Creation; or, The power behind evolution. Disclosing the unity of matter and force

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Chapter I. Laws Axd Modes Of Motion"

FROM THE SEEN TO THE UNSEEN — FROM THE SENSIBLE TO

THE REAL, TRANSCENDING, SENSIBLE RECOGNITION —

FROM THE HERE TO THE EVERYWHERE — GIVING

REVELATIONS OF THE INFINITE THROUGH

THE FINITE.

THE standpoint of sensible measures, to the student of science, is finite, and all his standards of weights and measures are inadequate to imparting any true conceptions of the infinite: Revelations from the infinite to the mind of the learner must come in such symbols as may be translated clearly into intelligent symbols of thought. The discoveries of science derive their great value from the instruction they convey respecting fixed and unvarying laws of nature, according to which the order and progressive work of a sensible creation became possible.

Into the constant working presence of physical forces the true teacher in science must lead his pupils and as he does, the assurance is gained that these forces do work according to universal laws of guidance. Schools of scientific thought will become uniform when these fixed laws of the physical forces are discovered and their working presence in nature accurately delineated.

Whatever place an infinite mind may occupy in the work of creation one thing is certain : All creative work has come into place under the fashioning potency of physical forces, and such forces as now appear, in the hands of the mechanic, as mechanical powers. Laws of motion are fixed by the impressed energy of affections of matter in lines of a constant impulse. In all the changes of matter, whether of state or place, there is perfect order and the ultimates of motion are perfections of time periods, and complete harmony of elements and bodies of matter in motion.

Laws of motion are also laws of work that belong to matter in its finest elementary states. The laws of the worlds are the same as those of the atoms out of which the worlds are built and the forces that move one also move the other. Molecular and planetary forces must have their places under the universal laws of motion, while the order of world creation must be in an ascending series from the least to the greatest.

Unseen atoms and intangible forces, are the commanding beginnings that antedate the first day of creative work. These also are native to the cold and darkness, and they encompass the entire field of thought vision. Energy, force, motion, are necessary to sensation and alone reveal material phenomena. First things to the student in all physical research are the seen, while first things in both spiritual and material sources of being are the unseen.

The scientist's line of work is unproved by way of analysis and experiment with matter in its sensible forms, to matter in its unseen and elementary states. In his entire line of investigation matter is found in charge of material forces and he is not made acquainted with a single atom devoid of energy, and I think there is nothing in the work of experiment that can lead him to believe that energy has an existence apart from elements of matter.

The scientist who treats of heat as a mode of motion has no test he can apply to matter, destitute of energy and existing as a mere passive element in Nature. If heat affords no tests revealing a material basis it has definite lines of work and gives tests of matter under the impulse of highest tension of material energy. It is light and heat that give the sublime plane of creative work where living organisms find birth and where the true history of creation can be studied in the presence of the unseen sovereignty that causes light to come forth from the darkness and life to spring out of the earth.

Light and heat are to matter, as life and thought are to the brain, and nervous system that gives to the brain its sensations, and it does not answer the purpose of the higher planes of thought to treat the lines of their influence, over matter, as simply modes of motion. There is a somewhat that binds matter to an unseen energy and gives force to material agencies that move matter and work out the myriads of form and life.

It is with this somewhat that scientific thought must seek an acquaintance, before it can solve the problem of creation, from a material standpoint, that will command universal acceptance. To do this we must rise above the testimony of the senses, and make discoveries in the realms of thought, under the guidance of careful experi-

12 LAWS AND MODES CF MOTION.

ments, in which the working presence of the unseen elements of material forces, that hold matter in charge, may appear, and the order of their work be diagrammed and made real to intellectual vision.

Errors in schools of science have found place and given bias to the teachings of our best masters, because of the false testimony of the senses. These errors must be sought out, and eliminated from our methods of thought, before science can make its greatest discoveries.

We still speak of the sun as rising and setting, and this accords with sensible phenomena, while scientific thought regards the sun as neither rising nor setting, but shedding upon the earth a constant light, through which the inhabitants of the central zones pass, at a distance of more than twelve thousand miles from morning to evening, and yet experiencing no sensible motion.

The three laws of motion, of our schools of philosophy, given as first truths of physical science, when brought under review, are silent respecting the nature of those forces that impress matter and establish the paths of planetary motion, giving to the planets their grand velocities, and regulating their time periods of revolution with the precision of the most perfect models of machinery in the shop of the mechanic.

