A silver dollar, a twenty-dollar gold piece, and a piece of copper of similar size, placed one on top of the other, with pieces of moist paper blotter between them, will generate sufficient electricity to send a telegram. Two iron tablespoons tied together with a piece of copper wire and their ends dipped in water will generate an electric current sufficient to send a cablegram across the Atlantic Ocean. So says Prof. Trobridge of Harvard. If this is true, what a fearful volcano or earthquake may be produced by water moistening the clay or substance between the thousands of acres of different mines or metals one above the other in the outer crust of the earth? These things are marvelous to contemplate and paralyze the imagination. CHAPTER X ELECTRICAL CREATION EXPLAINS NATURAL PHILOSOPHY Herbert Spencer says: "Science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge," and the first knowledge obtained by primitive man was that of sense and inference from such experience. Later there arose a disposition to speculate as to that which lies beyond sense and known only by its effect on sensible things. This speculative propensity is worthy of the highest consideration as a means of knowledge. It has developed all of the numerous systems of philosophy which have flourished in the history of the human race. First in the order of development comes the knowledge of things through the direct experience of physical sense, then comes imagination, reasoning, theoretic science and speculative philosophy. The object of all systems of philosophy is to comprehend and teach the truth about the world around us, especially that part supposed to exist beyond the range of our senses, and to prescribe what is right and good in the life of man. In modern times the attempt to unite all the sciences into a general system has been made by August Comte in France, and Herbert Spencer in England. According to Comte, it was time wasted and labor lost to attempt to explain the cause of gravity, chemical affinity, and electric and magnetic attraction and repulsion. The atomic theory of the constitution of matter, the conception of an interstellar ether, the undulatory theory of light and heat were all cast aside as useless and unworthy of notice because they were not directly observable and the senses unaided could not apprehend them. According to Comte, the only object of science and philosophy is to observe, record and classify sensible phenomena. What could not be observed by the senses could not be known and did not exist. It is said the only open road to the advance of philosophy was thus forbidden by the man who made the first valuable contribution to its advancement.