return of day and
night, of seasons, years and months, proclaim a God who cares. Every
smiling human face, every generous impulse and noble thought, every
worthy deed, every fragrant flower, waving field, and golden harvest
testify to a God who cares.
But what of the "red claw" of the tiger. What of the big fish that eat
the little ones, or the destruction of life by flood and storm, or human
trials, sickness and death? Are these things consistent with a God who
cares? They may be. The tiger devours to appease his hunger, the big
fish eat the little ones for the same purpose, and both obey the law of
self-preservation and the survival of the fittest. These two laws are
necessary to preserve the life of their kind, and perfect their species
for the benefit of mankind. It seems a sad spectacle to see the strong
destroying the weak, but it is in the earlier stages of existence the
only way under the law of evolution to preserve and improve the best of
each species, and is a kindness and a blessing in the end.
As to the destruction of life by flood and storms, these are nature's
efforts to preserve the equilibrium of her mighty forces, and where a
few are injured, millions are benefited and blessed. And as to man's
sickness and tribulations, they are one-half imaginary, and a half of
the other half are the result of their own folly in the violation of the
laws of health, and the remaining one fourth are disciplinary for the
purpose of developing character, which is an ample reward and
compensation.
As to death, it is as painless as going to sleep; it is the dread of
death that hurts. And if it is the transition process, as millions
believe, by which souls drop their brief tenement of atoms, and soar on
tireless wings to celestial realms, then it is not a curse but a
blessing, especially to the aged and decrepid, for whom life has no
charms.
Will man never cease slandering the good Deity, and libeling the
beneficent Creator of all good? With most people the fault is not with
the world or controlling providence and Deity, but in themselves. They
make their own world in their own mind and then find fault with it as if
it was a reality.
Albert Russell Wallace, in the Fortnightly Review of March, 1903, in a
labored article of great length, undertakes to carry the world back a
thousand years to the time when man thought the earth was the center of
the universe, and the stars were little openings or golden nails in the
crystal vault of heaven. He says we are at the center of the universe;
that our sun system belongs to a constellation situated near the center
of the Milky Way. This may be true, and it is not worth disputing, for
if we are at the center now--as our system travels 420,000 miles a
day--we were not there a thousand years ago, and in a few decades will
be far away from it. As we keep moving all the time, and do not get off
at this central station which he makes so much of, I see nothing gained
or lost if it is true.
But in order to show that it is central, he must limit the universe and
give its circumference, metes and bounds. This is an immense
undertaking. If our universe is limited--and Prof. Newcomb thought so a
few years ago, and held it was in the shape of a circle or disk, which
was about thirty thousand light years in circumference if true, then the
light from the distant stars have been traveling thirty thousand years
in order to reach us, and they must be millions of miles from where they
seem to be. Thus the center of the universe is constantly changing, and
it would take omniscient wisdom to tell where the center is, and then it
would not remain the center many hours. This would be true whether the
universe is limited or unlimited.
Mr. Wallace says, "The supreme end and purpose of this vast universe is
the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body
of man." If he had said that was the supreme purpose of the earth, I
would have agreed with him.
But since he makes man's development the supreme purpose of the universe
and says all other worlds are uninhabited, I am forced to disagree with
him. He says there are one hundred millions of stars and planets in the
universe, yet he depopulates them all for man's benefit, and then fails
to show how man can be benefitted, or for what purpose the almost
countless orbs were created. In my judgment he proves himself a million
of times wrong, and reaches the climax of unreasonable conjecture. I
believe no astronomer will agree with him. None has yet appeared, though
several of the most eminent have already expressed their dissent and
surprise at his position. His reasons, to my mind, do not justify his
conclusions, but prove the very opposite hypothesis.
He estimates there are one hundred millions of stars and worlds, and
says they "are all composed of the same elements as the planets and
solar system. Wherever organized life may have developed, it must be
built up out of the same fundamental elements as here on earth." Now, I
fully agree with him in that statement, which I contend shows clearly
that these worlds are inhabited. For if they possess the same elements
and are controlled by the same laws, they must produce the same results
of organic life as appear on our earth; and his arguments about
temperature, proportion of land and water, etc., do not affect the
question. His conclusions brand the Great Architect of the universe as
an incompetent and wasteful profligate, and is contrary to all analogy
in human reason, to all law of proportion and compensation, and to "the
eternal fitness of things."
The fact that our earth has the same laws, forces, and substances as
other worlds and is swarming with its countless myriad forms of organic
life; and that all the manifestations of nature's creative forces are
prolific in the production of sentient beings, is conclusive evidence
that abundant life exists on other spheres, and other worlds are not
dreary wastes of burning plains and sandy deserts. The fact that the
Creative Spirit built up man's body through ages of animal growth and
perfecting bodily development, or modeled it after such perfected animal
forms, and then breathed His own life and spirit into it, and made man a
spiritual, eternal being like Deity Himself, is strong evidence that in
other suns and worlds he has done likewise; and that they are the
theatres of spiritual as well as of vegetable and animal life. God
creates because He is Love and must have spiritual children as the
objects of His affection.
This reason would cause him to people other worlds with the highest
order of intelligent creatures similar to man. And the great planets,
and great suns, like Sirius, Alpha Lyra, Vega and Alcyone, which are a
thousand times larger than our sun, should possess beings of greater
intellectual and spiritual faculties than our earth in proportion to
their superior grandeur and power.
Thus the infinite wisdom and power of Creative Deity, and the laws and
creations He has evolved on this earth, teach us that in other worlds
and suns He has created other and numerous types of intelligent beings;
and that living organic creatures of His bounty in all suns and spheres
honor and adore His infinite goodness, power and love.
His suns and worlds are countless as the stars--
His jeweled finger-prints. Through chequered bars
Of light and shade all life is shadow of His breath--
An uttered thought. And law and change and death
His angel messengers. His spirit truth
Preserves the universe in fadeless youth.
The palpable Infinite! who can know?
Mind from a mustard seed to world, must grow.
The past, the emblems of His power hath wrought
Whose thought created first creating thought,
And veiled in mists above Olympian throne
We know the unknown God is God alone.