The first law of motion affirms the existence of a body, as though it is self- existent, in these words: "Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion, in a straight line, except in so far as it may be co?npelled by impressed forces, to change that state."

This initial step, in the investigation of the laws of matter, leads us to the contemplation of bodies of matter existing without law, and independent of any innate energy, or any outward moving force. This affirmation, of the existence of matter in a state of inertia, has been the stumbling block of science all along the ages. In the analysis of matter, there are constant, and even startling revelations of energy, that take on the clothing of material forms, and appear as forces moving and conditioning matter, changing its state, and, at the same time, no dead or inert bodies of matter are discovered, and no forms of matter appear moving under the innate impulse of inertia, or of a dead weight.

While all states of matter, from its unseen atomic state to its world forms, as suns and planets, and its systems of worlds, are found in the constant keeping of innate and never changing forces ; and while space is traversed with lines of force, such as light and gravity, having velocities transcending the measures of thought, with a constant conservation of all identities of being and all orders of creative work in their constant keeping, this law ot inertia, conditioning matter in its beginnings to bodies at rest, without power to change their state of rest, and, if set in motion, without power to reverse or change its motion, confronts all students of physical phenomena, as an unquestioned fundamental law of physics, or, more accurately speaking, as a phenomenon without law.

Again: This dead weight of matter assumes its place as a law of motion from its persistence of continuance in a straight line, after having been set in motion by some miraculous projectile impulse, and becomes the centrifugal force, balancing gravital attraction in all planetary matter, and thus dead weight is translated into constant projectile force, as real as the force of gravity.

The second law of motion introduces a second force to account for the change of straight line motion into curvelinear lines of motion, in these words: " Change of motion is proportional to the impressed force, and takes place in the direction of the straight line in which the force acts.

With these laws of motion, fully in mind, there is first taught the passivity, or inertia of matter, and, in the second place, the miraculous projectile impulse of bodies of matter in a straight line ; third, a change of motion by an impressed force in a straight line in the direction in which the force acts, and fourth, curve-linear motion as a compromise line of motion as a result of two independent, straight line impulses.

If it was possible that these conditions of matter and force could have place in the universality of matter and space it would be possible to individualize the conditioning impulses and guidance given to inert bodies of matter, and at the same time constituting them conditioning impulses of universal matter and universal motion, that, in their continuance, should become universal laws of motion. In short, it would be possible to show how a material universality should be conditioned by two centralized individualities, one giving straight line projective impulse, not belonging to matter, the other drawing from a centralizing, point, within matter ; the former becoming continuous, through the innate inertia of matter and the other continuous by means of a constant impressing, or attracting, force from matter.

Let it be supposed that two bodies of matter, at rest in space, receive their straight line projectile impacts, at the same time, and in the same direction, and that each body, at the same time, should become an impressing central force. Both bodies would be drawn from their rectilinear line on curvelinear lines, approaching each other, and, were they moving on parallel lines, their changed lines of motion would, according to the statement of the law, be in direct lines, in the direction of their central impressing forces, and, consequently, they would be drawn on constantly converging lines that would meet at the same point in space. Such point would become an attracting center with an indeterminate line of motion, with an aggregating attracting power equal to the joint attracting energy of the two bodies. Thus the initial projectile force would be merged into central attracting energy, and the primary duality of motion, and of force, would be lost in the conjoined bodies of matter.

Again: Were all bodies of inert matter in space to receive projectile force, as an endowment from a single commanding fiat, and were all such bodies also possessed of attracting energy, their lines of motion would be as disastrous to all laws of motion as colliding bodies would be to their individual identities.

There would be, in the inaugurating of such a system of impulses, giving motion to the inert bodies of matter, no whence and no whither, no determinate centers of motion and no lines of guidance, and the mystery of the origin of inert bodies of matter in space, would be greater than the endowments of impulses subsequently given. Bodies of matter having a chaotic condition in space, inert, at rest, destitute of either innate attraction or exterior impulse of motion, present, to the thoughtful student of nature, a dead universe, pervaded by material bodies of inorganic matter, uncaused and unmoved; and, consequently antedating a first cause.

This dead universe of chaotic bodies of matter is the ideal beginning of a universe of organic matter, wrought upon and moved by creative forces, which our teachers of theology and our old masters in science have relied upon as the beginning of thought, as first truths to be accepted as fixing the standpoints of observation, that overlook the progressive unfoldments of matter into revolving worlds, illuminated and permeated by constantly working forces, giving to matter individuality of forms and material births into life.

