LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 OF s 
 
 a - 
 Class 
 
CONSCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WINSTON REID 
 
 I/ 
 
 " No intellectual man will enter on any study for its own 
 sake, but only with a view to advance himself in that one sole 
 science which embraces all." PLATO. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 W. F. BRAINARD, PUBLISHER 
 
/7 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905, 
 
 BY 
 W. F. BRAINARD 
 
TO MY FATHER 
 THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 
 
 134957 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 To my sister Florence my thanks are due, for her 
 constant encouragement and assistance during the 
 composition of this work. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 I. Matter, or the Science of Chemistry . 1 
 
 II. Energy, or the Science of Physics . . 21 
 
 III. The Heavenly Bodies, or the Science of 
 
 Astronomy 46 
 
 IV. Life, or the Science of Biology ... 73 
 V. Consciousness, or the Science of Psy- 
 chology ... 103 
 
 VI. Conscience, or Scientific Philosophy . 147 
 
 v 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 One summer night the steamer upon which we had 
 embarked for a visit to Japan's beauty-renowned 
 Inland Sea was anchored in the harbor of Kobe. 
 The dark waters were streaked here and there with 
 the bright reflections of the lights of many vessels; 
 fantastic lanterns of the natives gleamed in the town 
 that stretched along the shore of the harbor; low 
 mountains in the background of the town cast their 
 deep shadows; and overhead myriads of stars shed 
 their faint light upon the night scene. Several hours 
 after I had retired, I was awakened by the steamer's 
 starting upon its course, and went to the port-hole 
 for a parting glance at Kobe. How transformed the 
 scene ! A portion of the town was in flames ! In place 
 of the many pale lights in the darkness, one great mass 
 of fire now stood forth, and shed a weird glare upon 
 the surroundings. High above the roofs of dwellings 
 and temples swept the fiery element, majestic, irre- 
 sistible, claiming all in its path as its own. The 
 steamer soon turned and the town could no longer 
 be seen. But on the eastern horizon there appeared 
 another streak of flame : in a short time the sun rose 
 above the surface of the sea, as a great ball of fire. 
 The same element that had just before been seen 
 as the power of transformation and destruction, now 
 
 ix 
 
x Introduction. 
 
 shone in all its dazzling glory as the kindly source 
 of light and of life to the earth. 
 
 As never before I felt the presence in Nature of 
 a force that was overwhelmingly grand and mys- 
 terious. What was this power which could trans- 
 form and destroy all things, and yet, in the sun, could 
 give us our very life? Fire is the power of crea- 
 tion as well as of destruction. If all things can be 
 transformed by fire into its own nature, then all things 
 have sprung from fire. The universe has arisen as 
 transformations of nebula3 of fire in space. 
 
 " Science has as yet furnished no explanation for 
 the existence of force or matter. The appearance of 
 life in the world is just as unexplained and baffling 
 as the presence of force and matter themselves. But 
 life probably existed in the cosmos long before con- 
 sciousness, and the advent of consciousness is again 
 as bewilderingly unaccounted for as that of life or 
 force or matter." 1 
 
 " The hypothesis that light is transmitted by wave 
 motion . . . evidently necessitates the hypothesis 
 of a medium in which these waves are propagated 
 through space. Various views of the constitution of 
 this medium known as the luminiferous ether 
 have been advanced by eminent physicists. Some of 
 the properties attributed to this hypothetical fluid are 
 so anomalous that it is almost impossible for the mind 
 to conceive the existence of such a medium. . . . 
 ' The luminiferous ether pervading all space is not 
 
 i Kelly, Evolution and Effort, 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 only highly elastic, but absolutely solid.' Now, as 
 our finite minds cannot grasp the idea of a solid 
 which is impalpable to the touch and invisible to 
 our sight as the ether evidently is any theory 
 which would relieve us from the necessity of imagin- 
 ,ing, or trying to imagine, such an anomalous sub- 
 stance should be very acceptable to our finite intelli- 
 gence." * If one is justified in doubting the exist- 
 ence of the hypothetical, illogical substance " lumin- 
 iferous ether " as an object of the external, physical 
 world, then light itself becomes a physical reality 
 and substance. " A reality is something that exists 
 of itself and in its own right, and not merely as a 
 modification of something else. It is consequently 
 something that does not require anything else in 
 order to be conceived." 2 Light, fire, or luminous 
 heat, once recognized as a reality and a substance, is 
 found to be the First Cause or common source of 
 Matter, Energy, Life and Consciousness. Then fire 
 or heat is the original substance from which all other 
 forms of matter have been evolved in space. Heat 
 is actually the force, the energy of Nature. The mys- 
 terious electricity is none other than this subtle sub- 
 stance heat. Man's superiority over the brute 
 creation and his civilization began when first he 
 learned the power of fire : when, according to the 
 myth, Prometheus stole fire from the heavens that 
 man might borrow its strength. Heat is the very 
 
 1 Gore, Light, Electricity, and the Ether. 
 
 2 Strong, Why the Mind has a Body. 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 life-force and is conscious energy: the currents that 
 flow along the nerves and through the brains of or- 
 ganisms are currents of electricity or heat. 
 
 At present there is a separate science for matter, 
 chemistry; for energy, physics; for life, biology; 
 for consciousness, psychology; each of these 
 separate sciences studying some one special part of 
 nature. But nature is a whole and constitutes the 
 universe. There is then a science of the sciences, 
 the science of nature considered as a unity, scien- 
 tific philosophy. Heat is the common bond of the 
 separate sciences, and binds them into one science. 
 Since the Latin " cum " or " con " signifies " to- 
 gether," the sciences united or the philosophy of the 
 sciences may be called " Conscience." Man is mere- 
 ly a part of nature, and his knowledge of the universe 
 reveals to him the place he occupies in the natural 
 system. Man deduces from his knowledge of na- 
 ture's relation to him what ought to be his adapted 
 reaction or conduct to the world. Human knowl- 
 edge of the external world is the means to the end, 
 conduct, " Truth is not holiness. The human soul 
 was made to turn, by the subtle chemistry of its 
 digestive experience, truth into goodness." * Con- 
 science or knowledge of the outer world becomes 
 transformed in man into conscience or knowledge of 
 how he ought to conduct himself toward this external 
 world. Nature is the cosmos, man the microcosm; 
 the external world is the vast Original of which man's 
 
 i Phillips Brooks. 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 mind becomes a little reproduction, a conscious force 
 that aims to imitate the World-Thinker and Will. 
 
 A scientific philosophy arises from the two mental 
 processes of analysis and synthesis. There must be 
 an examination and analysis of the various facts of 
 nature discovered by the separate sciences, and a 
 synthesis of these numerous truths into one whole. 
 This book will consist of a synthesis of many scien- 
 tific facts which are introduced mainly in the form 
 of quotations from recognized authorities. The orig- 
 inal part of the work will be the synthesis of these 
 many truths into a philosophy through heat as the 
 bond of all things. The purpose of the first five 
 chapters is to show that in each of the five sciences 
 heat is the all-important factor. Heat is then made 
 the foundation for the scientific philosophy of the 
 last chapter. The theory of knowledge is not dwelt 
 upon, since " Nature herself is what science ex- 
 plores and studies, not the mere domain of human 
 ' representation ' ; consciousness is the means it uses, 
 but knowledge of consciousness is not the end it 
 seeks and attains." 1 
 
 " The goal of science is clear it is nothing short 
 of the complete interpretation of the universe. But 
 the goal is an ideal one it marks the direction in 
 which we move and strive, but never a stage we shall 
 actually reach." 2 
 
 1 Abbot, Scientific Theism. 
 
 2 Pearson, Grammar of Science. 
 
CONSCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MATTER, OB THE SCIENCE OF CHEMISTRY. 
 
 Chemistry being the science of matter, the con- 
 tribution which this science offers towards a scien- 
 tific philosophy concerns the question of the origin 
 and relations of the various forms of matter. 
 
 Chemistry has shown that matter as we know it 
 on our globe can be reduced to about seventy sub- 
 stances called the elements. As no human means 
 can further simplify them, these substances have 
 come to be considered as truly elementary or ulti- 
 mate. Every substance on the earth is either one 
 of the elements or a compound of two or more of 
 them. The first step in tracing the origin of mat- 
 ter, then, is to consider all compound substances as 
 dissociated, or converted by heat back to their ele- 
 ments. All earthly matter will then be in the form 
 of the seventy elements. 
 
 The three states of matter are the solid, liquid 
 and gaseous. But the physicists have shown that 
 sufficient heat will convert all solids into liquids, and 
 still greater heat will convert all liquids into gases. 
 We know with certainty that the earth was once in 
 
2 Conscience. 
 
 a much hotter condition than it is at present. If 
 the seventy elements that constitute matter on our 
 planet were heated sufficiently, we should then have 
 all earthly substance in the form of the gases or 
 vapors of the elements. 
 
 Still greater heating of these seventy gases of the 
 elements would give us seventy glowing or luminous 
 gases. This is as far as our intensest artificial heat- 
 ing can convert matter. But just at this point the 
 spectroscope comes to our aid, and enables us to com- 
 bine terrestrial and celestial chemistry. The light 
 emitted by our seventy glowing gases can be an- 
 alyzed by the spectroscope and compared with the 
 light, similarly analyzed, of heavenly bodies. Per- 
 haps the earlier history of the glowing gases of our 
 so-called elements can be traced in some of the 
 heavenly bodies that are younger than the earth. 
 
 The spectroscope " enables us to study the light 
 that comes from distant objects, to read therein a 
 record, more or less complete, of their chemical com- 
 position and physical conditions." * When a ray of 
 the sun's light passes through the spectroscope, we 
 obtain the solar spectrum : " a bright band is seen 
 stretching from red to violet, but this band is cut up 
 by a very large number of fine black lines. These 
 lines are always present, and always occupy the same 
 relative position in the solar spectrum, they are, 
 in fact, shadows in the sunlight." 2 The cause of 
 
 i Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 aRoscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
The Science of Matter. 3 
 
 these shadows has been discovered through experi- 
 ment. " By passing the light from incandescent 
 sodium through the vapor of the metal the bright 
 yellow double line is changed to a dark one. If the 
 solar atmosphere contain the vapors of sodium, of 
 iron, of magnesium, of calcium, etc., in the state of 
 glowing gas, and if white light from the incandes- 
 cent mass beneath pass through these vapors, the 
 effect produced would be exactly that which is in 
 fact observed." 1 Thus science has discovered the 
 fact that there exist in the atmosphere of the sun 
 many of our terrestrial elements in the state of glow- 
 ing gases, and that a white light comes from the 
 nucleus of the sun and is sifted through these ele- 
 ments that form the solar atmosphere over the 
 nucleus. 
 
 We find then in the solar atmosphere the glowing 
 vapors or flames of many of our so-called elements. 
 The spectroscope tells us that these flames in the 
 sun's atmosphere are not as intense as the solar 
 nucleus which is at white heat and emits white light ; 
 for the atmospheric flames do not outshine the white 
 nucleus, but, on the contrary, are shadows in this 
 white light. The sun is now considered by some 
 scientists as gaseous throughout. Then the nucleus 
 of the sun may be glowing white gas, white flame, a 
 subtle primordial substance, from the cooling surface 
 of which there evolves an atmosphere of weaker, col- 
 ored flames which constitute the elements out of 
 
 iRoscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
4 Conscience. 
 
 which planets are formed. The various elements of 
 the earth-planet, when converted into glowing vapors, 
 become flames of various colors and hence of various 
 intensities: the different elements may then be dif- 
 ferent stages in the process of the cooling of the 
 primordial white flame. As white heat cools into 
 red heat, so hydrogen, the lightest element of the 
 earth, is the element that is the first to evolve in the 
 solar atmosphere, as a red flame resting directly 
 above the sun's white nucleus; whereas iron vapor 
 which is green and is a flame of less intensity than 
 red flame, appears in the outer, cooler portions of 
 the evolving atmosphere. 
 
 The universe of matter could then have arisen 
 from the entering of nebulae of concentrated white 
 heat into the void we call space. The concentrated 
 substance would continually radiate or diffuse into 
 space some of its surface heat, leaving the surface 
 less intense and concentrated or a forming atmos- 
 phere of weaker flames or elements. The solar 
 atmosphere, cast off from the nucleus to form a 
 planet, would continue to lose heat through radia- 
 tion, and its glowing elements would cool into non- 
 luminous gases, liquids and solids, and would enter 
 into various chemical combinations, giving rise to 
 the various forms of matter that we have on the 
 earth-planet. 
 
 The ancients emphasized the fourth state of mat- 
 ter, luminous gas or flame, which modern scientists 
 overlook. If we take earth, water, air and fire, not 
 
The Science of Matter. 5 
 
 as elements as did the ancients, but as synonyms for 
 solid, liquid, gaseous and luminous matter, we may 
 say with Marcus Aurelius, " Let that of Heraclitus 
 never be out of thy mind, that the death of earth is 
 water, and the death of water is air, and the death 
 of air is fire; and so on the contrary. 7 ' In the lan- 
 guage of Emerson, " Water dissolves wood and iron 
 and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire dissolves 
 air ;" while on the contrary, rock " is firm water, it 
 is cold flame." Considering then the flame state of 
 the elements, we are led to conclude that these col- 
 ored flames are various stages of cooling of one 
 primordial white flame. From the solid matter on 
 the earth we can arrive at the elementary flames in 
 the sun's atmosphere merely by adding the heat lost 
 through radiation. Is it not natural to conclude 
 that still further addition of heat to these colored 
 flames will give the intensest flame, white heat? 
 
 Let us briefly consider what evidence the present 
 condition of the heavenly bodies furnishes in sup- 
 port of the theory that the matter of the earth 
 planet has been gradually evolved from a primordial 
 white flame. Is it a matter of fact that the youngest 
 heavenly bodies are composed entirely of white flame, 
 and that more and more elements evolve in the at- 
 mospheres or cooling surfaces of heavenly bodies as 
 they become older and more advanced in the cooling 
 process ? 
 
 The nebula? are the youngest bodies in the heavens 
 at present, according to the nebular hypothesis which 
 
6 Conscience. 
 
 modern astronomy accepts; these heavenly bodies 
 have not yet reached the stage of development of 
 solar systems. " The white nebulae, the nebula of 
 Andromeda at their head, give only a continuous 
 and perfectly expressionless spectrum, unmarked by 
 any lines or bands, either bright or dark." * These 
 nebulas with their pure white light have no at- 
 mospheres that cast shadows in this light, as is proven 
 by the absence of dark lines in the spectrum ; nor are 
 there rarefied gases, as the absence of bright bands 
 indicates. We conclude that the matter of the white 
 nebulaB is the primordial, concentrated white flame 
 which has not yet become rarefied on its surface and 
 has not yet evolved an atmosphere. Observations 
 made on the nebula of Perseus, when the new star 
 of February, 1901, was being watched, give further 
 evidence that the nebulous matter is the subtle sub- 
 stance white heat or light. The rate of motion of 
 the matter of this nebula exceeded " anything known 
 in the stellar universe before, the motion . 
 approximating that of light. . . . Now, it has 
 recently been suggested that this velocity is so great 
 as to make it doubtful whether the observed changes 
 are due to actual motion of matter at all. . . . 
 According to Professor G. W. Ritchie the result of 
 a study of the appearance of the nebulous masses on 
 the photographs suggests that there is actual motion 
 of matter." 2 Then the matter of the nebula moves 
 
 1 Young, General Astronomy. 
 
 2 Mary Proctor, New York Herald, Dec. 22, 1901. 
 
The Science of Matter. 7 
 
 with the velocity of light. If light can be regarded 
 as a substance (the proof will be considered in the 
 chapter on Energy), we may logically conclude that 
 this swiftly moving substance of the nebula is light 
 itself. We know that light is radiated into space 
 from the nebula; the whole nebula may be merely a 
 cloud of intense white light. 
 
 Passing to a consideration of the second stage of 
 nebulae, we find nebulae that are no longer white. 
 These nebulae have no central white flame, they are 
 merely rarefied luminous gases. What has become 
 of the former white nucleus ? It is at this point that 
 we begin to trace the evolution of suns and planets 
 from the cooling of white nebulae. Atmospheres of 
 weaker, colored flames evolve on the surface of the 
 white flame of nebulae. These atmospheres, when 
 they become dense and heavy as a result of the evolu- 
 tion of many elements, are cast off into space by the 
 swiftly moving white nucleus. These cast-off at- 
 mospheres form the planets ; while the white nucleus 
 forms a sun and again begins to cool on its new sur- 
 face and forms another atmosphere. In due time this 
 new atmosphere is also cast off and evolves into an- 
 other solar planet, the white nucleus once more shin- 
 ing in the heavens as a white, atmosphereless star. 
 
 It is to these atmospheres gradually evolving on 
 the exposed surface of the primordial white flame 
 that we must look for the history of the elements 
 that constitute matter on the earth-planet. Let us 
 see what is the nature of the atmosphere when it is 
 
8 Conscience. 
 
 in its earliest stage of formation. " So far the 
 spectra of all the nebulae that show lines at all appear 
 to be substantially the same. Four lines are usually 
 easily observed, two of which are due to hydrogen; 
 but the other two, which are brighter than the hydro- 
 gen lines, are not yet identified, and are almost cer- 
 tainly due to some element not yet detected on the 
 earth or sun, and are apparently peculiar to the 
 nebula?." * Other lines have been photographed, and 
 " the lines of helium are generally found to be pres- 
 ent." 2 Thus the red flame of hydrogen and the 
 yellow flame of helium evolve in the atmosphere be- 
 fore flames of less intensity, as one would expect to 
 be the case if the various elements have evolved as 
 different stages of the cooling of the original sub- 
 stance. 
 
