I
Science recognizes a more fundamental world than that of matter. This is
the electro-magnetic world which underlies the material world and which,
as Professor Soddy says, probably completely embraces it, and has no
mechanical analogy. To those accustomed only to the grosser ideas of
matter and its motions, says the British scientist, this
electro-magnetic world is as difficult to conceive of as it would be for
us to walk upon air. Yet many times in our lives is this world in
overwhelming evidence before us. During a thunderstorm we get an inkling
of how fearfully and wonderfully the universe in which we live is made,
and what energy and activity its apparent passivity and opacity mark. A
flash of lightning out of a storm-cloud seems instantly to transform the
whole passive universe into a terrible living power. This slow, opaque,
indifferent matter about us and above us, going its silent or noisy
round of mechanical and chemical change, ponderable, insensate,
obstructive, slumbering in the rocks, quietly active in the soil, gently
rustling in the trees, sweetly purling in the brooks, slowly, invisibly
building and shaping our bodies--how could we ever dream that it held in
leash such a terrible, ubiquitous, spectacular thing as this of the
forked lightning? If we were to see and hear it for the first time,
should we not think that the Judgment Day had really come? that the
great seals of the Book of Fate were being broken?
What an awakening it is! what a revelation! what a fearfully dramatic
actor suddenly leaps upon the stage! Had we been permitted to look
behind the scenes, we could not have found him; he was not there, except
potentially; he was born and equipped in a twinkling. One stride, and
one word which shakes the house, and he is gone; gone as quickly as he
came. Look behind the curtain and he is not there. He has vanished more
completely than any stage ghost ever vanished--he has withdrawn into the
innermost recesses of the atomic structure of matter, and is diffused
through the clouds, to be called back again, as the elemental drama
proceeds, as suddenly as before.
All matter is charged with electricity, either actual or potential; the
sun is hot with it, and doubtless our own heart-beats, our own thinking
brains, are intimately related to it; yet it is palpable and visible
only in this sudden and extraordinary way. It defies our analysis, it
defies our definitions; it is inscrutable and incomprehensible, yet it
will do our errands, light our houses, cook our dinners, and pull our
loads.
How humdrum and constant and prosaic the other forces--gravity,
cohesion, chemical affinity, and capillary attraction--seem when
compared with this force of forces, electricity! How deep and prolonged
it slumbers at one time, how terribly active and threatening at another,
bellowing through the heavens like an infuriated god seeking whom he may
destroy!
The warring of the elements at such times is no figure of speech. What
has so disturbed the peace in the electric equilibrium, as to make
possible this sudden outburst, this steep incline in the stream of
energy, this ethereal Niagara pouring from heaven to earth? Is a
thunderstorm a display of the atomic energy of which the physicists
speak, and which, were it available for our use, would do all the work
of the world many times over?
How marvelous that the softest summer breeze, or the impalpable currents
of the calmest day, can be torn asunder with such suddenness and
violence, by the accumulated energy that slumbers in the imaginary
atoms, as to give forth a sound like the rending of mountains or the
detonations of earthquakes!
Electricity is the soul of matter. If Whitman's paradox is true, that
the soul and body are one, in the same sense the scientific paradox is
true: that matter and electricity are one, and both are doubtless a
phase of the universal ether--a reality which can be described only in
terms of the negation of matter. In a flash of lightning we see pure
disembodied energy--probably that which is the main-spring of the
universe. Modern science is more and more inclined to find the
explanation of all vital phenomena in electrical stress and change. We
know that an electric current will bring about chemical changes
otherwise impracticable. Nerve force, if not a form of electricity, is
probably inseparable from it. Chemical changes equivalent to the
combustion of fuel and the corresponding amount of available energy
released have not yet been achieved outside of the living body without
great loss. The living body makes a short cut from fuel to energy, and
this avoids the wasteful process of the engine. What part electricity
plays in this process is, of course, only conjectural.