It will be seen, at a glance, that the ideal universe of inert matter of the old masters cannot be gathered under the field glass of the astronomer, or any of its parts made subject to the test of the chemist ; it cannot be measured or analyzed.

It is impossible to describe matter separate from the forces that prevade it, or the impressing forces that fix its lines of motion and establish within it the perennial fountains of life. Scientific thought cannot accept of assumptions respecting matter in an elementary state, separate from those impressing forces that give to matter its changes of state and its sublime velocities.

In the entire field of scientific investigation there are no reliable data from which we can determine the possible existence of bodies of matter, "separate from impressing forces, and hence the assumed state of rest of bodies of matter, in their elementary beginnings, may safely be questioned, even in the presence of the fact that two out of the three laws of motion of our text books of philosophy are based upon the assumption.

The testimony of the senses is our authority for believing in the inertia of matter, while the testimony of scientific experiment is our authority for believing in the material forces that fix, in matter, all its states of both rest and motion.

We have already hazarded the thought that scientific methods of experiment only lead to ultimates of force, and, we may here add, to such ultimates of force as transcend sensible measure. The sovereign forces of light, heat, gravity, electricity and magnetism are classed by themselves as imponderable forces, because the most delicately poised scales of the experimenter fail to detect, in their paths of motion, the least disturbance of the balance. At these boundaries of physical phenomena, scientific thought has heretofore been baffled in all its efforts to discover the sources of the wonderful powers of these forces over matter, both affecting its states and determining its modes of motion.

As to the materiality of these forces we have the best of authority for both affirming and denying. When classed as imponderable, they were regarded as material, but in the refinement of reasoning, in our modern schools of science, it has become popular to surrender all questions, as to their materiality of structure, to the descriptive phenomena which they present, as "modes of motion."

The truth is that the problem of the forces that impress matter, fix its lines of motion and orders of organic work cannot be solved so long as dead, inert matter is treated as a necessary factor of the problem. All scientific discoveries lead to the contemplation of organic matter, as in the constant keeping of the innate affinities of atoms for atoms and the all comprehensive affinity of revolving worlds for the central suns, that give fixed laws of motion to universal matter, grouped into social systems of universal harmony of motion.

Chemical affinities and universal attraction of gravitation are nothing without matter, and, at the same time, every line of motion, of either atoms or worlds, is determined by the conditioning sovereignty of these forces.

Another thought, deserving notice, is that, as these forces cling to matter in body, so may matter, in its finest atomic, or elementary forms, cling to these forces, giving metallic lines of force to the medium environing the organic bodies that have taken on form around gravital centers.

The force currents of the magnet, environing the hardened steel that has been saturated with magnetic force, are as sensitive to metallic touch as the steel of the magnet. The magnetic field, over which a magnet extends its attractions, is pervaded by fine lines of metallic strength that reveal the same control of fine elements of iron that belongs to the steel of the magnet. The systematic arrangement of fine particles of iron around the poles of a magnet, when spread upon plane surfaces, within the fields of its influence, is secured by forces that are superior to the magnet, and, apart from it, and that brings to the steel a power of sensation that, in the case of the finely balanced magnetic needle, fixes its lines of rest, under the superior electrical currents of guidance that encircle the earth as a vast magnet.

We do not here refer to the magnet for the purpose of discussing questions of electro-magnetic energy, but simply to fix attention upon an organized, systematically working field of force currents, outside of matter, that are superior to matter and that have power to determine its lines of rest and its modes of motion. Let the thought be clearly fixed in the mind that imponderable, electro-magnetic force currents, moving in space, under the guidance of a localized center, such center being a gravital center of an organic body of solid matter, represent a universal materializing potency that is a conditioning sovereignty, alike over both matter and space. This potency is now revealing itself to both the artisan and the scientist as a universal sovereignty of materialization. Matter is transparent to this sovereignty of space, and, while it is without weight, and as immeasurable as the field of the forces, it establishes the foundation centers of all organic bodies of matter and is the balancing agency of all world velocities.

Chapter II. First Things

O age has had such teachers as the present, and yet no age has been less confident in its elementary sources of knowledge. In physical science, in religious faith, and in the science of government, there is a prevailing feeling of unrest. The old seems to be passing away, ancient beliefs are fading under the tests of advancing knowledge, while foundations for new and better guides of thought and of life do not come into place.

Under this condition of unrest and earnest reaching forth toward the future, for surer elements of thought, and purer systems of faith, nothing that awakens partisan strife can be deserving acceptance. While earnest and faithful inquiries respecting elements of being and of life can not fail to be attacked by zealous defenders of old fables, and, experimenters with merely sensible phenomena.