 A star or sun is the nucleus of white flame left 
 after the original nebula has cast off its atmosphere. 
 A new atmosphere at once begins to form. We find 
 in the heavens stars that have these new atmospheres 
 in various stages of evolution. " From the observa- 
 tions of Secchi and Yogel, it appears that the stars 
 may be divided into three main classes according to 
 the general nature of the spectra which they present. 
 In those of the first class metallic vapors are absent 
 from the atmosphere of the star, or if present have 
 only a very slight absorptive power. The spectra of 
 such stars are characterized by four dark lines cor- 
 
 1 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 2 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
The Science of Matter. 9 
 
 responding in position to the bright lines of hydro- 
 gen, as is the case in Sirius, Vega, and most white 
 stars, or by faint dark metallic lines unaccompanied 
 by strong hydrogen lines, or again by bright hydrogen 
 lines as well as the bright helium line. . . . 
 The second group contains the yellow stars such as 
 Pollux, . . . the spectra of which resemble 
 that of the sun, containing numerous dark lines due 
 not only to hydrogen but also to metals. The mem- 
 bers of the third group, which comprises the red and 
 blue stars, ... in addition to some dark lines 
 show channelled-space spectra, which are probably 
 due to the presence of chemical compounds in their 
 atmospheres. Some of the stars of this group ap- 
 pear to contain some compound of carbon in the in- 
 candescent state." * 
 
 " The simpler a spectrum is, the simpler must be 
 the composition of the body which yields that spec- 
 trum. Arguing upon these premises, Lockyer con- 
 cludes that the atmospheres of the whiter stars con- 
 tain, the fewer elements and those of smaller atomic 
 weight, and that as the peculiar color of the star 
 becomes more distinct its atmosphere becomes more 
 complicated. These results, coupled with the well- 
 known fact that dissociation of chemical compounds 
 uniformly takes place if the temperature be only suf- 
 ficiently high, has led Lockyer to suggest that the 
 heat being greatest in the whitish stars, their simple 
 spectra can be best explained by the existence of a 
 
 i Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
10 Conscience. 
 
 temperature sufficient to dissociate the substances to 
 which on this earth we give the name of elementary 
 bodies." * Lockyer " maintains in fact that none of 
 our so-called ' elements ? are really elementary, but 
 that all are decomposable, and are to some extent 
 actually decomposed in the sun and stars, and some 
 of them by the electric spark in our own laboratories. 
 Granting this, many interesting and remarkable spec- 
 troscopic facts find easy explanation." 2 " The ex- 
 istence of three elements on some celestial bodies and 
 of eighty on others, according to density, would be 
 without explanation were not the elements the re- 
 sult of evolution. The periodicity of the maxima 
 and minima of the sun-spots, in connection with the 
 appearance of the spots in distinct localities only, 
 and the difference of the prominences seem to point 
 to a continual formation of elements." 3 
 
 The sun, since it is the nearest star to the earth, 
 presents the best field for a study in detail of the 
 order in which the various elements are evolved in 
 the star atmospheres from the primordial white flame. 
 " If we examine the prismatic spectrum with a very 
 delicate thermometer, we find the heat increases from 
 the violet to the red end." 4 Let us see if the ele- 
 ments in the solar atmosphere range in the order of 
 their relative intensities, whether a red flame is 
 found nearest to the white nucleus, and a violet flame 
 
 1 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
 2 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 3 Wendt ; Venable, Periodic Law, 
 
 4 Steele, Popular Physics, 
 
The Science of Matter. 11 
 
 at the outer edge of the atmosphere, farthest removed 
 from the inner white flame. If this were so, the fact 
 would indicate that the white flame has gradually 
 evolved on its exposed, radiating, cooling surface into 
 an atmosphere of ever-weakening flames. 
 
 When the dazzling white nucleus of the sun is 
 eclipsed by the dark body of the moon, the solar at- 
 mosphere can be seen. " Within the corona, around 
 the margin of the disc, variously colored prominences 
 may be detected ; and fantastically-shaped tongues of 
 red flame may be seen to dart forth. . . . The 
 red flames consist, for the most part, of the gas 
 hydrogen." * Next to the sun's white centre, the 
 element hydrogen appears as " a red layer which en- 
 velops the sun." 2 " The hydrogen is too hot to 
 burn " in the sense of uniting chemically with some 
 other element such as oxygen, " the temperature of 
 the solar surface being above that of ' dissociation ' ; 
 so high that any compound containing hydrogen would 
 there be decomposed." 3 Next to the hottest part of 
 the sun, the white nucleus, is then the lightest of 
 earthly elements in the state of an intense red flame. 
 
 In the lower, first-formed portion of the solar at- 
 mosphere we find the red flame of hydrogen and the 
 yellow flames of helium and calcium. " The chro- 
 mosphere and prominences are composed of the per- 
 manent gases, mainly hydrogen and helium." 4 
 
 1 Huxley, Physiography. 
 
 2 Lockyer, The Spectroscope. 
 
 3 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 * Young, General Astronomy. 
 
12 Conscience. 
 
 Some astronomers think that the vapors that cause 
 many of the dark lines of the solar spectrum form 
 a reversing layer in this lower part of the atmos- 
 phere. But Lockyer is justified in questioning 
 " the existence of any such thin stratum, or f re- 
 versing layer.' According to his view, the solar 
 atmosphere is very extensive, and those lines of the 
 iron spectrum which, as he holds, correspond to the 
 more complex combinations of its constituents, are 
 formed only in the regions of lower temperature, high 
 up in the sun's atmosphere." * " The spectrum of 
 a sun spot differs from the general solar spectrum not 
 only in its diminished brilliancy, but in the great 
 widening of certain lines and the thinning and even 
 ' reversing ' of others, especially those of hydrogen. 
 The majority of the Fraunhofer lines, however, are 
 not sensibly affected either way, a fact which Mr. 
 Lockyer quotes as evidence that they originate high 
 up in the solar atmosphere." 2 Since the hydrogen 
 lines are reversed by the sun spots, these spots or 
 less brilliant and thus less intense flames of elements 
 evolve higher up in the atmosphere than hydrogen. 
 Towards the outer edge of the solar atmosphere we 
 find " matter excessively rarefied " ; and " the char- 
 acteristic feature of the visual spectrum is a bright 
 line in the green. . . . The line is really a close 
 double, one of its two components being due to 
 
 1 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 2 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
The Science of Matter. 13 
 
 iron. . . . Besides this conspicuous green line 
 there are several others in the violet." 1 
 
 To the question concerning the origin of the va- 
 rious forms of matter this answer may then be given : 
 Merely by the addition of heat, all substances on the 
 earth become converted into about seventy luminous 
 gases or flames of different colors. Intenser heat 
 would resolve these colored flames into white flame, 
 the primordial substance of the universe. Tracing 
 matter in the opposite direction, the cooling process, 
 we find in the youngest heavenly bodies, the nebulae, 
 the concentrated substance white heat, just begin- 
 ning on its exposed surface to diffuse and cool in 
 space. We can trace the orderly birth of the so- 
 called elements in the star-atmospheres that evolve as 
 cooling surfaces of the white flame. When these at- 
 mospheres are cast off from the white-hot nucleus, 
 they become planets; and their colored flames cool 
 and give rise to gases, liquids and solids, and to com- 
 pound. substances. 
 
 We find on examination that heat is the all-im- 
 portant factor in the study of matter. It is intensity 
 of heat that determines both the physical and the 
 chemical conditions of matter. All solids become 
 liquids, liquids gases, and gases flames when suffi- 
 ciently heated ; " the earth we stand upon . . . 
 is chemically resolvable into gases and nebulae." 2 
 Allotropism or " the occurrence of an element in 
 
 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 2 Emerson, The Preacher. 
 
 
14 Conscience. 
 
 two or more different modifications " 1 is a question 
 of heat. For example, carbon assumes three solid 
 forms, charcoal, graphite and diamond. " When the 
 diamond is heated between the carbon poles of a 
 powerful electric battery it swells up and becomes 
 converted into a black mass of graphite. 77 2 Then 
 diamond heated becomes graphite, or diamond is a 
 colder stage of the solid state of the element carbon 
 than is graphite. " It is found that the change of 
 one allotropic form of a substance into another is 
 always accompanied by either an evolution or an ab- 
 sorption of heat." 3 
 
 Turning to a consideration of the part that heat 
 plays in chemical changes, we find that matter is in- 
 destructible ; that heat is the power that transforms 
 it. " We see substances destroyed by fire, as we say. 
 . . . In the changes referred to the substances 
 changed disappear as such. After the fire, the wood 
 or the coal, or whatever may be burned, is no longer 
 to be found. The rusted iron is no longer iron. 
 The gunpowder after the flash is no longer gun- 
 powder. Changes of this kind, in which the sub- 
 stances disappear and something else is formed in 
 their place are known as chemical changes." * Ox- 
 idation or the usual " process of combustion consists 
 in the chemical combination of oxygen with the sub- 
 
 iRemsen, Chemistry. 
 
 2 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
 3 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 4Eemsen, Chemistry. 
 
The Science of Matter. 15 
 
 stance burned." * Combustion is not limited, how- 
 ever, to the union of oxygen with substances. When- 
 ever any two substances unite, with evolution of heat 
 and light, to form a new substance, we have the proc- 
 ess of combustion. Heat is given off whenever sub- 
 stances unite chemically to form compounds. 
 " Chemical combination is always accompanied by 
 an evolution of heat." 2 
 
 What then is the nature of chemical union, what is 
 the force of ' chemical affinity ' that causes elements 
 to combine ? If all the elements are different stages 
 in the cooling of the primordial white flame, there is 
 a difference in the intensity of the essence heat in the 
 different elements. Now there is a universal tend- 
 ency in nature towards diffusion of heat until an 
 equalization of temperature is reached : a hotter sub- 
 stance loses heat to a colder one. There is then a 
 difference of potential between any two elements and 
 a current of heat flows from one to the other, caus- 
 ing attraction or chemical affinity; the tendency of 
 the elements to unite or blend into one substance is 
 this tendency to equalization of their different in- 
 tensities of the essence heat. The elements are at- 
 tracted or drawn together by this current of heat 
 between them, flowing from the hotter to the colder, 
 and merge into a stage of matter between the two 
 former relatively hot and cooler elements. The 
 greater the difference of potential between two ele- 
 
 1 Remsen, Chemistry. 
 2Remsen, Chemistry. 
 
16 Conscience. 
 
 ments, the greater the current of heat and the chem- 
 ical affinity. When oxygen gas is uniting with 
 liquid or solid fuels, the gaseous matter and not the 
 colder fuels is the source of the heat of combustion. 
 The part that fuel plays is merely negative, it is the 
 cooler body which is needed to cause a flow of heat 
 from the body at higher potential ; the heat evolved 
 in oxidation was not stored up as i potential energy ? 
 in the fuel, but comes from the oxygen gas. The 
 colder the stage of matter with which oxygen gas is 
 uniting, the greater the amount of heat evolved by 
 the oxygen, for the greater is the difference of poten- 
 tial between the two uniting substances. The solids 
 radium, thorium and uranium are among the 
 heaviest, last evolved and coldest of the elements; 
 slow oxidation begins in them when once exposed to 
 the light, and the difference of potential between 
 oxygen gas and themselves being great, luminous heat 
 is evolved by the oxygen in its slow union with them. 
 The Becquerel rays are the heat of slow oxidation of 
 these heavy fuels. 
 
 There are three classes of chemical reactions: the 
 combination of two or more elements into a com- 
 pound, the decomposition of a compound sub- 
 stance into two or more elements, and " the 
 interaction of two or more elements or com- 
 pounds and the formation of two or more com- 
 pounds." In those reactions where compounds dis- 
 sociate into elements, heat is absorbed ; in those where 
 
 iRemsen, Chemistry. 
 
The Science of Matter. 17 
 
 substances unite into compounds, heat is evolved. 
 Heat is thus seen to he the keynote to all chemical 
 changes, the cause of transformations of matter. " It 
 has heen found that every chemical change gives rise 
 either to an evolution or to an absorption of heat, 
 and that for definite quantities of the same sub- 
 stances under the same circumstances the same 
 amount of heat is evolved or absorbed." * "A defi- 
 nite temperature is essential for the occurrence of 
 chemical action." 2 " Chemical action in general 
 entirely ceases at temperatures approaching 
 150." 3 
 
 " The sensible universe is made up of matter and 
 energy. . . . Under the influence of the forms 
 of energy the forms of matter are constantly under- 
 going change." 4 Since energy is the subtle sub- 
 stance heat, and heat is the primordial substance from 
 which the various forms of matter evolve as different 
 stages in the cooling of this substance, either absorp- 
 tion or evolution of some of this essence heat by sub- 
 stances naturally causes transformations. 
 
 We should expect, if it is true that the elements 
 have evolved as various stages in the cooling of one 
 substance, to find that there are certain gradations of 
 properties and certain close relations of the elements 
 when they are arranged in the order of their evolu- 
 tion. Those elements that have flames of great in- 
 
 1 Remsen, Chemistry. 
 
 2 Richter, Organic Chemistry. 
 
 3 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry, 
 * Remsen, Chemistry. 
 
18 Conscience. 
 
 tensity naturally evolved before those of less intensity. 
 By reference to the order in which the colors come 
 in the solar spectrum, as a scale of intensity as 
 related to color, we can learn of the relative inten- 
 sities of the variously colored flames of the elements 
 and hence of the order in which they were evolved. 
 
 The first elements to be evolved would resemble 
 in properties the original substance in a greater de- 
 gree than would later elements. "Now a property of 
 the subtle substance heat is imponderability. Heat 
 rises, and is therefore the opposite force to gravity 
 or downward tendency which causes weight. We 
 find that the first-evolved elements are the lightest, 
 and that elements increase in weight as the inten- 
 sities of their colored flames decrease. Hydrogen, 
 the flame of which is red, is the lightest element of 
 the earth, and instead of falling to the ground as do 
 solids, this gas rises above all other earthly substances. 
 Sodium, which can be converted into a yellow flame, 
 is heavier than hydrogen and lighter than gold, the 
 flame of which is green in color. Gold in turn is 
 lighter than lead, the flame of which is blue. 
 
 At the present stage of cooling of the earth, only 
 those elements are still gaseous that are light in 
 weight, that is, that evolved the first; they, being of 
 intenser heat than the others, still retain sufficient 
 heat to be in the gaseous state. Such cold as would 
 cause hydrogen gas to become a liquid " involves the 
 solidification of every gaseous substance but one that 
 is at present definitely known to the chemist; and 
 
The Science of Matter. 19 
 
 so liquid hydrogen introduces the investigator to a 
 world of solid bodies." Thus hydrogen, the lightest 
 of the elements and the flame of which is the in- 
 tensest, retains enough of its former heat to be in the 
 liquid state when all other elements have changed 
 into solids. 
 
 Mendelejeff " showed that when the elements are 
 arranged in order of their atomic weights, they may 
 be divided into groups, in each of which a similar 
 gradation of properties from element to element 
 occurs, the properties of the elements thus appearing 
 as periodic functions of the atomic weights." Ryd- 
 berg's " general conclusions were that ... it 
 is only the atomic weight and nothing else which 
 governs the specific gravities and melting points as 
 well as expansion coefficients, refraction equivalents 
 and in short all the known physical properties of the 
 elements." 2 Since the elements are governed by a 
 periodic law when arranged according to their atomic 
 weights, many chemists have considered this as evi- 
 dence of some fundamental relation between the ele- 
 ments. Some have even been led to conclude that 
 they were various stages of condensation of one 
 primordial element. According to Hartley, " an 
 atomic weight is a numerical proportion. There are 
 seventy elements and seventy atomic weights and 
 these represent matter in seventy different states of 
 
 1 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
 2 Venable, Periodic Law. 
 
 3 Venable, Periodic Law. 
 
20 Conscience. 
 
 condensation." 3 Hence the theory " that elementary 
 species have been formed by the successive condensa- 
 tions of a primordial substance of small specific 
 gravity and low atomic weight." * Heat is the 
 primordial substance, and the cooling process the 
 cause of contraction or condensation of matter. The 
 greater the cooling, that is, the greater the quantity 
 of the essence heat lost by radiation, the smaller the 
 quantity of matter that remains, the smaller the par- 
 ticles or atoms, and the smaller the space they oc- 
 cupy ; the colder that matter becomes, the more 
 atoms in a given space or the denser the substance 
 becomes through contraction. 
 
 i Henry Wilde, On the Origin of Elementary Substances. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ENERGY, OB THE SCIENCE OF PHYSICS. 
 
 " Physics is that branch of natural science which 
 treats of transferences and transformations of en- 
 ergy. 77 * The all-important truth discovered by the 
 science of physics is embodied in the principle of the 
 conservation of energy, according to which the va- 
 rious forms of energy can be changed one into an- 
 other, and in this transformation no energy is lost. 
 Now if any one of the various forms of energy can 
 be proved to be a subtle substance, then all the forms 
 of energy are substance. For by the fundamental 
 principle of chemistry matter is indestructible, and 
 thus one form of energy that is a substance could not 
 be changed into another form of energy that is not a 
 substance, matter could not become that which is not 
 matter. The contribution of the science of physics 
 towards a scientific philosophy may be thus stated: 
 The various forms of energy are transformations of 
 one and the same subtle substance heat; heat, the 
 essence of matter, is the energy and power of the 
 universe. 
 
 " Physics is the science of mechanics, heat, sound, 
 light, electricity and magnetism. 77 2 Physicists have 
 
 1 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
 2 Hall and Bergen, Physics. 
 
 21 
 
22 Conscience. 
 
 shown that sound is a sensation produced by the ac- 
 tion upon the nervous system through the end-organ 
 the ear, of waves of air set in motion by a vibrating 
 body. The theory will here be presented that heat, 
 light and electricity are one and the same subtle sub- 
 stance, and that motion and magnetism are properties 
 of this substance. 
 
