The Universe a Vast Electric OrganismWarder, Geo. W. (George Woodward)
Science
The Universe a Vast Electric Organism
Warder, Geo. W. (George Woodward)
Science -- Miscellanea
Mr. Spencer has described a general indefinite process as "the
redistribution of matter and motion," but he has revealed no natural
law, or fundamental explanation of natural phenomena. Every important
question leads him to a stone wall which he does not try to scale or
penetrate, but labels the "Unknowable."
A learned philosopher who has spent his life endeavoring to instruct
others should not fall back into the convenient ditch of the
"unknowable."
He says: "What is it that holds together the parts of which this
ultimate atom may be imagined to consist? The only answer is a cohesive
force." But he does not attempt to explain what that cohesive force is,
while I undertake to say it is magnetic cohesion under the law of
electro-magnetism, which holds aggregations of atoms in organic
affinity, producing visible form and substance.
He says: "Force is the ultimate of ultimates. Matter and motion are only
different manifestations of this unknowable force."
This is making force usurp the place of Deity. Force is a servant, not a
master--a tool and not an ultimate cause. Force without intelligence
back of it is anarchy and ruin; it is chaos and not a cosmos. God is a
scientific necessity.
The ultimate of ultimates is mind or spirit--the eternal intelligent
spirit of Deity and man.
I accept the scientific postulate that the conservation of energy and
the correlation of forces affirm, first, that there is but one kind of
energy or force in the physical universe; but I go further and contend
electric energy is that force. Second, that, like matter energy cannot
be created or destroyed. Third, that energy appears in a variety of
forms as motion, heat, light and so-called gravity and chemical action.
Fourth, that these forms of energy are interchangeable--any one form may
change into any other form, and all are transformations of the one
ultimate force I term electricity. Fifth, that there is nothing in
science to show that mind or spirit ever changes into physical energy,
or force into mind or matter, or either into the other. This destroys
the doctrine of monoecism, or all things from one substance. And
Haeckel will have to produce more facts and logic than he has yet set
forth to prove that spirit and matter, force and matter are all one and
the same thing or substance.
The psychic or mental force is the paramount force, and the true realm
of evolution belongs to the mental or spiritual universe and to organic
nature. Physical changes are not evolution in the highest sense except
as they are the result of spiritual power and unfolding intellect. The
highest sphere of evolution is in biology and psychology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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