Unfortunately, schools of scientific thought are restrained from making thorough search into the sources of Nature's lines of creative energy, as it is regarded by even cultured religious teachers as holy ground. The sources of light, the whence of matter, and the where of the beginning, and the when that Mind-energy was, and creation was not, it is regarded as profane to inquire after.

The writer of these pages has been restrained for years by the barrier to scientific thought and experiment that is thus thrown across the pathway of human reason in its effort to gain an acquaintance with matter and material energy in the elementary process of creation's grand work of natural unfoldment.

But the where of an intelligent creator, and the whence and what of matter, can only be sought out by parallel lines of research, and all classes of teachers, that tell us about a creator, must trace such lines of thought up to material beginnings, through material unfoldments. Ignorance respecting the latter, surely can be no evidence Of wisdom respecting the former.

Prophecy respecting a creator must begin where experiment with material phenomena ends. Again: Evidences of a creator can find no place where no creation is, and mind-images of a creator can give no testimony of a selfeternity of mind, as a unit, dwelling alone with chaos and darkness. It will, therefore, rest with all those who may regard our work and methods of thought as profane, to follow us in our lines of research, respecting the elementary sources of matter and of life, to beginnings that are actual and efficient in creative work, and evolve therefrom evidences of mind-energy that may be co-existent with matter and the first things of creation, and then, if they can, tell us more about God, and the world of thought will be pleased to regard their testimony.

The experimental work of science has made us acquainted with forms of matter and material energy that reach to the grandest conceptions of the Hebrew poet, respecting the creator, when he says in the 104th Psalm, ; <0 Lord, my God, thou art very great ; thou art clothed with honor and majesty; who coverest thyself with light as with a garment ; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain ; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters ; who maketh the clouds his chariot ; who walketh upon the wings of the wind ; who maketh his angels spirits ; his ministers a flaming fire ; who laid the foundation of the earth that it should not be removed forever."

In this glowing imagery of the psalmist, there is revealed the grand potency of matter wrapped around with its own garments of light, and sending forth its ministers of fire from its cloudy chariots. With this wonderful material potency science has come into intimate fellowship. It is making merchandise of its garments of light, and its messengers wait around all our marts of trade, and go everywhere at the bidding of human thought.

Now, our thought is that a divine mind is not thus degraded by the work of science, but matter and material agencies are ennobled and made fit clothing and effective mediums of intimate fellowship between infinites of mind and infinitesimals of form, compassing all in one grand unity of being. With these glimpses of thought in vision, it may be safe for us to affirm that matter is immortal in its elements, and that the material energy that "laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever," has always held the elements of matter well in its keeping, insomuch that chaos never had place at the world's beginnings and that a mass of dead, inert matter never was built into the world's foundation. Neither is there any point in space that is untouched with elements of material guidance.

We make these statements here not to claim the reader's acceptance, but to be kept in mind in the perusal of these pages, so as to avoid misinterpretation of our language, cr of our philosophy of thought. We think our conclusions have been reached, under the guidance of masters, that have the minds of thinking men in this age, well in keeping, and who are leading them to the discovery of secrets in the domain of material being and life, that have been hidden, from the foundations of the world.

In the London, Edinburg and Dublin Philosophical Magazine, for July, 1872, Mr. James Croll, upon the theme, " What determines molecular motion ?" says: "It is an opinion that is daily gaining ground that at some future time, perhaps not far distant, all the purely physical scien ces will be brought under a few general laws and principles." However wide and diversified physical phenomena may seem at first sight, and however great and radical the apparent distinction between the several sciences, yet, to the eye of the thoughtful physicist, who sees deeper into the subject, they begin to appear as but the varied modifications of a few common principles.

For example: heat, electricity and magnetism are, in their ordinary phenomena, very unlike each other, yet modern investigation has shown that they are mutually convertible. Heat can be converted into electricity and electricity into magnetism. Magnetism can be converted into electricity and electricity into heat. This indicates that these corresponding sciences are not radically distinct, that their phenomena have a common origin, that in each we have the same force, manifested under different forms. To arrive at unity among the facts of Nature, has ever been, and ever will be. the aim of physical investigation."