 Let us consider first whether heat, light and elec- 
 tricity are or are not matter. Scientists at present 
 hold the view that heat and light are not substances, 
 but are inclined to adopt the theory that electricity 
 is matter. If any one of the three is a substance, all 
 three are matter, since they can be converted one into 
 another. " There has been a difference of opinion as 
 to whether electricity is or is not a substance. A cen- 
 tury ago, when heat and light were believed to be 
 weightless fluids, electricity was classed with them as 
 a substance. Later, when it was shown that heat 
 and light were not substances, but were ( modes of 
 motion/ in which the particles of matter are involved, 
 the notion gained currency that electricity was a 
 mode of motion, rather than a substance by itself. 
 During recent years belief in the existence of electric 
 substance, or substances, has been growing again." 
 " Unlike heat, light and sound, electricity is not in 
 itself a form of energy; nor is it a form of matter 
 in the ordinary meaning of the term." 2 
 
 Is Tieat a substance? A century ago the answer 
 
 1 Hall and Bergen, Physics. 
 
 2 Stewart, Magnetism and Electricity. 
 
The Science of Energy. 23 
 
 would have been that heat is a substance, to which 
 the name caloric is given. To-day science answers 
 that heat can be changed into motion, and is there- 
 fore not a substance but is merely motion of the 
 molecules of matter. " Eumford was led to investi- 
 gate the nature of heat from noticing, in the work- 
 shops at Munich, how hot the cannon became while 
 boring. There seemed to be no limit to the amount 
 of heat which could be produced, yet the cannon, the 
 borer and the chips lost nothing, so far as he could 
 detect. If heat were a fluid, as the caloric theory 
 asserted, then there should be an end to the process 
 sooner or later. Eumford now began to get gleams 
 of the truth of the vibratory theory. Taking a large 
 piece of brass with a hollow at one end, he fitted to 
 it a blunt steel borer, which pressed down upon the 
 metal with a weight of 10,000 pounds. This appa- 
 ratus he placed in a box holding about 18% pounds 
 of water. The brass was then made to revolve by 
 horse-power at the rate of 32 times per minute. In 
 the beginning the water in the box was at 60 F., 
 but in two hours and a half it actually boiled. ' It 
 would be difficult,' wrote Eumford, ' to describe the 
 surprise and astonishment of the bystanders to see 
 so large a quantity of water heated and actually made 
 to boil without any fire.' ... By this experi- 
 ment he had proved that motion can be turned into 
 heat." * 
 
 The experiment at least reveals the fact that heat 
 i Steele, Physios. 
 
24 Conscience. 
 
 and motion are closely related. The great quantity 
 of heat evolved could not have been derived from an 
 indefinite store of caloric present in the cannon. If 
 heat be a substance, whence then was the evolved heat 
 obtained? The motive power used in boring the 
 cannon was the heat energy evolved by the horse by 
 the oxidation of its muscular tissue. The working 
 horse had to generate enough heat or power to move 
 its own body and the machinery to which it was at- 
 tached. The body of the horse and the attached 
 machinery may be regarded as resisting bodies which 
 lie in the path of the stream of heat that is generated 
 by the working horse and which tends to flow to the 
 ground; these obstacles in the path of the stream of 
 heat-substance are themselves moved by the swift 
 current. Instead of heat being considered merely as 
 a kind of motion, motion could be regarded as merely 
 the property and characteristic of a substance heat: 
 it is the nature of the substance heat to flow, and the 
 intenser the heat, the more swiftly will it move. 
 Heat is the active substance, the motive power, the 
 energy of nature. 
 
 When a sufficient quantity of heat is added to all 
 forms of matter, they become luminous gases or col- 
 ored flames, and in this state all matter is seen to 
 partake of the nature of fire or heat. The converse 
 seems true, that heat is thus of the nature of matter, 
 that heat is substance. In the chapter on Matter we 
 conceived the elements as having evolved as various 
 stages of intensity in the process of the cool- 
 
The Science of Energy. 25 
 
 ing of white heat, and hence conceived of heat as the 
 primordial substance, the very essence of matter. 
 
 To the question, Is light a substance, we should 
 answer that light is the substance heat in its intense 
 state of luminous gas. But the modern scientific 
 theory is that light " is not a substance, but a kind of 
 wave-motion, a shiver, which is sent along through 
 bodies with great velocity and to very great distances, 
 although the particles of the body, or medium, trans- 
 mitting this wave-motion travel very small distances 
 on either side of their positions of rest." 1 
 
 What kind of substance does science assume to 
 exist, in order that light may be considered not a 
 substance in itself, but wave-motion ? " If light is 
 motion, what moves ? Our atmosphere is but a thin 
 investment of the earth, while the great space that 
 separates us from the sun contains no air or other 
 known substance. But empty space can neither re- 
 ceive nor communicate motion. It is assumed - 
 it is necessary to assume that there is some me- 
 dium filling the interplanetary space, in fact, filling 
 all otherwise unoccupied space (i. e., where matter 
 is not, ether is), by which motion can be communi- 
 cated from one point in the otherwise empty space to 
 another. This medium has received the name of 
 ether. Ether is supposed to penetrate even among 
 the molecules of liquid and solid matter, and thus 
 surrounds every molecule of matter in the uni- 
 verse, as the atmosphere surrounds the earth. No 
 
 i Hall and Bergen, Physics. 
 
26 Conscience. 
 
 vacuum of this medium can bo obtained ; an attempt 
 to pump it out of a space would be like trying to 
 pump water with a sieve for a piston. We cannot 
 see, hear, feel, taste, smell, weigh, nor measure it. 
 What evidence, then, have we that it exists? You 
 believe that a horse can see; you have no absolute 
 knowledge of the fact. But you reason thus : he be- 
 haves as if he could see ; in other words, you are able 
 to account for his actions on the hypothesis that he 
 can see, and on no other. Phenomena occur just as 
 they would occur if all space were filled with an 
 ethereal medium capable of transmitting motion, and 
 we can account for these phenomena on no other 
 hypothesis; hence our belief in the existence of the 
 medium." * " There is supposed to be a fluid, 
 termed ether, constituting a kind of universal at- 
 mosphere, diffused through space. It is so subtle 
 that it glides among the molecules of bodies as the 
 air does among the branches and the foliage of trees. 
 It fills the pores of all substances, eludes all chemical 
 tests, passes in through the receiver and remains even 
 in the vacuum of an air-pump. A luminous body 
 sets in motion waves of ether, which go off in every 
 direction. They move at the rate of 186,000 miles 
 per second, and breaking upon the eye, give the im- 
 pression of sight. The wave-motion is like that of 
 sound, except that the vibrations are transverse." 2 
 Let us take a closer look at the nature of this in- 
 
 1 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
 2 Steele, Physics. 
 
The Science of Energy. 27 
 
 teresting substance ether. " Graetz, assumes the ether 
 to be an elastic solid, and therefore attributes to it 
 the same properties Fresnel and Neumann did." 
 We can pump from the receiver of an air pump mat- 
 ter as subtle as invisible gas, and yet cannot remove 
 a certain solid named ether. If this ether exists, it 
 has the distinction of being the only solid that is 
 subtle and invisible; gases commonly have these 
 characteristics, but not solid matter. " That me- 
 dium by which light is transmitted through what we 
 commonly call a vacuum is named by physicists the 
 luminiferous (light-bearing) ether. This medium 
 is a good deal of a mystery. We have overwhelming 
 proof that it transmits energy by means of a wave- 
 motion. It must, therefore, have inertia, like ordi- 
 nary matter, but it is not, so far as we know, subject 
 to gravitation like ordinary matter. Its wave-mo- 
 tion is much like that of an elastic solid, yet it does 
 not, so far as we have discovered, impede the heaven- 
 ly bodies in their motion through it. These various 
 properties, positive and negative, do not harmonize 
 very readily, and we have still much to learn about 
 the ether." 1 
 
 It has justly been said that " without the arbitrary 
 hypothesis of an inter-stellar ether, which science has 
 thought itself compelled to invent, . . . and 
 which has no other objective evidence, besides being 
 in its own character in various ways a logical con- 
 tradiction, without such an ether we are compelled 
 
 i Hall and Bergen, Physics, 
 
28 Conscience. 
 
 to admit that this heat energy exists entirely apart 
 from all atoms in absolute space. This must occur 
 whenever it passes from one place to another, either 
 through the vast voids between the stars, or ... 
 through the infinitesimal voids between atom and 
 atom in gases." * 
 
 The theory that light is merely wave-motion of a 
 hypothetical substance ether does not explain the 
 mystery light; for in order to make light mere mo- 
 tion a greater mystery than the original one that was 
 to be explained is introduced. Everyone knows more 
 or less concerning light, through sense-experience of 
 it as an external reality, though its true character 
 remain forever nature's insolvable mystery. But no 
 one can ever hope to know with certainty that ether 
 actually exists. Whatever light is, it is the grand 
 source of all matter and all energy, and the defini- 
 tion of it as wave-motion of a hypothetical and illog- 
 ical substance ether is inadequate. "The sunbeam 
 comes to the earth as simply motion of ether-waves, 
 yet it is the grand source of beauty and power. Its 
 heat, light, and chemical force work everywhere the 
 miracle of life and motion. In the growing plant, 
 \ the burning coal, the flying bird, the glaring light- 
 ning, the blooming flower, the rushing engine, the 
 roaring cataract, the pattering rain we see only 
 varied manifestations of this one all-energizing 
 force." 2 Since everyone must acknowledge the fact 
 
 i Murray, Atoms and Energies, 
 2Steele, Physios. 
 
The Science of Energy. 29 
 
 that the sun is the source of all energy and life that 
 the earth possesses, which then do we receive from 
 the sun, a subtle, all-powerful substance heat, or 
 merely little waves sent through a medium ether ? 
 Does the following theory explain the nature of the 
 heat and light which the earth receives from the 
 sun ? " The molecules of the sun and stars are in 
 rapid vibration. These set in motion waves of ether, 
 which dart across the intervening space, and surging 
 against the earth, give up their motion to it." 
 
 The invisible gases of the atmosphere baffle our in- 
 vestigations into their true nature. How much more 
 then must the vastly more subtle light and heat defy 
 our reason ! Luminous hydrogen gas seems almost 
 as " unsubstantial " as the sunbeam or the electric 
 spark, but when we cool it into liquid hydrogen we 
 feel that then it is unquestionably substance. We 
 who live on a globe where matter exists not in the 
 form of luminous gases as on the sun, but chiefly in 
 the solid and liquid states with a few non-luminous 
 or invisible gases which still form an atmosphere 
 above the solid crust, begin with matter in the solid 
 state as the basis for our conceptions of matter in 
 general, and from this basis reason concerning the 
 nature of liquids and gases. But solid matter is 
 the last-evolved state of matter, and matter is no 
 less matter when it is gaseous and subtle and eludes 
 human investigation into its nature. We find 
 " that matter is not what it appears ; that chem- 
 
 i Steele, Physics. 
 
30 Conscience. 
 
 istry can blow it all into gas. Faraday, the most 
 exact of natural philosophers, taught that when we 
 should arrive at the monads, or primordial elements 
 (the supposed little cubes or prisms of which all mat- 
 ter was built up), we should not find cubes, or prisms, 
 or atoms, at all, but spherules of force." * Tracing 
 back solid, liquid and gaseous matter, we find in the 
 youngest heavenly bodies, the white nebulae, a pri- 
 mordial substance white light or white heat, which is 
 at the same time the energy of the universe. 
 
 Is electricity matter ? If experiment justifies the 
 use of the term ' current of electricity,' the implica- 
 tion would be that some substance is flowing. One 
 simple method of obtaining a so-called " current of 
 electricity " is as follows : " It is found that if a 
 circuit be made up of two wires of different metals, 
 and one of the junctions be heated, a current is set 
 up in the circuit. Currents so produced are called 
 thermo-electric currents." 2 A current " may also 
 be produced by cooling either of the junctions." 3 
 What then is this " electricity " that flows through 
 the wires? When a certain part of the wires is 
 heated or cooled more than the other parts, a differ- 
 ence of temperature exists between this heated or 
 cooled portion and the other parts. Since there is 
 a universal tendency towards equalization of tem- 
 perature, heat flows from the hotter to the colder 
 
 1 Emerson, Poetry and Imagination. 
 
 2 Stewart, Magnetism and Electricity. 
 
 3 Stewart, Magnetism and Electricity. 
 
The Science of Energy. 31 
 
 parts of the wire. What else could the electric cur- 
 rent in the wires be except this flowing heat? 
 " The strength of the current is nearly proportional 
 to the difference in temperature " x of the parts of the 
 wires. " A thermo-electric pile consists of alternate 
 bars of antimony and bismuth soldered together. 
 . . . If both faces of the pile are equally heat- 
 ed, there is no current. The least variation of tem- 
 perature, however, between the two is indicated by 
 the flow of electricity. . . . This constitutes a 
 delicate test of the presence of heat." 2 " Experi- 
 ment proves that a thermo-electric current uses up 
 heat." 3 A thermo-electric current is a current of 
 heat, electricity is the subtle substance heat. 
 
 Let us consider what further evidence there is 
 that electricity is heat. Franklin first proved that 
 lightning is electricity. What then is lightning? 
 It is the heat evolved by the warmer of two merging 
 clouds, and the heat evolved in the process of water 
 vapor or steam becoming liquid rain. The highly- 
 resisting air impedes the current of heat until it be- 
 comes so accumulated and intensified that it can flash 
 as luminous heat or light along a path from which it 
 removes the resisting air, the displacing of the air 
 giving rise to the sound known as thunder. Only in 
 the warmer regions of the earth 1 in the tropics, and 
 during the hot summer in the temperate zones, is the 
 
 1 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
 2 Steele, Physics. 
 
 3 Hall and Bergen, Physics. 
 
32 Conscience. 
 
 heat evolved during rains intense enough to become 
 visible as luminous heat or lightning. 
 
 " When two conductors at different potentials are 
 made to approach one another, a passage of electricity 
 takes place between them across the intervening dielec- 
 tric accompanied by heat, light, and a crackling 
 sound." 1 One would describe the appearance as the 
 flash of a spark of fire from the conductor at the 
 higher potential to the other, and what but fire 
 crackles, is hot and luminous ? Again, when a strong 
 current of electricity is flowing through a wire that 
 is not insulated, anyone who grasps the " live " wire 
 is burned. A great intensity of heat is required to 
 melt metal wires, and these can therefore be used as 
 conductors of currents of electricity or fire that are 
 not very intense ; but the wires carrying the currents 
 have to be insulated, to keep the fire from coming in 
 contact with wood, paper and other inflammable 
 materials. 
 
 What is the electric current that is generated in a 
 battery ? The metals and acids of a battery unite to 
 form compounds, and heat is always evolved in the 
 act of chemical combination. This chemical union 
 that takes place in every voltaic cell is a form of slow 
 combustion, heat is evolved during the process of the 
 gradual burning of the metals by the acids. The 
 two metals of the battery differ in their rate of union 
 with the acid, the more active evolving the greater 
 quantity of heat in a given time. There will con- 
 
 i Stewart, Magnetism and Electricity. 
 
The Science of Energy. 33 
 
 sequently be a flow of heat from the metal that is 
 evolving the greater quantity to the other, and this 
 flowing heat is the electric current generated in 
 the battery. " The greater the disparity between the 
 two solid elements, with reference to the action of the 
 liquid on them, the greater the difference in poten- 
 tial ; hence the greater the current." 1 " When char- 
 coal or gas-carbon electrodes are used with a powerful 
 battery, on slightly separating the points, the inter- 
 vening space is spanned by an arch of the most daz- 
 zling light. The flame, reaching out from the pos- 
 itive pole like a tongue, vibrates around the negative 
 pole, licking now on this side and now on that. The 
 heat is intense. Platinum melts in it like wax in 
 the flame of a candle, the metals burn with their 
 characteristic colors; and lime, quartz, etc. are 
 fused." 2 The effect of the highly-resisting air in 
 the small space between the highly-resisting carbon 
 points of an arc-lamp is to accumulate and intensify 
 the current into luminous heat or white flame. This 
 intense and concentrated heat of the electric arc is 
 the nearest form of earthly matter to the concentrated 
 white flame in the sun's nucleus. " The brightest 
 part of an electric arc comes nearer sunlight in in- 
 tensity than anything else we know of, being from 
 one-half to one-quarter as bright as the solar sur- 
 face itself." 3 " The electric light is of the purest 
 
 1 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
 2 Steele, Physics. 
 
 3 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
34 Conscience. 
 
 white. . . . The heat generated by electricity 
 will vaporize all substances." * 
 
 When electricity accumulates instead of flowing 
 as a current, it is called " static," in contradistinction 
 to current or " dynamic," electricity. Since heat is 
 motive power, all electricity flows, unless impeded 
 by media of too great resistance. For example, 
 when the circuit of a battery is broken by separating 
 the ends of the conducting wire, leaving between 
 the separated ends the highly-resisting medium air, 
 " the current ceases, but electricity accumulates in the 
 wire." 2 From the arc-lamp we learn that a current 
 must be greatly intensified by accumulation in order 
 to span a very small but highly-resisting air-space. 
 In the case of the Ley den jar, where electricity is 
 accumulated or " stored " on tin-foil over glass, the 
 highly-resisting media glass and air are used to in- 
 sulate the electricity, that is to say, to impede its 
 onward flow as a current to some good conductor or 
 path of low resistance. Similarly, when a person 
 who is standing on a glass or insulating stool is 
 struck with a strip of fur, the glass stool and the 
 surrounding air are media of great resistance which 
 impede the flow to the ground or some other good 
 conductor of the small quantity of heat that accum- 
 ulates upon him from the friction of the fur. 
 
 The relation of dynamic and static electricity is 
 then as follows: A current or dynamic electricity 
 
 1 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
 2 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
OF 
 
 ( 
 
 The Science of Energy. 35 
 
 may become impeded and diffused in a highly-resist- 
 ing medium, thus becoming static; just as a 
 stream of water may diffuse into a stagnant marsh 
 on reaching level country where no easy channel is 
 offered as an outlet. On the other hand, static or 
 diffused electricity may be concentrated into a stream 
 or current by a good conductor which drains it into 
 its easy channel ; just as a river bed drains and 
 concentrates into one stream water formerly diffused 
 over a wide area of land. Further, as water tends 
 to spread evenly over the whole surface of a level 
 area, static electricity is diffused equally above the 
 surface of a body. A charge of static electricity is 
 said to reside on the exterior of a body; more ac- 
 curately, it forms an atmosphere of heat directly 
 above the body's exterior surface, as a result of its 
 becoming diffused in the resisting medium as soon 
 as it leaves the conductor and can flow no further 
 along its course towards the ground. 
 
