The Universe a Vast Electric Organism. Warder George Woodward

relations.

      The higher types of life are almost wholly dependent upon the arrangement of the cells on a high electric tension, and the early forms were almost wholly of nerve-tissue structures, and the primitive animalculæ followed the law of differentiation and were able to construct muscular fiber and bone formation, and became the fish and reptiles that inhabited the ancient seas.

      The processes of planetary formation are resultants of electrical action among the elements that form the planet, and here is the true field of scientific research for the knowledge of causation as expressed through world construction. To the chemist and electrician belong the task of explaining the processes of world building as well as the secrets of life itself, and they must be found in the laws that control the electro-magnetic ether that permeates all atoms and space.

      In the paleozoic age there were surging tides of electric energy through the planet itself, producing induced currents in all the forming bodies upon its surface. And these primitive currents swept the cell-formations into lines parallel with their lines of force the same as crystallizations, and as they were floating in circumambient water, the cells took the form of tissue structure, forming organs that followed the crystalline law of self preservation, and, in response to changing electric currents, throwing out new cell-structures.

      Nerve tissue is the highest form of atomic balance that is visible, and the true basis of form structure that has vitality to meet the shifting electric currents. The tiny cells joined themselves to form new structures to respond to the electric waves, while the lower magnetic induction of the planet sent its power over the new tissue to hold it in form so that the organism could be partially permanent in form in its new environment. In this manner the organism grew and expanded from the primitive animalcular nerve type to the consolidated, firm tissue that enabled it to hold itself from dissolution under adverse conditions and planetary changes. The action of electric force in building secondary forms with a magnetism of their own is one of the most wonderful exhibitions of nature.

      And now comes a startling result of this type of energy that has called living organism into being from the lower grades of atomic life. The cells that have formed themselves around a central point, as in the crystalline state, begin to quiver and vibrate with a strong rapidity that defies all power of restraint. In them is to be seen a new relation of the elements that grade still higher in the scale of atomic action. They have risen in the power of sensitiveness above the plane of receptive response to the swaying currents of the earth, and begin to send out currents of their own. Those currents penetrate the whole system with strange energy, and the organism begins to respond with new expressions of power. It moves with reference to the currents that it creates itself, and we have the first type of creation with a brain center governing the whole system.

      That brain tissue is the result of the action indirect of the electric energy that is sweeping the planet in ceaseless lines of force and power. It sends its induced currents upon all the forming host of animalcular life floating in the dark waters, and some begin to grow brains.

      The cellular structure ranges itself in line with the positive and negative polarity that made the crystalline form of the world a globe, and from that living cell-battery go out the currents that control the form by the inward force that ever after is to witness to the power of constructive energy to create living beings with sentient power to regulate and control their own destiny.

      Meanwhile the surging tides of electric energy are forcing the continents upward, and the fish that swim in the paleozoic seas find the waters receding and himself part of the time on the land or in the mud and shallows, and the growing organism, from generation to generation becomes adapted to each condition of life on land and water. Then comes to pass the raising of the organism from the fish to the reptile by the influence of electrical induction and change of environment. Then also comes the growth of plant life, and the marvelous varieties of vegetation in the form of tree and shrub and grass. Upon the land, half submerged, the vegetation that had its rootlets in the former ocean bed grew from sea weeds into rank grasses and ferns, the types of which are seen to this day in the dense forests and jungles of the tropics.

      In the early period of the paleozoic age the molusks, polyps, and marine plants were evolved without any reference to light whatever and depended on the sense of feeling to provide for the necessary food supplies to maintain their organism.

      We have in the night-blooming cereus a flower that belonged in that epoch of the world's evolution when plants flowered and perfected their seed bearing in the dark. And in the salamander, beaver and hippopotamus a type of the amphibious animals of the early ages. We have in the bat a type of animal that flourished in the darkness of earth's formative period, and in the embryonic period of animal and man we find the beginning of the life processes in the darkness of the womb, and all seed of vegetable and plant must be buried in the darkness of earth before it can bring forth new life.

      Every living structure on the planet takes form by the laws of nature's creative processes; and the secret unfolding of life structure to-day, however perfect at maturity, is a complete record of all the previous stages of formative growth in animal life, from the vertebra of the fish to the contour of the mammal and the man, condensed as to time during the period of gestation, but following the original lines of formative structure, power and principle.

      This and all growth and evolution is the result of electrical energy under divine law and spiritual control. Electrical power is the great agent in arranging molecular compounds into all forms of animal and plant life as well as crystalline structures and world forms. The duplicates of plant life with the secondary crystalline forms are found in limestone caverns of the earth. There, in the dense stillness of eternal night, many forms that are seen above ground as plants and flowers are there wrought out in solid stone, as the crystalline limestone rock has arranged its molecular structure obedient to the same lines of form as the electric currents in the upper atmosphere follow in vegetable life.

      Thus in the eternal nature of the atom and electric energy with their inherent potencies the Creator has abundant resources not only to make this planet, but also the countless worlds of boundless space. And in the wonders of electrical potency in this planet alone He is constantly producing results that excite profound gratitude and reverence. At length when the clouds of darkness faded away and the atmosphere became translucent, and the glorious light of the sun—the great electric heart of our system of worlds—shone upon the earth, there was a new realm of infinite life and expression to lift the world and all organic life to a higher state of perfection.

      While the world, like an enormous battery, had in itself enough energy to hold the planet in its spherical form and to stimulate to activity the secondary forms of life, had not the sun come into more vigorous activity with its electric life-giving energy the earth could not have gone above the primitive forms of life. With this greater influx of power from another sphere of causative energy, the dark age of animality passed and the monstrous types faded out, and in the place of them the world began to bear a class of beings that could reflect the power and principles of light and beauty. And under the pulsations of the sun's electrical and magnetic energy the earth started on its marvelous career of organic growth and development.

      The sun, as an immense electrical reservoir battery, must radiate in all directions its electric vibratory power over the surging elements in its own environment and from thence through electric atomic transfer to bodies in space. So that whenever a body was in direct line with the magnetic centers of the sun, the arrest of the electric current and atomic motion coming from the sun's center by another magnetic center, as the earth or any other planet, would instantly change the rate of the environment of the planet magnet to a grade of intensity that would give light and heat. In this manner light, heat and greater vital force was born upon the earth, when its dark clouds lifted and its atmosphere became translucent, so that the sun's electric currents could affect the earth through electric transfer. Thus the influx of external light upon planetary life was positive and marvelous, introducing a new power upon the forming organic life in the vegetable and animal world, and working great changes in all organic structures. And in response to this new power the eye began to form and a new and distinct organ of sense was perfected. It was slowly developed at first, for the light radiated from the sun penetrated the mists of earth dimly, for it was almost midnight gloom in some sections and dusky twilight in others.

      So