The Universe a Vast Electric Organism. Warder George Woodward

heart of its organism, it began to generate heat and light in its own environment, which in time became translucent to the sun's rays, and, instead of the sun and earth losing their light and heating power, they are steadily increasing them.

      It is thus apparent that all light, heat, physical organisms and vegetable and animal life are evolved and exist only in the magnetic atmosphere of suns and planets.

      The light we see does not come from the sun or stars; it is generated in our own atmosphere. No man ever saw the sun or stars; they see the rays of light which photograph them in our atmosphere. They see pictures of them at the end of the ray emanating from them, but some of these rays have been two hundred years in reaching us.

      It takes light over four years to reach us from the star nearest our earth, so it is plain we do not see these stars.

      As to the heat of the sun, there has been a vast difference of opinion among scientists. Newton held it to be 1,669,300 degrees hot; Erickson, 2,726,000 degrees hot; Sacchi, 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 degrees; Waterson, 9,000,000 to 10,000,000, and Soret, 5,800,000 degrees hot. But since the discovery of the law of the conservation of energy, which is only about a hundred years old, the scientists have been hedging and crawfishing with wonderful dexterity and reducing it, until now 18,000 to 20,000 degrees are accepted as possibly correct.

      As Newton was a great mathematician and the scientists accept him on other scientific questions, they ought to accept him on the sun's heat, and acknowledge a fact that ought to be apparent to all—that if heat comes to the earth from the sun, in a column 93,000,000 miles long and 8,000 miles in diameter through frigid ether 460 degrees colder than ice, the sun must be millions of degrees hot. Then, as nothing in the known universe can exist a million or even twenty thousand degrees hot, they should admit the sun is not hot, and no heat comes from the sun to the earth. Only electric currents come from the sun, which generate heat and light in our own atmosphere.

      Then arises another question. All bodies lose their magnetic power when heated to less than one thousand degrees hot. Professor Fleming in his book, "Magnets and Electric Currents" says: "Magnetic bodies become changed into feeble magnetic ones by heating to a certain temperature. Iron at its critical temperature, 690 degrees to 870 degrees or a light red heat, loses all its strong magnetic qualities. In the same way nickel loses them at 300 degrees." Thus we have the sun at even 1,000 degrees hot deprived of its magnetic power and unable to control the solar system. Prof. T. C. Mendenhal, in a recent article in Harper's Magazine, says: "The electrical resistance of pure metals diminishes at a rate which indicates that at absolute zero it would vanish and these metals would become perfect conductors of electricity." Thus cold increases and heat diminishes the electric energy of metals and all substances.

      In my previous book, The Cities of the Sun, I have given over fifty reasons why the sun is not hot. Among them I may mention, first, because of the extreme cold that prevails in the upper atmosphere of the earth, through which the sun's rays must pass, but whose temperature they cannot alter. Second, because the sun's rays must traverse 93,000,000 miles of space between sun and earth, which is 460 degrees colder than ice, which would make it impossible for them to retain any degree of heat whatever. If heat comes from the sun it must come in a column 93,000,000 miles long, 865,000 miles in diameter, converging to 8,000 miles at the earth's surface, which would destroy the sun or any known body in the universe to furnish such heat. Third, because the perpetual snow upon the mountains even in the tropics show the sun's rays bring no heat to the earth, or the snow would be melted by the first and greatest volume of heat from the sun. Fourth, because if heat came from the sun there could be no clouds in our atmosphere, for the heat of the sun would strike them first, and greater heat above the cloud level would prevent their formation and forever banish them from our skies.

      Fifth, because heat by the law of its nature is diffusive, and cannot be shot from one sun or planet to another, or forced through space like a leaden ball or other substance, but is soon dissipated in the cold ether of space. Sixth, the sun is not hot because comets have passed three hundred thousand miles through the sun's corona without visible change or injury, which would be impossible if the sun is excessively hot, for the comet, coming from outer space, must be intensely cold, and excessive heat in the sun would explode and destroy it. This argument alone should destroy the hoary headed superstition that the sun is hot. Seventh, heat does not come from the sun, because there is no such thing as heat. Heat is simply a sensation; it is not a substance or an entity. It is a sensation caused by the increased activity of the molecules of which a body is composed, and, is produced by electric currents. I hold the sun is not a thermal or heating engine, as the astronomers claim, but an electric generator which is not hot and does not need to be hot. I repudiate the law of gravity and adopt electricity as the evolving force of the universe.

      As the sun is 745 times larger than all the planets of the solar system combined, and controls the life and energy of the solar system by all laws of analogy and distribution in the universe, it should be more highly endowed with all the elements of growth, living forms and intellectual organisms than all the planets combined. Therefore, the sun should be the spiritual and intellectual center as well as the physical and electric center of our system of worlds, the headquarters of Deity and the future abode of man. No life could come from a hot or burning sun or world, yet all animal and vegetable life comes from the all life-giving energy of the sun. Heat is not life-giving, it is not even a substance or a force. Heat does not exist except as a sensation created by the increased activity of the molecules of which the body is composed. This increased activity is caused by currents or waves of electricity passing through a body or substance. Cold is the absence of heat or lack of motion of the molecules of a body or substance, and, like heat, is not a reality, a substance or a thing, but only a sensation.

      Heat and cold are produced by electricity, and are sensations resulting from electrical conditions. Heat is not a creator; electricity is the creator and heat is its servant, and only one of its thousand-fold expressions. Electricity creates the activity of the molecules which gives the sensation of heat. A person standing in the sun on a hot day receives currents of electricity which were not hot when they left the sun, but only became so when they came in contact with the earth's opposite electricity near the earth's surface. These currents produce the sensation of heat. The sun is not a burning globe, or blazing world of fire; it is an enormous magnet of measureless power, thirteen hundred thousand times larger than the earth magnet on which we live. It revolves on its enormous axis at the rate of four thousand miles an hour and is thus constituted a working magnet or arc dynamo, drawing electric energy from its vast electric field, embracing the solar system, six billions of miles in diameter. Of this electricity, it uses for its own light, heat, and vital force what it needs, and the balance is thrown off to its luminous corona or photosphere, where it is shot by the law of electric repulsion in the sun and electric attraction in the planets to the earth and plants. The brilliancy of the sun is caused by its surplus electricity creating a luminous aurora which extends from its poles to its equator.

      Newton discovered an imaginary force. Newton had an imagination which the scientific plodders who came after him lacked. They have dug in the dirt, while he sailed through azure seas and linked suns and worlds together by the mere sweep of the imagination, without any explanation or conceivable cause, and called it gravity. He might just as well have called it weight or ponderosity, which means the same as gravity. And the scientists followed him and accepted his theory of gravity, which means nothing and explains nothing. It was the best they could do, as he had an imagination and an idea and they had none. Thus the blind led the blind for two centuries, until electricity and its invisible forces were discovered, and a new field for thought and causation was opened up.

      Let us suppose that space and the invisible atoms or star dust which permeate it are seized by electric energy, creating a boundless sea of invisible electro-magnetism, which began to vibrate to the law of action and reaction, attraction and repulsion. Under this law every atom became a tiny magnet, and electric centers are formed which are the foundation stones and nuclei of growing suns and worlds; and invisible atoms, nebulæ and finally meteors are drawn by electric energy and woven by magnetic force or induced electric currents into orderly layers of crystalline rock and varied metals, forming a vast thermopile, galvanic battery, working magnet, and electric dynamo all combined. By the law of electric attraction all matter would tend toward a common center, and in that common center would