 " Positive " and " negative " charges of electricity 
 do not point to the existence of two electric sub- 
 stances, but to differences in the intensities of the 
 same substance heat. Any two charges that are not 
 the same in intensity are respectively positive and 
 negative. Positive electricity is " by definition, 
 such as is developed on glass when rubbed with 
 silk," and negative is such as is " developed on seal- 
 ing-wax when rubbed with flannel." * Now no two 
 substances in nature conduct electricity, or heat, at the 
 i Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
36 Conscience. 
 
 same rate ; hence, when they are exposed to the same 
 source of heat for the same length of time, they will 
 differ in the quantity of heat each has received. It 
 requires working-power on the part of the agent to 
 rub bodies together, and this working-power is heat 
 evolved by the agent. This current of heat from the 
 agent to the bodies moved against each other will be 
 unequally divided between these bodies, the better 
 conductor receiving the greater quantity of this heat 
 of friction. There is thus a difference in the amount 
 of heat the glass, silk, sealing-wax and flannel each 
 receives, and when compared, they are found to be 
 at different potentials or unequally charged. 
 
 Light bodies that are unequally charged attract or 
 approach each other ; for the difference in their poten- 
 tial gives rise to a current of heat from the more 
 highly charged body to the other, and this stream of 
 heat carries along the light, easily-moved body in its 
 current, towards the other body. The heat current 
 that flows between two " oppositely " or differently 
 charged bodies is thus their magnetic bond, their 
 cause of attraction. When the flow of heat between 
 them has brought them to the same potential, the 
 current then ceases and consequently no further at- 
 traction between the bodies exists. The bodies then 
 actually separate or repel each other, for the at- 
 mospheres of heat surrounding both of them take up 
 space and move the bodies asunder. For example, 
 an electrified body first attracts a light pith ball sus- 
 pended by a silk thread near it, and when the ball 
 
The Science of Energy. 37 
 
 has received a flow of heat that forms over it an at- 
 mosphere of the same intensity as exists over the 
 electrified body, this newly acquired heat atmosphere, 
 being substance, occupies space, the ball moves aside 
 or is said to be repelled. 
 
 If heat, light and electricity are a subtle substance, 
 motion and magnetism may be regarded as prop- 
 erties of this substance. If light is a substance, the 
 enormous velocity with which it flows is proof of the 
 truth that motion is its attribute. It naturally can 
 flow faster through void space than through space 
 that is already partly filled with matter, and " care- 
 ful experiments have proved that the velocity of light 
 is less in a dense than in a rare medium." * If heat 
 is motive power, the intenser the heat the greater its 
 motion, and the colder the form assumed by matter, 
 the more nearly will it approach a state of rest. 
 Force, energy, heat has to be applied to set in motion 
 the cold liquid and solid forms of matter upon the 
 earth's surface that have come to rest. Since mo- 
 mentum varies as the mass and velocity, light, 
 though an imponderable substance, has great mo- 
 mentum because it has enormous velocity. " Light 
 substances, even so light as air, exhibit great energy 
 when their velocity is great." 2 As a swift moun- 
 tain torrent sweeps along in its downward flow the 
 bodies which it encounters in its channel, so the sub- 
 stance heat that itself possesses inherent motive power 
 
 1 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
 2 Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
38 Conscience. 
 
 tends to move bodies that lie in its path as it flows 
 towards the cold, solid ground at low potential ; the 
 result depending on the intensity and strength of 
 the heat-current and on the amount of resistance 
 which the bodies in its path offer. When the stream 
 of heat is intense, its velocity will be great, and it 
 will consequently have sufficient energy to move even 
 large and heavy bodies that lie in its current. When 
 weak, the stream has not strength enough to move 
 these bodies and itself flows on through them as re- 
 sistances which decrease its rate of motion, at times 
 even to the point of completely diffusing and check- 
 ing the current. 
 
 The mechanical engines which man employs are 
 heat engines. " Nature, by supplying combustible 
 material everywhere, has afforded us the means of 
 generating heat and the motive power which is given 
 by it, at all times and in all places." * Therefore we 
 are able to utilize the motive power that heat 
 possesses by placing the objects we desire to be moved 
 in the path of the current of heat, just as we make 
 use of water-power by placing the wheels of our mills 
 in the path of a stream of water. For example, the 
 electric cars of the present day are moved by being 
 placed as resistances in the circuit or path of strong 
 electric currents. There are no perfect heat-engines, 
 engines in which none of the strength of the heat 
 current is lost ; for some heat is constantly diffusing 
 from the current through the resisting bodies through 
 
 i Sadi Carnot, Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat. 
 
The Science of Energy. 39 
 
 which the current is flowing, and the mechanical 
 effect of the engine will decrease in proportion as the 
 current decreases in intensity. Metal wires are 
 widely used at the present time as paths for heat 
 currents ; being " good conductors " or paths of low 
 resistance, they do not soon disperse the heat concen- 
 trated in a current. 
 
 The laws of the refraction and the reflection of 
 light could be explained as readily on the hypothesis 
 that light is a subtle substance that moves with tre- 
 mendous velocity as on the hypothesis that light is 
 rapidly-moving ether-waves. The denser the body 
 through which the substance light is flowing, the 
 less direct or the more refracted its path. When a 
 say of white sunlight passes through a glass prism, 
 only a part of the substance composing the stream 
 can find enough free space, in the pores of the glass, 
 to flow on through the prism in a straight line; the 
 rest of the substance will have to seek more and 
 more indirect outlets. That light that is most re- 
 fracted from a direct path will lose the most heat 
 by diffusion in a resisting medium and will emerge 
 as the weakest light, violet in color. A lens that 
 causes convergence of rays of light will concentrate 
 the substance once scattered into colored lights again 
 into an intense white ray, which will even set on 
 fire a piece of paper placed at the focus of the lens. 
 Certain light-effects are explained on the wave- 
 theory as either wave reinforcements or wave inter- 
 ferences ; either the waves merge and become stronger 
 
40 Conscience. 
 
 through union, or they interfere and destroy one an- 
 other, giving rise to darkness in place of light. On 
 the hypothesis that light is a flowing substance, two 
 streams could unite and form a stronger, more con- 
 centrated light; but two streams of substance could 
 not destroy each other on meeting, for matter is in- 
 destructible. This latter phenomenon of two rays 
 of light becoming invisible after meeting could be 
 explained as the meeting and redistribution of two 
 streams formerly flowing in different directions. 
 " In all cases of interference, . . . it is to be 
 carefully remembered that light (regarded as energy) 
 is never annihilated. The distribution alone is al- 
 tered, so that the illumination, instead of being dif- 
 fused regularly, is concentrated in some places at the 
 expense of others." 1 
 
 Magnetism is the drawing of bodies into the chan- 
 nel of the stream of heat or electricity by the swift 
 current. The attraction that a piece of hard steel 
 exerts upon soft iron filings seems mysterious and 
 inexplicable until some light is thrown upon the na- 
 ture of magnetism by the knowledge of the fact that 
 " a coil of wire carrying a current is equivalent to a 
 magnet." 2 An electro-magnet " is a magnet pro- 
 duced by electricity." 3 The electro-magnet that is 
 used to lift heavy masses of metal drops its load as 
 soon as the current from the dynamo is cut off; the 
 
 1 Preston, The Theory of Light. 
 
 2 Stewart, Magnetism and Electricity. 
 8Qage, Elements of Physics, 
 
The Science of Energy. 41 
 
 magnetic force lasts then only while there is a cur- 
 rent, and electricity and magnetism are thus shown 
 to be related as cause and effect. The stream of 
 electricity that is flowing through a wire tends to 
 draw neighboring bodies into its current, the bodies 
 thus being drawn to the wire that constitutes the 
 current's channel. Hard steel attracts soft iron be- 
 cause they differ in their conduction of heat, the 
 better conductor receiving more heat from the sur- 
 roundings in a given time; a current of heat thus 
 flows from the better conductor to the other, as a re- 
 sult of the tendency towards equalization of heat, and 
 this stream of heat between the steel and soft iron 
 is their magnetic bond. When a person comes in 
 contact with an uninsulated wire through which a 
 powerful electric current is flowing, he is unable to 
 overcome the attraction and is held in the current's 
 channel. 
 
 A " conductor which is carrying a current has a 
 magnetic field surrounding it/' and if iron filings 
 are scattered near the wire, " the filings at once ar- 
 range themselves in curves of force, taking the form 
 of concentric circles round the wire as their common 
 centre." 1 As some water from a stream percolates 
 through the soil that borders its bed, so some heat 
 from the main current flowing through a body in a 
 definite direction, diffuses or radiates from this chan- 
 nel of the stream in ever-widening circles in every 
 direction. 
 
 1 Stewart, Magnetism and Electricity. 
 
42 Conscience. 
 
 " The cause of the earth's magnetism is not 
 known. The theory that it is an electro-magnet in 
 virtue of currents flowing around it near its surface 
 from east to west, explains all the effects that it 
 produces on the magnetic needle. But what sus- 
 tains these electric currents ? There are many things 
 that point to the sun as the source of the earth's mag- 
 netism. Those who adopt this theory generally re- 
 gard the terrestrial currents as thermo-electric." * 
 The sun heats the earth's surface unequally, and 
 currents of heat thus flow from the hotter to the 
 colder regions. In the first place, there is the daily 
 inequality of the heating of the east and the west, 
 the sun rising in the east and moving westward, 
 thus causing heat currents to flow from east to west. 
 Besides this daily difference in the temperatures of 
 various portions of the earth's surface, there is the 
 difference in the quantity of heat the equatorial, 
 temperate and arctic zones receive from the sun. 
 Currents of heat, as well as hot ocean streams and 
 hot winds, flow regularly from the hot equatorial 
 regions towards the cold, arctic regions. The com- 
 pass, being made of a substance that is a good con- 
 ductor of heat, is sensitive to this general current of 
 heat that flows towards the earth's coldest regions 
 and points towards the arctic regions, though not to 
 the exact geographic north and south poles. The 
 attraction or force of gravitation that exists between 
 
 i Gage, Elements of Physics, 
 
The Science of Energy. 43 
 
 the intensely hot sun and its cooler planets may be 
 regarded as magnetism, the bond being the stream of 
 heat that flows from the sun to the planets that are 
 at lower potential. 
 
 The following points of resemblance between heat, 
 light and electricity may be cited as further con- 
 firmation of the theory that they are one and the 
 same substance. The " law of inverse squares " ap- 
 plies to heat, electricity and the force of gravitation 
 or magnetism as truly as it does to light: intensity 
 diminishes as the square of the distance increases. 
 Again, " the order of conductive power of the metals 
 is the same for both heat and electricity." * Again, 
 " light is only visible radiant heat. If we elevate 
 the temperature of a body sufficiently, we can change 
 heat-rays into light-rays." 2 " All bodies become 
 luminous at a fixed temperature. Like light, heat 
 may be reflected, refracted and polarized. It radi- 
 ates in straight lines in every direction, and de- 
 creases in intensity as the square of the distance. 
 It moves with the same velocity as light. It is 
 therefore believed that light is luminous heat," 3 
 Again, from experiment it was learned that 
 " electro-magnetic waves " " were reflected like 
 light-waves, they were refracted like light-waves, 
 and they traveled with about the same velocity as 
 light-waves. There could be no doubt that the two 
 
 1 Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Chemistry. 
 
 2 Steele, Physics. 
 s Steele, Physics. 
 
44 Conscience. 
 
 kinds of waves are essentially the same. Thus was 
 completed one of the greatest intellectual triumphs 
 of the century, the proof of the electromagnetic na- 
 ture of light/' * 
 
 The substance of the white nebulae is the origin 
 of Energy and of Matter. This concentrated, in- 
 tense white heat of the nebulae is energy in its 
 highest form. The tendency of nature is from this 
 highest form of energy towards the lowest form, the 
 radiated heat of nebula? uniformly diffused in space. 
 " There is a constant tendency in nature towards the 
 establishment of an equilibrium of temperature; so 
 that every transformation of energy is accompanied 
 by the dissipation of a certain proportion of it into 
 space in the unavailable form of uniformly diffused 
 heat . . . There is never any absolute loss 
 of energy. Like matter, it is indestructible." 2 
 " Whenever the transformations of any given portion 
 of energy are traced as far as possible it will be found 
 that it tends to take the form of heat. The flight of 
 a cannon-ball, the music of an orchestra, the white 
 light of an electric arc-lamp, the muscular energy of 
 a race-horse, all end in slightly warming the air 
 and surrounding objects. It may be said that heat 
 is the lowest form of energy. Other forms run into 
 it as streams run into the ocean." 3 Uniformly dif- 
 fused heat is the lowest stage of energy; the other 
 
 1 Hall and Bergen, Physics. 
 
 2 Gibson, Elementary Biology. 
 
 3 Hall and Bergen, Physios, 
 
The Science of Energy. 45 
 
 forms of energy are intenser, more concentrated heat. 
 During transferences of energy from bodies of higher 
 to bodies of lower potential, transformations of en- 
 ergy arise, according as the path causes diffusion or 
 concentration. The heat radiated into void space 
 from nebulae and suns spreads out from its source 
 as centre as a more and more rarefied gas the farther 
 it travels; this radiated solar heat is the planets' 
 chief source of " energy." On the other hand, the 
 flames of the elements that evolve on the radiating 
 surface of white flame are only slightly less concen- 
 trated than the white flame itself, thus the matter of 
 which planets are formed is not rarefied substance to 
 the extent that radiated heat is. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE HEAVENLY BODIES, OK THE SCIENCE OF AS- 
 TKONOMY. 
 
 " Astronomy is the science which treats of the 
 heavenly bodies. It investigates (a) their motions 
 and the laws which govern them; (b) their nature, 
 dimensions, and characteristics; (c) the influence 
 they exert upon each other either by their attraction, 
 their radiation, or in any other way." 1 The study 
 of Matter, or the science of chemistry, throws light 
 upon the nature of the heavenly bodies, upon their 
 physical and chemical condition. The heavenly 
 bodies are so related in nature that they appear as 
 various stages of evolution from a primordial sub- 
 stance once concentrated in nebulae. The study of 
 Energy, or the science of physics, throws light upon 
 the motions of the heavenly bodies. The white heat 
 of nebulae and suns is energy in its highest form. 
 These fiery bodies possess energy or the motive power 
 of heat, whereas the motion of their planets or cast- 
 off, cooler atmospheres is governed by the force of 
 gravitation. The stream of heat that flows con- 
 stantly from the hot suns to their cooler planets con- 
 
 i Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 46 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 47 
 
 stitutes the magnetic attraction known as gravitation. 
 Philosophy searches among the facts that the science 
 of astronomy has collected, for evidence that the 
 heavenly bodies are so related to one another in their 
 nature and motions through space that they form one 
 system. The question then arises of the place which 
 the earth occupies in this vast cosmic system. 
 
 The nebular hypothesis has been brought forward 
 by astronomers as the explanation of how the various 
 classes of heavenly bodies nebulae, stars or suns, 
 planets and satellites of planets are related. Ac- 
 cording to La Place, " at some time in the past the 
 matter which is now gathered into the sun and 
 planets was in the form of a nebula, ... a 
 cloud of intensely heated gas. . . . Rings of 
 nebulous matter " would become " detached from the 
 central mass " during its rotation. " The ring thus 
 formed would for a time revolve as a whole, but 
 would ultimately break, and the material would col- 
 lect into a globe revolving around the central nebula 
 as a planet. . . . The planet thus formed 
 might throw off rings of its own, and so form for it- 
 self a system of satellites." * If we consider the 
 " cloud of intensely heated gas " a cloud of the sub- 
 stance intense heat or white flame, the primordial 
 substance, then the " rings " that become detached 
 from the nebula are the successively formed atmos- 
 pheres of colored flames or " elements " evolved 
 from the cooling surface of the white flame. Satel- 
 
 * Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
48 Conscience. 
 
 lites are formed by the breaking into two or more 
 parts of gaseous or liquid planets during their rapid 
 motion through space. 
 
 The process of cooling seems to be the cause of the 
 evolution of form and of the increase of cohesion. 
 The white-hot nebulae are clouds devoid of definite 
 shape : " the larger and brighter nebulae are mostly 
 irregular in form." * On the other hand, the cold- 
 est stages of matter assume the most perfected form ; 
 the crystalline form appears only in solid mineral 
 matter. Crystalline carbon or the diamond is a 
 colder state of the substance carbon than is amorphous 
 charcoal. As a nebula cools in space by the loss by 
 radiation of some of its surface heat, the remaining 
 substance of the body's surface, being no longer con- 
 tinuous, shrinks into a smaller space or contracts as 
 a result of the cooling process through spiral forms 
 until the spherical shape, the form in which there is 
 the least surface, is finally assumed; the once form- 
 less nebula of white flame becomes a rounded sun. 
 
 If there be one system of the heavenly bodies, most 
 of the evidence of the existence of this system must 
 be derived from an examination of the arrangement 
 in space of the various heavenly bodies. Is there a 
 definite order discoverable in the positions of heav- 
 enly bodies ? The " large majority of the stars 
 which we can see with the telescope are contained in 
 a space having the form of a round flat disc, the 
 diameter of which is eight or ten times its thickness. 
 
 i Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
,The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 49 
 
 Our sun is near the centre of this disc-like space." 1 
 This ring of stars is known as " The Milky Way." 
 " The zone of the Milky Way being rich in stars, we 
 must either infer great extension of the sidereal sys- 
 tem in the direction of that zone, or a real aggrega- 
 tion of stars within a ring-shaped or spirally-shaped 
 region around the earth." 2 The latter inference is 
 considered the true one, there is a spiral aggregation 
 of stars about the earth. " At right angles to the 
 i galactic plane ' the stars are scattered more evenly 
 and thinly than in it, and we find here on the sides 
 of the disc the comparatively starless region of the 
 nebula?." 3 
 
 Let us emphasize the contrast in the positions in 
 space of nebula? and of stars. " On each side of the 
 galactic and stellar region we have a nebular region, 
 in which we find few or no stars, but vast numbers 
 of nebula?. The nebula? diminish greatly in num- 
 ber as we approach the galactic region, only a very 
 few being found in that region." The majority of 
 the resolvable nebula? " lie near the direction of the 
 plane of the Milky Way, comparatively few being 
 seen near the perpendicular direction." 5 Then " the 
 regions farthest from the Milky Way, that is, the 
 regions around the poles of the galactic circle, 
 are those richest in nebula?, speaking generally." 6 
 
 1 Young, General Astronomy. 
 
 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Astronomy. 
 