Again: I find in Professor Tyndall's Lectures on Light these words: "In the process of crystallization, Nature first reveals herself as a builder. Where do her operations stop ? Does she continue by the play of the same forces to form the vegetable, and afterwards the animal ? Whatever the answer to these questions may be, trust me that the notions of the coming generations regarding this mysterious thing, which some have called 'brute matter,' will be very different from those of the generation past." In the same line of thought we hope to make some progress, believing that by learning more about matter and its methods of world-building, we shall advance in the right line of progress towards an acquaintance with the creator.

The popular argument of first cause as a beginning in the work of creation, we regard as fallacy, from the fact that the power of causation can have no existence apart by itself. Thus placed, it is not a cause, and, when result follows cause, it must proceed out from the cause, or influence an entity outside of itself. In # the former case, the cause must include all possible results, in the latter case, the effect is as much a part of the causative as is the cause. Neither can exist without the other. A duality of causative Joyces, therefore, must logically be the sources of all being, and such causative duality of all organic unity in creative work, is awaiting discovery.

Causes hide themselves in the things caused, and hence without the existence of the caused, there is not only a lack of evidence of a causative existence, "but such existence could be nothing more than mere continuance. Those conceptions of matter that are limited by sensible material measures, such as magnitude, form, impenetrability and inertia, are conceptions of matter as it appears after it has passed under the fashioning touch of creative forces. These conceptions all have material boundaries and are gained by experimental tests of properties and qualities that report themselves to the senses of the experimentor. But all tests of matter wrought into sensible forms, fail to elicit any testimony respecting the history of creative potencies that have fashioned them, or of the sources from which they have been gathered, or the periods of their transformations, antedating the possession of present properties and qualities. There is no language of creation, that man has yet discovered, capable of revealing, in symbols that may be known and read of all men, the true story of the creation of the heavens and the earth.

The alphabet of creation's history must be sought out from the working presence of those unseen forces that fashion and modify the properties of bodies of matter giving them place and motion, fixed, uniform and unchanging in their orders of succession, while they, as forces, hide themselves in the elementary forms of matter that move with the velocity of light and keep company with the sunbeam in carrying forward the beneficent work of giving seed time and harvest to all worlds in the sun's

26 FIE ST THINGS.

system, and clothing them all with the changing drapery of an eternal creating potency.

As we have seen from highly respected authority that gravitation, heat, light, magnetism and electricity may be converted into each other, we take but a single step forward in scientific thought in affirming that they are all modifications of one sovereign force, having a duality of expression that we here designate as attraction and repulsion. Light, heat, electricity, magnetism and gravitation, when fully understood, will alike give us the backward and forward motion of attraction and repulsion, while each will also reveal a constant right angled cross section of forces that give circular paths to the planets, and spherical form to all worlds, and all seed and germ forms in all worlds. I say in all worlds, because these forces have but one testimony in their methods of work in creation on our earth and the sun and stars tell the same story of light that is told between sun and planet. Gravitation, also, binds the solar system in the strong cords of its omnipotent currents of force, and fixes the machinery of the sun's system of satellites and planets, and hence we believe it rules over a universe of worlds without a rival.

One step more we may take, in our study of the unity of creative forces, and assume that chemical affinity and gravitation are but different expressions of the same universal force. While gravitation finds expression in its control of planetary bodies, across intervening space, chemical affinity finds expression in the mysterious unfoldments of atomic forms of matter, in all sensitive organic unions. I would express my conception of the unity of these forces, as they appear under the mental visions of the astronomer and chemist, by calling them the universal potency of sensation.

The reach of these forces is beyond the reach of both telescope and microscope, and at the same time they reveal their omnipotence to the touch of each atomic element that enters into the myriad forms of Nature's building.

These forces must antedate all created forms of matter and they alone can reveal the periods of beginnings at which creation's work began. The foundations of all suns and planetary bodies were committed to their keeping, and they are now revealing themselves as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, of all material measures of human thought, as applied to the infinites of creation. They are the measures of space, and of those omnipotent forces that hold atoms and worlds within their embrace, constituting a material providence over every thing that has sensation and motion.

I make these statements as the very beginning of my acquaintance with the reader of these pages, because it is my purpose to simplify the problems of scientific thought, so as to make my solutions plain to the comprehension of human vision.

The time has come when scientific dreams must submit to the test of materialization, to gain the confidence of the thinking, inquiring masses. The capacity of the scientist must be measured by his efforts at translating the true language of Nature into the well studied symbols of daily life. To-day is the day of beginnings of creation, as truly as any period in the past. It is within the experience of a single life that all the mysteries of creation pass before the questioning tribunal of human reason.