 3 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 4 Newcomb, Popular Astronomy. 
 6 Newcomb, Popular Astronomy. 
 
 6 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Astronomy. 
 
50 Conscience. 
 
 On the other hand, the number of stars 
 " increases with considerable regularity from the 
 galactic poles, where they are most sparse, towards 
 the galactic circle, where they are most crowded." 1 
 To sum up in one sentence, the nebulae " are most 
 abundant at the two poles of the Milky Way/ 7 and 
 decrease in numbers as we approach the galactic 
 plane, the resolvable nebulae appearing chiefly in 
 the direction of that plane; whereas as we advance 
 " from either pole toward the Milky Way, the num- 
 ber of stars increases, at first slowly and then more 
 rapidly, until the proportion at the galaxy itself is 
 thirty-fold." 2 
 
 " Since all the nebulae maintain the same position 
 with respect to the stars, their distance must be in- 
 conceivably great, and, in order to be visible to us, 
 their magnitude must be proportionately vast." 3 
 Since the solar system to which the earth belongs oc- 
 cupies as its position in space the centre of a spiral 
 region of stars, and since the nebulas are remote 
 from this galaxy, being most numerous in the galac- 
 tic polar regions, the conclusion follows that the 
 nebulae, of all the heavenly bodies, are most remote 
 from the region of our solar system. The irresolv- 
 able nebulas are further removed from the plane of 
 the Milky Way than the resolvable nebulae. But the 
 irresolvable nebulae are the youngest heavenly bodies. 
 
 1 Young, General Astronomy. 
 
 2 Steele, Astronomy. 
 s Steele, Astronomy. 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 51 
 
 Then the youngest heavenly bodies are in the most 
 distant regions of space from the position which our 
 solar system occupies. Perhaps the age of heavenly 
 bodies and their present positions in space are re- 
 lated. 
 
 According to astronomers, the nebula from which 
 our solar system evolved at one time extended over 
 the space now bounded by the largest planetary orbit. 
 There is no thought of this nebula having once occu- 
 pied an entirely different region of space from that at 
 present occupied by the sun and its planets. But 
 there are reasons for believing otherwise. In the 
 first place, those heavenly bodies that are nebulae 
 at the present time are in regions of space more dis- 
 tant from the present place of the solar system than 
 are any other heavenly bodies. All nebulae may at 
 first have been in the regions of space in which 
 nebula? are at present. Further, if the nebulae are 
 at the outset clouds of white light, of intense heat, 
 the conclusion is that they could not have originated 
 within the bounds of cold, dark space: they must 
 emanate as fire clouds from a realm of Fire be- 
 yond space, from the region called by the Greeks 
 " the empyrean " or " fire-realm," " the abode of the 
 gods." >ince heat diffuses and cools in space, the 
 Eternal and Infinite Fire, the Unchanging Light, 
 whence have emanated the fire-clouds of creation, 
 must dwell beyond the influence of dark, void space. 
 The nebulae are then on the outmost borders of space, 
 and space itself, though inconceivably vast, is finite. 
 
52 Conscience. 
 
 Modern astronomy fully accounts for the paths in 
 which the planets move by the cause of " gravita- 
 tion " : the sun acts as a central force, attracting the 
 planets and governing their motions. But there is 
 no explanatior offered of the nature of the paths 
 and the cause of the motion of our sun itself which 
 is a star, and of the other stars and nebulas. Ac- 
 cording to Newton's first law of motion, " a body at 
 rest remains at rest, and a body in motion moves 
 with uniform velocity in a straight line, unless acted 
 upon by some external force to change its condi- 
 tion.' 7 1 It is known from experience that the mo- 
 tion of bodies can be increased by increasing the 
 force applied to them, or, since force is heat, by in- 
 tensifying the heat. For example, the intenser the 
 electric current, the greater the motion of the elec- 
 tric car; and the hotter the furnace-fire of a steam- 
 engine, the greater the speed of the train. Further, 
 when the fire is extinguished, the engine ceases to 
 move ; heat produces motion, then, and cold pro- 
 duces rest. If heat constitutes motive power, the 
 intenser the heat the greater the velocity. The 
 nebulae, stars and our sun are in their nuclei concen- 
 trated white heat or energy in its highest form : thus 
 these fiery bodies have inherent motive power. Since 
 we know that heat produces motion of bodies on the 
 earth, we must acknowledge the truth that the sun's 
 motion must be connected with its intense heat. Let 
 us translate Newton's first law of motion, then, into 
 i Gage, Elements of Physics. 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 53 
 
 the following: Since motion depends upon heat, a 
 nebula of the intensest heat would move forever in 
 a straight path with uniform velocity. But all 
 nebulae decrease in the intensity of their heat and 
 motive power as a result of their steady radiation of 
 heat into space. The path of a cooling nebula will 
 depart more and more from a straight line and be- 
 come more and more curved, the cooling body tend- 
 ing towards a position of rest at the vertex of the 
 resulting spiral or conical path. (A body that moves 
 at first in a straight line and then through paths that 
 increase in curvature towards a point of rest traces 
 out a spiral.) 
 
 The cooling surface of a nebula evolves into an 
 atmosphere of heavier flames which becomes a burden 
 which the weightless, swift white light conveys 
 through space. The nebula's velocity will decrease 
 as it itself becomes cooler, and its planetary burden 
 heavier. The cast-off planets are rebound to the 
 parent-nebula through the tie of gravitation, and are 
 drawn through space by the nebula's force. Those 
 white nebulae that are the youngest and the least 
 cooled will move the fastest and in the least-curved 
 paths. Other nebulae will move more slowly and in 
 more curved paths, in inverse proportion to the 
 quantity of heat still concentrated in them and not 
 yet lost by radiation and by planetary formation, 
 and in proportion also to the planetary bur- 
 den drawn through space. That nebula that first 
 entered space, and is the oldest and most advanced 
 
54 Conscience. 
 
 in the evolution of the system of sun and planets, 
 will have the heaviest burden of planets, for its 
 planets will be the ones that have been cooling the 
 longest and that have increased most in weight as a 
 result of cooling. The path of that oldest nebula 
 will be the most curved of all the stellar paths, and 
 it will move more slowly than any other star. 
 
 Our sun occupies a central position within a 
 spiral group of stars. If the diurnal revolution of 
 the heavenly bodies about the earth be interpreted 
 as real, and not as due to the actual rotation of our 
 earth, our sun moves daily in a circle of greater 
 curvature than does any other star, since it keeps to 
 a central position within the vast disc-like space 
 along the outer edge of which the stars nearest to 
 our sun in space move in vast circles. It would fol- 
 low that our sun, having the path of greatest curva- 
 ture, is the first and oldest nebula ; a fact which 
 is further confirmed by the present nebulae being 
 more distant from our solar system than are the 
 stars. Our sun would then be the star that had 
 radiated the greatest quantity of its original heat, 
 and that had the heaviest planetary burden, since its 
 planets have been cooling longest in space. 
 
 The first body in the heavens to come to rest would 
 be the oldest nebula's oldest planet, the coldest and 
 heaviest body in the heavens. That body would be 
 the first to reach the vertex of the conical path which 
 its sun and other stars and nebula? pursue in space 
 as they change from rectilinear to more and more 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 55 
 
 curved paths. If the sun is the oldest nebula, which 
 is its oldest planet? The remoter planets from the 
 earth are the younger. " Jupiter and Saturn, Ura- 
 nus and Neptune, do not seem yet to have cooled off 
 to anything like the earth's condition." 1 Mercury, 
 Venus, Mars and the Earth are " not very different 
 in density and probably roughly alike in physical 
 constitution." 2 The earth's great age is testified to 
 by the evidence brought forward by geologists and 
 biologists. Ages that are to be reckoned in millions 
 of years have elapsed since the first formation of a 
 solid crust on the surface of the ever-cooling earth, 
 and the crust's evolution into its present condition, 
 with its continents that have been long eras in rising 
 above the surface of the sea, with its slowly-formed 
 sedimentary rocks and rocks composed of myriads of 
 minute shells of organisms, with its vast coal areas 
 formed gradually from primeval forests, and with its 
 highly complex organisms evolved from simple cells 
 during the course of ages. The solid crust of the 
 earth-planet is of great age, then ; while some of the 
 planets of the sun have not yet formed a first solid 
 crust. 
 
 Unless it is the earth that is the oldest planet of the 
 oldest star, and is the first heavenly body to come to 
 rest at the central point within the volume of space, 
 because its matter is too cooled and heavy to be 
 drawn any longer through space by the ever-cooling 
 
 i Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 s Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
56 Conscience. 
 
 and weakening sun-power, then the earth's motion 
 would not differ from the type of planetary motion 
 which applies at the present day to all the other 
 planets of the sun. Copernicus would in that event 
 be justified in his argument that this planet rotates 
 daily about its axis and revolves annually about the 
 sun, as do the other planets. If, however, Tycho 
 Brahe rightly held that the earth is at rest, and if 
 the sun, still drawing through space the planets that 
 are younger and lighter than the earth-planet, re- 
 volves around the axis of the conical path of heavenly 
 bodies at the vertex of which the earth has come to 
 rest, then there is a real, not a merely apparent 
 diurnal revolution of the heavens, and the heavenly 
 bodies are bound together in one vast system, and 
 truly form a universe. 
 
 " When we look at the heavens on a clear night, 
 we perceive a concave hemisphere on which are 
 strewn multitudes of bright points. As we watch 
 these hour after hour, we find that they are carried 
 round precisely as though they were fixed on the 
 interior surface of a spherical shell turning on a 
 fixed axis." 1 " Eelatively to the earth, the star- 
 sphere rotates from east to west once in twenty-four 
 sidereal hours." 2 " The ancients accounted for 
 these fundamental and obvious facts by supposing 
 that the stars are really attached to the celestial 
 sphere, and that this sphere really turns daily in the 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Astronomy. 
 
 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Astronomy. 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 57 
 
 manner indicated." 1 " The earliest astronomical 
 system was that in which this globe was supposed to 
 be at rest in the centre of the universe, all the heav- 
 enly bodies revolving around it in the space of 
 twenty-four hours. The theory which assigned the 
 earth to this position in the universe is known as the 
 Ptolemaic or geocentric system. It remained the ac- 
 cepted system until the time of Copernicus, whose 
 hypothesis or discovery that the sun is the actual 
 centre of the planetary motions, and that the earth 
 revolves on its own axis, introduces the second great 
 era in the progress of astronomy." 2 
 
 Either the stars revolve daily around a common 
 axis and the earth lies at rest on that axis, or the 
 earth itself rotates. If the Copernican theory be 
 accepted, and the earth be considered a rotating 
 body, which rotation causes an apparent diurnal 
 revolution of the stars, and the earth be considered 
 to be revolving in an orbit about the sun, the modern 
 science of astronomy is enabled by this theory to ex- 
 plain the motions of the planets of the sun. But the 
 theory goes no farther in its power of explanation 
 than the solar planets. It does not discover any 
 rational system for the vast stellar universe beyond 
 our small solar system; it can throw no light upon 
 the causes of the motions of the stars and of our sun, 
 and upon the nature of the stellar paths. The Coper- 
 nican theory revolutionized man's conception of the 
 
 1 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 2 Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia. 
 
58 Conscience. 
 
 universe and of his own place in Nature's system; 
 it substituted for the former view that religion gave 
 of man's importance in the plan of creation, a view 
 of man's insignificance. Man's dwelling was no 
 longer the centre of the universe, he was merely on 
 " a little scrap of a planet " that revolved around a 
 star of only medium size : " the earth, like the rest of 
 the planets, is being whirled through space with the 
 sun, we know not why or whither." 
 
 If it be true that heat is the cause of motion, 
 the science of physics recognizes the close rela- 
 tion tha.t exists between heat and motion then the 
 intensely hot stars and nebulaB could not be moving 
 so slowly as to appear " fixed," which conclusion 
 is, however, necessary when the earth is regarded as 
 a rotating body and the revolution of the heavens is 
 considered merely apparent, not real. If it be true 
 that white heat or light constitutes the substance of 
 the nuclei of nebulae and stars, we know that light 
 moves swiftly, consequently these fiery bodies must 
 be moving with enormous velocities. If they move 
 with the velocity of light, their substance, they would 
 in a short time greatly alter their positions in space. 
 If their apparent daily revolution be interpreted as 
 real, this condition would be satisfied; whereas, if 
 the earth be considered as rotating daily, these white 
 flames that the Copernican theory regards as the 
 " fixed stars," do not have attributed to them the 
 motive power they inherently possess as heat and 
 light 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 59 
 
 "Copernicus (1473-1543) asserted the diurnal 
 rotation of the earth on its axis, and showed that it 
 would fully account for the apparent diurnal revolu- 
 tion of the stars." * The argument which Coper- 
 nicus brought forward and which must he considered 
 is the following : " Which, then, is more likely to be 
 in motion, the earth or the whole universe outside of 
 it? In whatever proportion the heavens are greater 
 than the earth, in the same proportion must their 
 motion be more rapid to carry them round in twenty- 
 four hours. Ptolemy himself shows that the heav- 
 ens were so immense that the earth was but a point 
 in comparison, and, for anything that is known, they 
 may extend into infinity. Then we should require 
 an infinite velocity of revolution. Therefore, it is 
 far more likely that it is this comparative point that 
 turns, and that the universe is fixed, than the re- 
 verse." 2 
 
 The following may be presented as an answer: 
 All heavenly bodies have evolved from nebulae, and 
 all nebula? have originated from the realm of Light 
 on the outermost borders of space. Heat being en- 
 ergy and motive power, the clouds of intensest white 
 heat would possess infinite velocity if they did not 
 decrease in intensity by radiation of some heat from 
 the moment that they entered space, their enormous 
 velocity decreasing in the same proportion as their 
 intensity of heat decreased. The oldest and coldest 
 
 1 Young, General Astronomy. 
 sNewcomb, Popular Astronomy, 
 
60 Conscience. 
 
 heavenly body would be the first body that came to 
 rest To the question of Copernicus, " Which, then, 
 is more likely to be in motion, the earth or the whole 
 universe outside of it ? " the answer would be : The 
 whole universe outside the earth is more likely to be 
 in motion if all heavenly bodies are various intensi- 
 ties of the primordial substance heat and if heat is 
 motive power. The earth-planet with its solid crust 
 and its central position in space is most likely the 
 oldest and coldest planet, and would more likely be 
 " fixed " than the fiery stars that possess power of 
 motion and energy. To the second part of the argu- 
 ment of Copernicus, " In whatever proportion the 
 heavens are greater than the earth, in the same pro- 
 portion must their motion be more rapid to carry 
 them round in twenty-four hours," may be answered : 
 The heavenly bodies are arranged in space according 
 to their age, the youngest bodies that have greatest 
 heat and velocity are the ones that are remotest from 
 the earth and the centre of space. While these 
 nebulse, if they revolved through diurnal circles, 
 would have an almost infinite distance to traverse, 
 they would move with almost infinite velocity. 
 
 Before the Copernican theory supplanted the the- 
 ory that the earth is fixed and the stars revolve, it was 
 supposed that the stars were merely luminous points 
 fastened on a revolving sphere, that the earth lay at 
 rest at the central point within the spherical volume, 
 and that the whole sphere, turned daily. But if the 
 early conception of fixed stars on a revolving sphere 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 61 
 
 is given up, and the stars are acknowledged to be 
 moving in separate and various-sized orbits of their 
 own, what is the explanation of the fact that the 
 earth appears to be the centre of all stellar orbits? 
 Further, why should all the stars complete their 
 revolutions in the same period of time, a sidereal 
 day, if some stars have to traverse larger paths than 
 do others in this period ? 
 
 Let us consider first why the earth should appear 
 to be the centre of the diurnal circles of the stars. 
 Our present solar system was in the beginning in 
 the form of one nebula, which originated on the 
 outermost limits of space, in the region of either the 
 north or the south galactic-polar plane. As this 
 nebula was once intense heat, with no retinue of 
 planets, it moved in a path of the slightest curvature 
 along the outer borders of space. It is immaterial 
 whether space is conceived as spherical or cubical, 
 for the nebula cooling at once from infinite fire would 
 from the first pursue a path not perfectly straight, 
 but of little curvature, >a circle of almost infinite 
 circumference. As this nebula's velocity decreased 
 with the decrease of its fire's intensity and on account 
 of the ever-increasing planetary burden of cooler 
 matter which its force conveyed through space, its 
 path would become more and more curved ; it would 
 no longer move along the borders of space but would 
 approach nearer and nearer to the central region of 
 space. Since the solar system at present lies in the 
 galactic plane, the plane farthest from the two galac- 
 
62 Conscience. 
 
 tic-polar planes, being midway between them, we 
 see that the first nebula in its ever-narrowing spiral 
 path did not remain in the plane of the galactic 
 pole but advanced from this outer realm of space 
 towards the central plane of space. When the first 
 nebula reached the galactic plane, it would be mov- 
 ing through a circle of great curvature, and would be 
 approaching the central point of the volume of space. 
 The path of this first nebula would not be an ever- 
 narrowing spiral in one plane, the plane of the galac- 
 tic pole, but a drawn-out spiral, or conical surface, 
 the base of the cone being the vast circle which the 
 nebula pursued as its path in the galactic-polar plane, 
 and the vertex being the position of rest at the cen- 
 tral point of the volume of space. 
 
 The first nebula as it passed through the various 
 stages of evolution that led to our present solar sys- 
 tem advanced within the volume of space from one 
 of the two galactic-polar planes, occupying in suc- 
 cession positions in space that are now occupied by 
 present irresolvable nebulae, resolvable nebulae, and 
 stars of the galaxy, until finally it has reached the 
 central region within the galaxy. Since all nebulae 
 originate in the outer regions of space and since their 
 motive power tends to undergo similar changes as 
 they cool more and more, the conical path of the first 
 nebula would be the path of all subsequent nebulae 
 that started from the same galactic-polar region of 
 space as this nebula. Nebulae starting from the 
 .other galactic-golar region would also trace out a 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 63 
 
 conical surface, the central point of the volume of 
 space being the common vertex of the cone that had 
 its base in the north galactic-polar plane and of the 
 cone that had its base in the south galactic-polar 
 plane. The first nebula or our solar system has al- 
 ready approached the central region of space where 
 the common vertex of the two conical surfaces lies, 
 while younger, later nebulae are in earlier portions of 
 the conical paths, their positions along the two 
 conical surfaces being in accordance with their ages, 
 the younger heavenly bodies being nearer the base 
 of the conical surface, older ones that have already 
 evolved into solar systems nearer the vertex. The 
 earth, being the oldest planet of the first nebula, is 
 the first heavenly body to reach the common vertex 
 of the two conical surfaces, the position of rest at the 
 centre of space, while all other heavenly bodies are 
 still pursuing some part of the conical path from 
 either the north or south galactic-polar plane towards 
 the centre of space. Thus, as the vertex of the cones 
 where the earth lies is on the axis of the two conical 
 surfaces, those heavenly bodies that move by their 
 own force and not under the controlling influence of 
 solar gravitation, that is to say, all true stars or suns 
 and nebulae appear to be revolving daily around the 
 earth as a centre, whereas they in their conical path 
 are revolving around the axis of the two cones, and 
 present this appearance to the earth that lies at a 
 point on that long axis. The planes of these diurnal 
 circles are parallel to one another. The nearest heav- 
 
64 Conscience. 
 
 enly bodies to the earth's position in space seem to 
 move in the largest diurnal circles, whereas the op- 
 posite is true, the vast distance of the nebulae dwarf- 
 ing the appearance of the size of their paths. 
 
 From the galactic-polar regions of the youngest 
 heavenly bodies that are still irresolvable nebula?, 
 we advance to the regions of the resolvable nebulas, 
 nebulas just breaking up into solar systems; and 
 then to the central plane of space, the plane of the 
 galaxy, where solar systems are in well-advanced 
 stages of evolution; and at last to the centre of this 
 plane, that is, the centre of space, where lies our 
 solar system, the oldest in the heavens. The heav- 
 enly bodies are thus seen to be arranged in space 
 according to their respective ages, the youngest at 
 present tracing the earliest part of the conical sur- 
 face that all nebulae would in time complete, our sun, 
 having traversed more of the entire path than has 
 any other star. The stars of the galaxy are seen to 
 have a spiral arangement in space ; they are numer- 
 ous enough to outline distinctly that belt of the entire 
 conical surface which they are at present tracing 
 out. Their spiral arrangement results from their 
 pursuing each some special portion of a common 
 conical path. 
 
 The irresolvable nebulas disappear as we approach 
 the direction of the galactic plane, for as they ad- 
 vance from the galactic-polar regions along the 
 conical path they evolve into resolvable nebulas or 
 star-clusters, the early stage of solar systems. The 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 65 
 
 number of stars increases more and more as we ap- 
 proach the direction of the galactic plane, for what 
 were once single heavenly bodies irresolvable 
 nebulae break up in these inner regions of space 
 into suns with ever-growing retinues of planets. 
 There are then more heavenly bodies in the galactic 
 plane than in. any other direction in space simply be- 
 cause, by the time nebulae have reached this inner 
 realm of space, they have evolved into advanced 
 stages of solar systems, each sun having several 
 planets. What would be only one heavenly body, a 
 vast nebula, at the galactic-polar region would become 
 a sun and many planets by the time it reached the 
 central plane. The aggregation of heavenly bodies 
 in the Milky Way thus results from the evolution of 
 once single nebulae into solar systems. 
 
 The true stars or suns are those heavenly bodies 
 that still retain in their nucleus the primordial sub- 
 stance white flame. These true stars will outshine 
 the planets, that are still luminous atmospheres, or 
 sun-illuminated spheres, and that appear as " stars of 
 lesser magnitude." The true stars or suns will be 
 bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, while 
 the planets will not be. Now we find that " the six 
 or seven thousand stars around us, which are easily 
 seen by the naked eye, are scattered in space with a 
 near approach to uniformity." 1 That is, there is a 
 uniform distribution of true stars or suns in space, 
 a fact which points to there being a regular and equal 
 1 Newcomb, Popular Astronomy. 
 
 ' v 
 
66 Conscience. 
 
 interval between the births of successive nebulae on 
 the borders of space. 
 
 If nebulae and suns have sufficient motive power 
 to complete large circular paths about the conical axis 
 in a short time, what is the explanation of the har- 
 mony in the periods of these stellar revolutions, why 
 do all stars complete a circle in the same sidereal 
 day ? Now pendulums vibrating on our earth under 
 the force of gravity complete their vibrations in 
 equal periods of time under certain conditions. The 
 stars may be represented as pendulum-balls sus- 
 pended from a common line, the axis of the conical 
 surface over some portion of which each is revolving 
 or making a complete vibration. These pendulums 
 would be of different lengths, but their lengths would 
 vary in a regular manner, the longest pendulums 
 being the youngest nebula? revolving near the conical 
 base, the shortest the oldest bodies revolving near the 
 conical vertex. But the force that moves these pen- 
 dulum-balls would also vary in a regular manner, 
 the longest pendulums being the youngest and hottest 
 stars that have most energy, the shortest the coolest 
 and the slowest in their motions. Thus the longest 
 pendulums would have the greatest force or power of 
 motion, and the motive power would decrease as the 
 circles of the stellar paths decreased in size. Now 
 the periods of pendulums vary directly as their 
 lengths and inversely as the force that causes their 
 motion. If the motive power or force remained a 
 constant for all the star-pendulums, the shortest in 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 67 
 
 length would complete their circles in the shortest 
 periods. But the motive power varies with the 
 length, the longer star-pendulums having more force. 
 Thus the decrease in length being in the same pro- 
 portion as the decrease in force, the period or time 
 of revolution remains a constant, or all stars complete 
 their circles in the same period of time. The planets 
 of the sun revolve about the sun, and not about the 
 conical axis as their centre, and their periods differ 
 from those of the stars. 
 
 The planets appear to observers on the earth to 
 move in elliptical orbits about the sun. Now a cir- 
 cle seen sidewise appears to be an ellipse. It may 
 be that the solar planets move in what would be seen 
 to be truly circular paths if they were viewed from 
 the sun about which they gravitate. If a planetary- 
 orbit is really a circle about the sun as centre, equal 
 arcs of this circle are traversed in equal periods of 
 time or the planet moves with uniform velocity along 
 its path, the planet appearing to observers on the 
 earth to traverse some sections of its course with 
 greater speed than others because distance dwarfs the 
 size of the more remote portions of the path. 
 
 According to the Copernican theory, the earth not 
 only rotates daily on its axis, but completes in the 
 period of a year an elliptical orbit about the sun 
 which lies at one of the foci of the ellipse. This 
 elliptical orbit about the sun explains why the earth 
 is nearer the sun at one time of the year than at 
 another. It also readily explains the annual paral- 
 
68 Conscience. 
 
 lax of the " fixed stars " : the fixed stars seem to 
 describe small orbits annually because the earth from 
 which the observations of the stars' positions in the 
 heavens are taken is itself making an annual orbit. 
 If, however, the theory be held that the earth has 
 come to rest in the centre of space, the cause of the 
 sun's apparent motion among the stars, which mo- 
 tion brings it nearer to the earth at one time of the 
 year than at another, and the cause of the annual 
 parallax of the stars, await explanation. 
 
 The Foucault pendulum experiment proves one 
 of two things: either it demonstrates the earth's ro- 
 tation, or it proves that a pendulum free to shift its 
 plane of vibration actually shifts it constantly. The 
 experiment is the following : " From the dome of 
 the Pantheon in Paris " Foucault " hung a heavy 
 iron ball about a foot in diameter by a wire more 
 than 200 feet long. A circular rail some twelve 
 feet across, with a little ridge of sand built upon it, 
 was placed in such a way that a pin attached to 
 the swinging ball would just scrape the sand and 
 leave a mark at each vibration. To put the ball in 
 motion it was drawn aside by a cotton cord and left 
 to come absolutely to rest ; then the cord was burned 
 off, and the pendulum started to swing in a true 
 plane. But this plane seemed to deviate slowly 
 towards the right, so that the pin on the pendulum- 
 ball cut the sand-ridge in a new place at each swing, 
 shifting at a rate which would carry the line com- 
 pletely around in about 32 hours, if the pendulum 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 69 
 
 did not first come to rest. In fact the floor of the 
 Pantheon was actually and visibly turning under the 
 plane of the pendulum vibration. . . . Really 
 in this case the plane of vibration remains fixed, 
 while the earth turns under it." * The question 
 arises, which is the true explanation of the apparent 
 shifting of the pendulum's plane of vibration, an 
 actual shifting, or the rotation of the earth beneath 
 it ? If the arguments already brought forward in 
 support of the actual diurnal revolution of the stars 
 be accepted as convincing, the earth does not rotate. 
 The experiment would then prove that a freely mov- 
 ing pendulum constantly shifts its plane of vibration. 
 The sun and stars could be considered pendulum 
 balls vibrating around the conical axis ; the Foucault 
 experiment would prove that they constantly shift 
 their plane of vibration. If they made a complete 
 circuit of planes in the period of a year, there would 
 result an annual parallax of the sun and stars. The 
 so-called " epicyclic motion of the planets " could be 
 attributed to the planets moving around the sun as 
 centre when this centre itself is constantly shifting 
 the planes in which it vibrates or revolves. 
 
 Astronomy contributes its share to the proof that 
 heat is the all-important factor in the study of mat- 
 ter. It has been said that " every known property of 
 a piece of matter, except its gravity and inertia, 
 varies with variation of temperature." 2 Variation 
 
 1 Young, Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 2 Lord Kelvin. 
 
70 Conscience. 
 
 of temperature causes variation even of gravity: hot 
 air weighs less than cold ; steam rises in opposition 
 to the force of gravity, while water flows downward. 
 A body's inertia, even, changes with variation of 
 temperature, since heat causes motion and cold causes 
 rest: a motionless block of ice, when its temperature 
 is raised, becomes moving, rising steam. Thus every 
 property of a piece of matter varies with sufficient 
 variation of the temperature; or intensity of heat, 
 the primordial substance and the very essence of 
 matter, determines what properties a given piece of 
 matter will possess. 
 
 In conclusion it may be said that either of two 
 theories may be held as the explanation of the body 
 of facts that the science of astronomy has collected. 
 The Copernican theory that the earth rotates daily 
 on its axis and revolves annually about the sun gives 
 a simple, logical explanation of the observed facts by 
 attributing many apparent motions of the heavenly 
 bodies to the actual motion of our earth. The 
 strongest point of the theory is its clear explanation 
 of the motions of the planets of our solar system; 
 its weakest point, that by rejecting many apparent 
 motions of heavenly bodies as not their own but as 
 due to the earth's motion, it can discover in the re- 
 maining motions of those bodies no signs of a stellar 
 system. If intensity of a heavenly body's heat is 
 connected with its motion in space, the Copernican 
 theory has taken no account of the fact. Coper- 
 nicus himself considered the sun and stars the 
 
The Science of the Heavenly Bodies. 71 
 
 very bodies that have greatest heat and energy as 
 immovable or " fixed." His view was the follow- 
 ing: " The heaven, composed of stars perfectly at 
 rest, occupies the remotest bounds of space, then the 
 orbit of Saturn, next Jupiter, Mars, the Earth (ac- 
 companied by its moon), Venus, Mercury, and, 
 lastly, the Sun immovable at the centre." * Since 
 his day, however, " observations on the motion of the 
 sun-spots have . . . established the fact that 
 the sun is not strictly a fixed body, around which the 
 earth revolves, but that it has a motion of its own 
 through space." 2 The spectroscope has revealed the 
 fact that the stars are not " fixed " but moving bodies. 
 The sun and stars must nowadays be acknowledged 
 to be moving, though the system of these motions 
 was not sought after by Copernicus since he consid- 
 ered them immovable in space. The earth cannot be 
 proved to be in motion by any physical method that 
 is as trustworthy and convincing as the means by 
 which the sun and stars have been proved by astron- 
 omers to be in motion. 
 
 The second theory maintains that the earth is fixed 
 and that all other heavenly bodies are in motion. 
 This theory in one form was held universally before 
 the time of Copernicus, and was defended by Tycho 
 Brahe even when Copernicus had proved that the 
 motions of the planets centre about the sun, Tycho 
 Brahe maintaining still the fixed position of the 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britarmica, Astronomy. 
 
 2 Huxley, Physiography, 
 
72 Conscience. 
 
 earth, making the other planets revolve about the sun 
 and the sun itself revolve about the earth. The fix- 
 ity of the cold earth-planet and the diurnal revolu- 
 tion of the stars is here argued for, on the ground 
 that heat is motive power, and that the white light 
 that constitutes the nuclei of stars moves with enor- 
 mous velocity, which would make necessary the 
 actual diurnal revolution of the heavens, the velocity 
 attributed at the present day to the stars not being 
 compatible with the known velocity of light. If the 
 earth is in truth fixed and the other heavenly bodies 
 revolve daily, one vast system of the universe actually 
 exists, though the explanation of this system may be 
 crude, owing to the magnitude of the problems to 
 be met. Astronomy, the noblest and most compre- 
 hensive of the sciences, has the largest contribution 
 for scientific philosophy; it is, more than any other 
 science, cosmical in its nature, and the manner in 
 which its facts are interpreted will determine one's 
 final conception of Nature as a whole. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 Biology being " the science of life," philosophy 
 seeks from the body of facts collected by this science 
 an answer to the questions: What is the life-force 
 itself? What relation does this vital force bear to 
 the physical forces of nature? What connection 
 exists between the earth's early inorganic and its later 
 organic history ? 
 
 Let us turn to the sub-science of physiology for 
 light upon the first of these problems, the nature of 
 life. " The structural elements from which all liv- 
 ing beings are built up are called cells." * " Cells 
 are masses of protoplasm containing a nucleus, and 
 this sometimes contains a nucleolus." 2 " Proto- 
 plasm and nucleus are the bearers of life." 3 " Cells 
 essentially make up the body and do its 
 work; their form and arrangement determine the 
 form of the organs; their activity, the function of 
 the organs." 4 Anatomy is " the study of the forms 
 which cells and intercellular substances assume; 
 
 1 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 
 2 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 3 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 
 * Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course, 
 73 
 
74 Conscience. 
 
 physiology, . . . the study of the specific ac- 
 tivity of the cells." * 
 
 The life-functions are the same in nature through- 
 out the organic world, the difference between the 
 various ranks of plant and animal life being due to 
 the relative simplicity or complexity of the organs 
 that perform these life-functions in correspondingly 
 simple or complex ways. Further, all living beings 
 are composed of the same general substances : organic 
 constituents formed from the chemical elements 
 oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, and inor- 
 ganic constituents, of which the chief are water and 
 salts. The life-process is twofold : it consists in the 
 storing up of food, and the oxidation or burning of 
 this stored-up fuel. A great difference between the 
 plant and animal kingdoms lies in their respective 
 powers of assimilating the chemical substances which 
 become transformed into their body-substance or 
 protoplasm. The vegetable kingdom can obtain its 
 food from the inorganic world, the animal only from 
 the organic. When the food has once been assimi- 
 lated by plant and animal, it is similarly oxidized or 
 burned by both, that " life " may be maintained. 
 " There is no doubt that all the living protoplasm of 
 the plant undergoes slow oxidation, with evolution of 
 carbonic anhydride. In the green parts, and in 
 daylight, this process of respiration is disguised by 
 the more conspicuous one of assimilation, in which 
 carbonic anhydride is decomposed and oxygen given 
 l Martin, The Bwnan Body, Briefer Course, 
 
The Science of Life. 75 
 
 off. In the deeper seated cells, and in all parts of 
 the plant when light is absent, respiration alone 
 goes on." x 
 
 " The body is like a stove in which fuel is burned, 
 and the chemical action resembles that in any other 
 stove. This combustion produces heat, and our 
 bodies are kept warm by the constant fire within us. 
 When there is plenty of fuel in our human 
 furnaces, the oxygen burns that; but if there is a 
 deficiency, the destructive oxygen must still unite 
 with something, and so it combines with the flesh ; 
 first the fat, and the man grows poor; then the 
 muscles, and he grows weak; finally the brain, and 
 he becomes crazed. He has burned up, as a candle 
 burns out to darkness." 2 
 
 " As each organ works it oxidizes ; some of its sub- 
 stance is broken down by combination with oxygen 
 brought to it by the blood, and is thus converted 
 into burnt waste matter. The blood 
 brings, however, not merely oxygen but also food 
 matters in solution. These ooze through the walls of 
 the blood vessels, and are taken up by the living tis- 
 sues and built into new tissues like themselves, to 
 replace the part which has been used up and de- 
 stroyed. This building and repair of tissues and or- 
 gans from the dissolved food obtained from the blood 
 is known as assimilation in plain English, ' a 
 making alike.' Each living tissue takes from the 
 
 1 Huxley and Martin, Practical Biology. 
 
 2 Steele, Chemistry. 
 
76 Conscience. 
 
 blood foods which are not like itself, and builds them 
 up into a form of matter like its own. The converse 
 process, which accompanies all vital action, the 
 breaking down into wastes of a living tissue when it 
 works, is called dissimilation, or ' a making un- 
 like. 7 " 1 
 
 " Carbon forms the basis of all the organic com- 
 pounds of our body. It unites with hydrogen and 
 oxygen to form fats and carbohydrates; with hydro- 
 gen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur to form proteid 
 bodies." 2 " Of the combustible foodstuffs, proteids 
 serve to replace the body-proteids destroyed by the 
 physiological combustion. . . . Proteids con- 
 tain all the elements needed for replacing organic 
 substances in the body; fats and carbohydrates con- 
 tain only a part, viz. carbon, oxygen and hydro- 
 gen." 3 Proteids serve as the frame-work of the 
 organic machine and are worn out much less rapidly 
 than the fats and carbohydrates which serve as a 
 ready supply of easily-burnt fuel. " Carbohydrates 
 and fats are the chief fuel constituents of food. 
 Both are readily oxidized in the body, giving off 
 water and carbon dioxide. Their oxidation produces 
 proportionately more heat and muscular power than 
 that of proteids. Both are transformed into the fat 
 of the body, and are mainly responsible for the stor- 
 age of fat. . . . Necessary as are the carbo- 
 
 1 Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 
 2 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 
 3 Schenck and Giirber, Human- Physiology. 
 
The Science of Life. 77 
 
 hydrates and fats, like the albuminoids and other 
 alimentary principles, none of them alone will sup- 
 port life." 1 The ashes of the organic machine or 
 " the products of combustion are removed from the 
 tissues, in which the combustion takes place, by the 
 circulating blood and lymph ;" 2 since they " would 
 only clog up the various organs, as the ashes and 
 smoke of an engine would soon put out its fire if they 
 were allowed to accumulate in the furnace." 3 " That 
 the body may continue to exist, new material for 
 combustion must be supplied to it from without. 
 This is effected by the partaking of nourishment 
 which is made absorbable by digestion, and, after ab- 
 sorption, supplied to the tissues by the blood and 
 then assimilated." * 
 
 The answer of physiology to the question of the 
 nature of the vital processes is then the following: 
 There is, so long as life lasts, a constant burning of 
 protoplasm or body-substance by inhaled oxygen gas, 
 a process which renders necessary a renewing of the 
 protoplasm by the assimilation of food. This oxida- 
 tion of protoplasm evolves heat. " The various 
 plant-products . . . when burned, either in the 
 body as food or in the air as fuel, give off heat," 5 
 So long as the production of heat is not emphasized, 
 the purpose of the burning of the body-substance is 
 
 1 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 2 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 s Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 * Schenck and Gurber, Human Physiology. 
 s Steele, Chemistry. 
 
78 Conscience. 
 
 not evident, and the paradox arises that life is de- 
 rived from the destruction or death of the body. 
 " All our life is produced by the destruction of our 
 bodies. ~No act can be performed except by the wear- 
 ing away of a muscle. No thought can be evolved 
 except at the expense of the brain. Hence the neces- 
 sity for food to supply the constant waste of the sys- 
 tem, and for sleep to give nature time to repair -the 
 losses of the day." * The purpose and meaning of 
 this constant burning of the substance of the body is 
 seen, however, when we learn that heat is thereby 
 generated ; for heat is energy and power. The body 
 then serves only as the means to a definite end, it sup- 
 plies the cold liquid and solid fuel with which hot 
 oxygen gas combines, oxygen evolving in this act of 
 union some of the heat it had in the state of a free 
 gas. The inhaled oxygen and the food are . merely 
 the means that serve the purpose of the production 
 of heat. Heat is the very life-force then, and life 
 lasts only so long as the physiological combustion 
 generates it. Food is stored up by the body in order 
 thai it may be oxidized and heat be produced. Every- 
 thing that breathes, burns, and the evolved heat is its 
 life. Fire is the vital power of the universe, as well 
 as the energy and the primordial substance of so- 
 called inorganic nature. 
 
 The source of the heat of organic beings is the 
 oxygen gas they breathe in, and not the foods they 
 store up. There are two objections to the generally 
 
 aSteele, Chemistry. 
 
The Science of Life. 79 
 
 accepted view that the body, in " constantly forming 
 complex substances from simpler ones " is " thus 
 storing energy." i The first objection is that heat 
 is always lost, not absorbed or stored up, during the 
 formation of compounds; chemical union evolves 
 heat. These complex compounds of the body have 
 been formed by several acts of chemical union of 
 once free elements and heat has been lost by each of 
 these acts of union. It is the reverse process to chem- 
 ical combination, the process of dissociation into sim- 
 pler compounds and of these into free elements, that 
 requires an absorbing or storing up of heat. When 
 then the question is raised as to which of the two 
 bodies in the act of oxidation is the source of the 
 generated heat, the answer must be that free oxygen 
 gas possesses more heat and is at higher potential 
 than the complex carbon compounds in the liquid 
 and solid states, that form the body-substance. The 
 heat of the sunlight dissociates oxygen from the com- 
 pounds in which it exists in the food-materials 
 absorbed by the green plants; oxygen escapes from 
 the plants into the atmosphere as a free, hot gas, 
 while cold, solid carbon is left behind in the plants. 
 This uncombined oxygen gas returned to the earth's 
 gaseous atmosphere will evolve the heat once restored 
 to it by the sunlight when it enters again into chem- 
 ical union with carbon and other fuels. 
 
 The second objection to the view that energy is 
 derived from the complex compounds of the body is 
 i Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
80 Conscience. 
 
 that in that event energy would have to be regarded 
 as assuming at times a passive state, becoming merely 
 " potential." But energy that is merely potential is 
 not energy at all, energy is present activity. Nature 
 accordingly supplies the living being constantly with 
 a small quantity of active oxygen; there can be no 
 storing of oxygen in the body as there is of inactive, 
 complex compounds. These passive substances are 
 stored up in the body as reserve fuel to be used by the 
 oxygen when needed. The supply then of oxygen is 
 steady and small, and its activity becomes at once 
 effective. " We all know that if the supply of air 
 be cut off, a man will die in a few minutes ; his food 
 is no use to him unless he gets oxygen. While he 
 usually has stored up in his body an excess of food 
 matters, he has little or no reserve of oxygen." * The 
 " amount of inhaled oxygen is a measure of the 
 extent of combustion taking place in the body." 2 
 More oxygen is breathed in by the lungs when the 
 organism is working than when it is sleeping, as 
 more combustion and heat-production are required. 
 The living body has well been defined as " a heat- 
 producing, moving, conscious organism." 3 The 
 evolved heat of the organism constitutes its energy, its 
 power of moving, its working-force. Thus the force 
 the body can exert is dependent upon the amount of 
 heat it can generate by its process of combustion. 
 
 1 Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 
 2 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 
 3 Martin, The Human Body. 
 
. 
 OF THF \ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 The Science of L 
 
 OF TH 
 
 ( UNIVER 
 
 ife. 
 
 XgALIFOP 
 
 " The energy of food in the body is estimated by phys- 
 iologists just as if the food were burned outside the 
 body, i. e., in heat units or calories." 1 Since we 
 know that " a definite amount of heat can be obtained 
 by burning a definite amount of a given substance," 2 
 we can calculate the ' fuel values ? of various nutri- 
 ents, that is to say, " their capacities for yielding 
 heat and mechanical power." 3 " The amount of 
 kinetic energy liberated during such chemical com- 
 binations is very great; a kilogram of carbon unit- 
 ing with oxygen to form carbon dioxide sets free 8080 
 units of heat, or calories." 4 " The adult resting 
 human being produces in twenty-four hours about 
 2400 calories, or in one hour 100 calories." 5 Energy 
 " cannot be created from nothing ; since the body 
 constantly expends energy, it must have a steady 
 supply. This supply comes from the energy liber- 
 ated when substances in the body are burned, or, as 
 the chemists say, oxidized, just as that used by a 
 locomotive comes from the burning or oxidation of 
 coal or wood in its furnace." 6 " Destructive 
 metabolism is constantly going on, the processes sup- 
 plying heat and force to the animal." 7 " The animal 
 is in fact a machine, fed by the materials it derives 
 from the vegetable world, as a steam-engine is fed 
 
 1 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 2 Remsen, Chemistry. 
 
 s Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 4 Martin, The Human Body. 
 B Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 e Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 7Bidgood, Elementary Biology. 
 
82 Conscience. 
 
 with fuel. Like the steam-engine, it derives its mo- 
 tive power from combustion." 1 " The locomotive is 
 an inorganic machine; the animal is an organic 
 machine." 2 
 
 " Of all the energy set free by a working body, at 
 most only one-fourth can be utilized for mechanical 
 work; the remaining three-fourths is set free as 
 heat." 3 It has been found " that the human body is 
 a better and more efficient machine for the production 
 of energy than any engine yet devised by man. 
 . . . It will yield more power for a given 
 amount of fuel than the best steam engine or oil 
 engine. . . . Whereas the most economical 
 steam engine delivers in actual horse power only 
 about thirteen per cent of the total heat value of the 
 fuel supplied, a first-class athlete produces thirty-six 
 per cent, or nearly three times as much." * 
 
 There is greater heat-production in the higher 
 organisms that represent a greater life-force than in 
 the lower plants and animals, consequently the body- 
 temperature of the former is greater. " The surface 
 of a plant . . . exposed to the air is very great, 
 so that the heat evolved is very speedily dissipated. 
 Of course, where the greatest metabolism is going on, 
 as, for instance, in the reproductive organs, in the 
 growing shoots and in germinating seeds, there the 
 greatest amount of heat is evolved. Unless specially 
 
 1 Huxley, Physiography. 
 
 2 Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 
 s Schenck and Gtirber, Human Physiology. 
 *New York Herald, May 19, 1901. 
 
The Science of Life. 83 
 
 protected, however, the temperature of a plant seldom 
 rises above that of the surrounding air, for the reason 
 above stated. It is more frequently beneath the 
 temperature of the air, owing to the cooling effect of 
 evaporation from the exposed parts." 1 " All ani- 
 mals, so long as they are alive, are the seat of chem- 
 ical changes by which heat is liberated; hence all 
 tend to be somewhat warmer than their ordinary sur- 
 roundings, though the difference may not be notice- 
 able unless the heat production is considerable. A 
 frog or a fish is a little hotter than the air or water 
 in which it lives, but not much; the little heat that 
 it produces is lost, by radiation or conduction, almost 
 at once. Hence such animals have no proper temper- 
 ature of their own ; on a warm day they are warm, on 
 a cold day cold, and are accordingly known as change- 
 able-temperatured . . or . ' cold- 
 blooded ' animals. Man and other mammals, as well 
 as birds, on the contrary, are the seat of very active 
 chemical changes by which much heat is produced, 
 and so maintain a tolerably uniform temperature of 
 their own, much as a fire does whether it be burning 
 in a warm or a cold room. ... A lizard 
 basking in the sun on a warm summer's day 
 may be quite as hot as a man usually is; but 
 on the cold day the lizard becomes cold, while 
 the average temperature of the healthy human 
 body is, within a degree, the same in winter 
 or summer; within the arctic circle or on the equa- 
 
 i Gibson, Elementary Biology. 
 
84 Conscience. 
 
 tor." 1 " In the case of a hot-blooded animal if the 
 temperature of the air decrease, more heat-producing 
 food (fats) must be oxidized to keep up the balance; 
 if the temperature increase, less food is of course 
 needed. If, on the other hand, the animal be cold- 
 blooded and the temperature of the air decrease, 
 metabolism is diminished; if the temperature of the 
 air increase, metabolism is also increased." 2 
 
 " The test of life is usually taken to be the per- 
 formance of life functions, the assimilation of food 
 and excretion of waste, the breathing in of oxygen, 
 and breathing out of carbonic-acid gas, movement, 
 feeling, etc. But some animals can actually suspend 
 all of these functions, or at least reduce them to such 
 a minimum that they can not be perceived by the 
 strictest examination, and yet not be dead. That is, 
 they can renew again the performance of the life 
 processes. Bears and some other animals, among 
 them many insects, spend the winter in a state of 
 death-like sleep. Perhaps it is but sleep; and yet 
 hibernating insects can be frozen solid and remain 
 frozen for weeks and months, and still retain the 
 power of actively living again in the following 
 spring." 3 The little animal known as the bear- 
 animalcule becomes desiccated when the pond in 
 which it lives dries up. " If after a long time 
 years even one of these organic dust particles, one 
 
 * Martin, The Human Body. 
 
 2 Gibson, Elementary Biology. 
 
 s Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 
The Science of Life. 85 
 
 of these dried-up bear-animalcules, is put into water, 
 a strange thing happens. The body swells and 
 stretches out, the skin becomes smooth instead of all 
 wrinkled and folded, and the legs appear in normal 
 shape. The body is again as it was years before, and 
 after a quarter of an hour to several hours (depend- 
 ing on the length of time the animal has lain dormant 
 and dried) slow movements of the body parts begin, 
 and soon the animalcule crawls about, begins again 
 its life where it had been interrupted. Various 
 other small animals, such as vinegar eels and certain 
 Protozoa, show similar powers. Certainly here is 
 an interesting problem in life and death." Just as 
 an inorganic machine will, if its structure remain in- 
 tact, perform work again when a new fire is kindled 
 in it after the first fire has died out; so, when the 
 atmospheric oxygen heated by the spring sunlight 
 ignites the phosphorus of the cells and starts combus- 
 tion of the protoplasm, a simple organism will live 
 again, provided its organs be perfectly preserved and 
 able to continue this rekindled process of heat pro- 
 duction. The winter cold extinguishes the fire and 
 life of a low organism, but preserves the body from 
 decomposition; even freezing does not injure the 
 body. Desiccation is as effective as is cold in pre- 
 serving the body from decay. When the dried-up 
 bear-animalcule is put again into its element, the 
 body regains the water it had lost, and since there has 
 been no other change in the body, it is restored to 
 i Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 
86 Conscience. 
 
 the condition in which it formerly was when the 
 animalcule was alive. The oxygen gas dissolved in 
 the water rekindles the combustion of the uninjured 
 cell. A dead fly is often restored to life by the sun- 
 shine, the sun-heated oxygen again igniting the com- 
 bustion process of its body. With the coming of 
 spring, the oxygen of the atmosphere becomes hotter 
 and more active and rekindles combustion that winter 
 extinguished: the leafless trees put forth new life, 
 and hibernating insects and animals " awake," their 
 metabolism or life processes being increased. When 
 such higher animals as the bear hibernate, all of the 
 vital functions are not suspended, for these functions 
 are performed by complex organs which are much 
 harder to start afresh than are the simple organs of 
 one-celled organisms. 
 
 Seeds of plants germinate when sufficient heat is 
 supplied to start oxidation of the protoplasm. The 
 same truth holds in the animal kingdom, heat hatches 
 the egg, by kindling protoplasmic combustion. The 
 cicatricula within the pigeon's egg " exhibits no more 
 signs of life than the young plant within the pea. 
 It is in a quiescent state, and its activity must be 
 roused by an external influence. This, in the case 
 of the egg, is simply a certain amount of heat 
 (which is ordinarily furnished by the warmth of the 
 body of the parent), the supply of nourishment being 
 yielded by the matter stored up within the egg itself, 
 in the yolk and white." 1 The ostrich merely buries 
 i Huxley, Physiography. 
 
The Science of Life. 87 
 
 its eggs in the sand, the heat of the tropical sun 
 kindling in them the vital process of combustion. 
 
 " The ordinary tests of life are the power to assim- 
 ilate food and air, the power to move or be aroused, 
 and the possession of animal heat. When the heart 
 ceases to beat and breathing stops and heat leaves the 
 body, a person is said to be dead. Instances are on 
 record where life has been restored by the application 
 of heat to the body, both externally and internally, 
 by the use of stimulants, and by arousing the circula- 
 tion and the action of the lungs by means of elec- 
 tricity and by the practice of artificial respiration." 
 So long as the human body has not been injured in 
 any of its essential organs and has not become worn 
 out from age, there is a probability of man's being 
 able to rekindle the vital process of heat production 
 that has once become extinguished by drowning, 
 freezing, sudden shock to the heart, and the like. 
 
 Further evidence that heat is indeed the very life- 
 force is the following: the earth's life-forms depend 
 upon the sun, and luminous heat is all that the sun 
 gives to the planet. " A little heat ... is all 
 that differences the bald, dazzling white and deadly 
 cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical cli- 
 mates." 2 Those regions of the earth then that 
 receive most heat from the sun abound most in life. 
 Further, the forms of life vary with the climate or 
 intensity of heat. " On ascending a high mountain, 
 
 1 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene, 
 
 2 Emerson, Nature. 
 
88 Conscience. 
 
 from a plain in a hot country, the traveller meets 
 with changes in the character of the animal and vege- 
 table life, which are similar to those changes which 
 may be observed in passing from low to high lati- 
 tudes. . . . Climate determines, to a very large 
 extent, the character of the animal and vegetable 
 population of a country." * Since life-forms become 
 modified and vary as one goes from a warm to a cold 
 climate, intensity of heat is seen to play an all-im- 
 portant role in the organic world. 
 
 The second problem to be considered in Biology is 
 the relation of the vital force to the physical forces 
 of Nature. " Contrary, perhaps, to our first antici- 
 pation, we find that the phenomena of Biology, 
 complex and involved as they admittedly are, are 
 generally speaking capable of expression in physical 
 terms, while the changes that take place in the ani- 
 mal or plant organism are found to agree in all im- 
 portant points with those which form the subject of 
 chemical and physical investigations. Even mental 
 or psychological phenomena . . . are unde- 
 niably accompanied by some such change, and cannot 
 be said to be independent of the physical and chem- 
 ical basis on which the science of Biology, as a whole, 
 is built. . . . No constituent of living mat- 
 ter is incapable of being classified among chemical 
 substances; . . . the substances which enter 
 into the composition of living things are among the 
 commonest constituents of the minerals of the earth's 
 
 i Huxley, Physiography. 
 
The Science of Life. 89 
 
 crust." * " The living body contains no other ele- 
 ments and forces than those found in the inanimate 
 world. There is no special ' Vital Force.' " 2 Phys- 
 iology has found that the metabolic processes of the 
 living body have as their result and purpose the con- 
 stant production of heat. This generated heat con- 
 stitutes the vital force of the organism. Thus the 
 life-force,, being heat, is the same as the energy and 
 physical forces of the universe. 
 
 There are two great periods in the earth's history. 
 The earlier period was devoid of organic life and 
 may be called the inorganic age; the later period 
 includes the history of organic as well as of inorganic 
 nature. Since the life-force of the organic world 
 is the same as the energy of the inorganic world, and 
 the materials of the living body are common constit- 
 uents of the earth's crust, it would seem that the 
 inorganic world has conditioned and given rise to 
 the organic. Did protoplasm, the life-substance of 
 the organic world, arise from the inorganic world as a 
 natural stage in cosmic evolution ? 
 
 " Geology deals with the history of the earth. 
 . . . The beginnings of the earth's history can 
 never be known from record or relic. But the 
 facts and comparisons afforded by astronomy save 
 us from complete ignorance. What we may with 
 considerable safety infer about the earliest condition 
 of the globe is suggested by the Nebular Hypoth- 
 
 1 Gibson, Elementary Biology. 
 
 2 Schenck and Gurber, Human Physiology, 
 
90 Conscience. 
 
 esis." 1 When the cooling surface of a nebula of 
 the primordial substance white flame evolved into an 
 atmosphere of weaker flames or " the elements," and 
 was cast off by the central white flame to form a 
 planet, the elements of the atmosphere, having no 
 longer a central white flame beneath them, became 
 rearranged, the colder, heavier elements sinking 
 towards the centre of the forming planet-globe, the 
 hotter, lighter elements rising to the outer surface. 
 " The time of a gaseous, molten, and glowing earth, 
 before there was a solid crust, has been called 
 . the ' Astral ' aeon or era." 2 As the planet 
 cooled more and more in space, the elements 
 would enter into various chemical combinations and 
 would change gradually from the gaseous form into 
 liquids and solids. The first elements to form chem- 
 ical combinations and to liquefy and solidify would 
 be those that were between the central matter and the 
 outermost atmosphere; for the central matter would 
 be greatly protected from the cooling process in space 
 by the covering of substances above it, while the heat 
 gained by the outer atmosphere from the sun's radia- 
 tion would partly counteract the tendency of this 
 surface matter to cool rapidly as a result of its ex- 
 posure in space. The solid crust would form below 
 the sun-heated atmosphere of the lightest gases and 
 above the molten central matter, and would consist 
 of elements of medium weight. As the solid crust 
 
 i Brigham, Geology. 
 2Brigham, Geology. 
 
The Science of Life. 91 
 
 cooled more and more and shrank, it compressed the 
 central molten matter, which would in its turn tend 
 to expand to its normal size and would thus exert 
 pressure upon the confining crust, thereby pushing 
 outward or " uplifting " some portions of the crust 
 and breaking through the softer, more yielding parts 
 in the form of volcanic eruptions. 
 
 After elements of medium weight had formed 
 various chemical combinations and had begun to form 
 the earth's solid crust, there would come as a later 
 stage of the cooling of the earth-planet the period of 
 the chemical union and condensation of some of the 
 light gases of the outer atmosphere. The light gases 
 hydrogen and oxygen united and condensed into a 
 probably universal ocean above the solid crust. 
 Parts of this crust would be gradually uplifted by 
 the pressure of the central molten matter which the 
 contracting crust compressed ; the once universal seas 
 would drain from these high portions of the crust 
 into ocean-basins, and islands and continents would 
 gradually arise from this uncovering of uplifted 
 solid land by the seas. 
 
 Geologists find no trace of former organic life in 
 the oldest, crystalline, igneous rocks of the earth's 
 crust ; no fossil remains bear witness that " life " had 
 originated on the planet at the early period when 
 these rocks were formed. The ocean came into being 
 after this early crust of rock. Biology holds that the 
 first organisms lived in the ocean, since certain ma- 
 rine organisms are simpler than any organisms that 
 
92 Conscience. 
 
 live on land or in the air, and must therefore, from 
 the point of view of evolution, be considered the 
 most primitive. If the earliest organisms were ma- 
 rine, organic life originated at a later period than 
 the ocean itself. One of the constituents of proto- 
 plasm is water, while the other chief constituents are 
 among the lightest of the elements and were therefore 
 substances that remained as gases in the outer at- 
 mosphere after heavier elements had solidified. At 
 a later period in the history of the cooling of the 
 earth than the time of the formation of a solid crust 
 and of an ocean above this crust, would come the 
 chemical combination of some of the lightest gases 
 of the atmosphere that existed above the seas. The 
 substances formed by their union would be heavier 
 than the former free gases, since heat was evolved 
 in their formation, and these chemical compounds of 
 some of the lightest elements would sink beneath the 
 atmosphere of free gases into the ocean. The ocean- 
 water would act chemically upon them, and there 
 would result a new substance, a complex compound 
 of light elements and water. Protoplasm or the life- 
 substance would appear in the natural course of the 
 earth's cooling, though at an advanced stage in this 
 process of cooling, for complexity of compounds 
 points to the evolution of a great quantity of heat, 
 and the lighter gases would not liquefy and solidify 
 until a cold period in the earth's history was reached. 
 As a bar of iron when it enters into chemical union 
 with oxygen becomes converted into red dust or 
 
The Science of Life. 93 
 
 myriads of separate particles, so the resulting com- 
 plex compound of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitro- 
 gen with ocean-water was in the form of myriads of 
 separate particles, vast swarms of minute spherical 
 bodies or one-celled protoplasm. 
 
 Protoplasm is not generated in modern times from 
 inorganic nature, because the physical and chemical 
 conditions of the earth have changed. As there was 
 an appropriate and unique period for the origin of 
 the earth's crust and of the ocean, so, too, there was 
 a suitable and unique period for the origin of proto- 
 plasm, a complex compound of certain light elements. 
 
 Protoplasm is, of all the substances of the planet, 
 the life-substance, because it is the most complex and 
 unstable compound of nature ; the sun-heated oxygen 
 gas constantly unites with it, and there results a 
 steady production of heat or vital energy from this 
 oxidation of the unstable compound. " The most 
 important thing we know about the chemical consti- 
 tution of protoplasm is that there are always present 
 in it certain complex albuminous substances which 
 are never found in inorganic bodies. . . . Pro- 
 toplasm is the primitive basic life substance, but it is 
 the presence of these complex albuminous compounds 
 that makes protoplasm the life substance." x Though 
 " in animate bodies, there are doubtless certain 
 amounts of heat generated by other actions, yet these 
 are all secondary to the heat generated by the action 
 of oxygen on the substances composing the tissues 
 
 i Jordan and Kellogg, Animo>l Life, 
 
94 Conscience. 
 
 and the substances contained in them. Here 
 we see one of the characteristic distinc- 
 tions between inanimate and animate bodies. Among 
 the first, there are but few which ordinarily exist in a 
 condition to evolve the heat caused by chemical com- 
 bination; and such as are in this condition soon cease 
 to be so, when chemical combination and genesis of 
 heat once begin in them. Whereas among the second, 
 there universally exists the ability, more or less 
 decided, thus to evolve heat ; and the evolution of heat, 
 in some cases very slight and in no cases very great, 
 continues as long as they remain animate bodies/' 1 
 The sun-heated oxygen gas breaks down the cold, 
 complex compound protoplasm, the natural cooling of 
 the earth's substances in space leads to a re-formation 
 of the complex compound, and again the sun-heated 
 oxygen decomposes the compound. This oxidation 
 of the complex compound evolves heat or vital energy. 
 If the chasm that seems to yawn between the 
 Inorganic and the Organic can be bridged, and if the 
 inorganic world can be regarded as the natural cause 
 of the organic, then all cosmic history has continuity, 
 for the nebular hypothesis gives the key to the rela- 
 tions of the various heavenly bodies, the key to inor- 
 ganic history, while the theory of evolution gives the 
 key to the relations that exist between the various 
 forms of organic life. If the origin of protoplasm 
 was a result of the natural, physical tendencies of the 
 earth's matter, then there can be traced an unbroken 
 i Spencer, Principles of Biology, 
 
The Science of Life. 95 
 
 cosmic evolution, the first chapter of this history be- 
 ing at present represented by the youngest irresolv- 
 able nebula of the primordial substance light on the 
 outermost bounds of space, the latest chapter by man, 
 the latest-evolved organism on the oldest and most 
 cooled planet in the centre of space. 
 
 Darwin and Spencer first found the key to the 
 solution of the problem, How are the various organ- 
 isms on the earth related to one another ? All forms 
 of life on our planet are but stages or chapters of the 
 same general history of organic development. The 
 minute, one-celled masses of protoplasm that orig- 
 inated in the ocean are the first and lowest forms of 
 organic life, from which have evolved during long 
 ages all the higher, more complex organisms. At 
 some remote period in the past history of our planet 
 protoplasm or the life-substance was formed, and 
 from originally unicellular and homogeneous proto- 
 plasm have been developed the many-celled and het- 
 erogeneous forms of plant and animal. 
 
 There has been " orderly progress of the earth's 
 history. Progressive unfolding has been the law 
 throughout." There have been " two great lines of 
 evolution, the geographical and the organic. The 
 continents began with straggling and isolated lands, 
 and grew and consolidated by successive deposit and 
 uplift. Depressions have intervened, but the goal has 
 not been obscured. Progress has usually been quiet, 
 but not infrequently energy has gathered, until vast 
 and almost catastrophic changes followed in quick 
 
96 Conscience. 
 
 succession. Amid every diversity of slow and swift, 
 uplift and down wear, all forces have wrought to- 
 gether to make lands of moderate average altitude, 
 great areas with genial climate, rocks covered with 
 soil, and soil supporting abundant life. Equally 
 wonderful in its majestic ongoing has been the prog- 
 ress of life. From the earliest fossil-bearing rocks 
 to the last sands laid on the beach the tendency of 
 life has on the whole been upward. Lowly forms 
 have given way to higher, and clumsy generalized 
 types like the early fishes, reptiles, and birds, have 
 yielded the stage to nobler and more special groups. 
 The land forms came last, but steadily gained in 
 numbers, variety, and physical rank, until signs of 
 intelligence appeared, and these received their crown 
 in man." 1 The testimony of geology is that the 
 earth's history shows continuity and that there has 
 been steady progress towards the present conditions 
 on the globe. The development on our planet is 
 teleological, it has been in accordance with a majestic 
 system and purpose, and is not the result of chance 
 or blind forces. 
 
 Why should life advance, what has caused the 
 primitive forms of life to change? Spencer points 
 out " the truth which holds throughout the organic 
 world, that life itself is the maintenance of a moving 
 equilibrium between inner and outer actions the 
 continuous adjustment of internal relations to ex- 
 
 i Brigham, Geology. 
 
The Science of Life. 97 
 
 ternal relations ; or the maintenance of a correspond- 
 ence between the forces to which an organism is sub- 
 ject and the forces which it evolves. . . . For 
 those progressive modifications upon modifications 
 which organic evolution implies, we find a sufficient 
 cause in the modifications after modifications, which 
 every environment over the Earth's surface has been 
 undergoing, throughout all geologic and pregeologic 
 times," 1 as a result of " the astronomic, geologic and 
 meteorologic changes that have been slowly but in- 
 cessantly going on, and have been increasing in the 
 complexity of their combinations," thus " perpetually 
 altering the circumstances of organisms." 2 Evolu- 
 tion of higher from lower life-forms is thus the result 
 of changing environment, of modifications in the 
 functions and structures of organisms in their adapt- 
 ing themselves to their changed surroundings, and 
 of the survival of the best adapted organisms in the 
 struggle for existence. 
 
 The chief cause of the variations that have arisen 
 in organic life-forms is the variations in the quantity 
 of heat that various portions of the earth's surface 
 have received from the sun. " M. Standfuss, of 
 Zurich, has taken up the old experiments of Weiss- 
 man on the variations in butterflies produced by tem- 
 perature acting on the chrysalis. He finds that the 
 chrysalids, according to the temperature to which 
 they are exposed, have given birth to butterflies not 
 
 1 Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
 2 Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
98 Conscience. 
 
 of the kind they are derived from, but kinds belong- 
 ing to countries far from Zurich. Thus, pupse of 
 the vanessa urtica, which is common in Switzerland, 
 when kept at a temperature of 4 to 6 degrees cen- 
 tigrade, produced the vanessa polaris, a species proper 
 to Lapland. Others of the same sort kept at 37 to 
 39 degrees centigrade produced the ichnusa, found 
 only in Sardinia and Corsica. A still higher tem- 
 perature produced ichnusoides, found sometimes in 
 temperate regions during hot summers. Other 
 chrysalids gave birth to entirely new species/' * Sud- 
 den and decided variations in organic life-forms may 
 be traced to the following astronomic cause: the 
 abrupt and extreme change in the earth's climate 
 each time that one of the sun's younger planets has 
 been born. The solar atmosphere which, while form- 
 ing, blanketed the solar nucleus ever more and more, 
 has at several times been suddenly cast off to form 
 a planet, and the earth has then received radiated 
 heat directly from the white, atmosphereless nucleus 
 of the sun. During the long period of the gradual 
 formation of a solar atmosphere of ever-increasing 
 density, there would be a growing diminution in the 
 quantity of heat radiated to the earth; and an ice- 
 age would come over the earth when the heaviest ele- 
 ments evolved in the solar atmosphere and absorbed 
 the radiated heat from the solar nucleus. Then 
 would follow the sudden casting off of the well-de- 
 
 1 Baltimore American, Dec. 22, 1901. From the London 
 Globe. 
 
The Science of Life. 99 
 
 veloped atmosphere, and to the ice-bound earth the 
 sun would blaze forth again as a white star, the in- 
 tense heat which it radiated gradually melting the 
 glaciers on the earth and producing a tropical climate 
 and vegetation and animal life in regions far removed 
 from the equator. There have been then several 
 abrupt changes from an ice-age on the earth's surface 
 to a tropical climate even at the poles; and since 
 variations in quantity of heat cause variations in or- 
 ganic life-forms, some of these more recent innova- 
 tions of tropical climate, coming within the age when 
 organic life had already begun on the earth, have 
 been the direct and sufficient cause for the origin of 
 new species of organisms. The more important 
 and abrupt variations of organic life may be attrib- 
 uted to this cause. Man himself, by nature tropical, 
 may have arisen as an abrupt variation from the 
 earlier mammals at the tropical age of the birth of 
 the sun's youngest planet. " It would seem that 
 about the time of the glacial epoch, probably just as 
 the great ice-floats began to melt away, man suddenly 
 appeared among the mighty quadrupeds which then 
 covered the earth, to contest the supremacy." * 
 
 There has been " one general law leading to the 
 advancement of all organic beings, namely, mul- 
 tiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest 
 die. . . . By the theory of natural selection 
 all living species have been connected with the parent- 
 species of each genus, by differences not greater than 
 
 i Steele, Geology. 
 
100 Conscience. 
 
 we see between the natural and domestic varieties of 
 the same species at the present day ; and these parent- 
 species, now generally extinct, have in their turn been 
 similarly connected with more ancient forms ; and so 
 on backwards, always converging to the common an- 
 cestor of each great class." * In tracing all animals 
 and plants back to earlier forms, Darwin was led " to 
 the belief that all animals and plants are descended 
 from some one prototype/' 2 The " classification into 
 unicellular plants and unicellular animals is a very 
 loose one, and ... no doubt many of the or- 
 ganisms at present classed as doubtfully vegetal or 
 animal in their relationships, are in reality transition 
 stages between the two types, or forms which repre- 
 sent the generalized type from which both animal 
 and vegetal have been derived." 3 " If all forms of 
 organisms have descended from some primordial sim- 
 plest form, it follows that, since this primordial 
 simplest form must have inhabited some one medium 
 out of the several media which organisms now in- 
 habit, the peopling of other media by its descendants, 
 implies migration from one medium to others im- 
 plies adaptations to media quite unlike the original 
 medium. To speak specifically water being the 
 medium in which the lowest living forms exist, it 
 is implied that the earth and the air have been col- 
 onized from the water." * The marine Protozoa 
 
 1 Darwin, The Origin of Species. 
 
 2 Darwin, The Origin of Species. 
 s Gibson, Elementary Biology. 
 
 * Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
The Science of Life. 101 
 
 " which have the simplest body structure and per- 
 form the necessary life processes in the simplest way, 
 are the oldest, the first animals." 1 " Normally the 
 whole body of the simplest animals is a single spher- 
 ical cell, and . . . every one of the higher an- 
 imals, however complex it may become by growth and 
 development, begins life as a single spherical cell." 2 
 " If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, be- 
 comes a man in the space of a few years, there can 
 surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under 
 appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of 
 untold millions of years, give origin to the human 
 race." 3 
 
 " Man is descended from some less highly-organ- 
 ized form. The grounds upon which this conclusion 
 rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity be- 
 tween man and the lower animals in embryonic de- 
 velopment, as well as in innumerable points of 
 structure and constitution, both of high and of the 
 most trifling importance the rudiments which he 
 retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he is 
 occasionally liable are facts which cannot be dis- 
 puted. . . . The great principle of evolution 
 stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts 
 are considered in connection with others, such as 
 the mutual affinities of the members of the same 
 group, their geographical distribution in past and 
 
 1 Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 
 2 Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 a Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
102 Conscience. 
 
 present times, and their geological successions. It is 
 incredible that all these facts should speak falsely." * 
 " Man may be excused for feeling some pride at 
 having risen, though not through his own exertions, 
 to the very summit of the organic scale ; and the fact 
 of his having thus risen, instead of having been 
 aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a 
 still higher destiny in the distant future." 2 
 
 1 Darwin, The Descent of Man. 
 
 2 Darwin, The Descent of Man. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS, OR THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 Psychology has been defined " as the ' description 
 and explanation of states of consciousness as such/ 
 By states of consciousness are meant such things as 
 sensations, desires, emotions, cognitions, reasonings, 
 decisions, volitions, and the like. Their ' explana- 
 tion ' must of course include the study of their causes, 
 conditions, and immediate consequences, so far as 
 these can be ascertained." * " The existence and ac- 
 tivity of the human Nervous System is the general 
 physical condition of all those mental states which can 
 become data for psychological science." 2 " The bald 
 fact is that when the brain acts, a thought occurs." 3 
 Likewise, when the brain acts, heat appears. Phi- 
 losophy seeks the significance of this similar relation 
 of consciousness and of heat to the brain. Does the 
 primordial substance heat, the energy of the physical 
 .universe and the life force of the organic world, pos- 
 sess the property of consciousness, of rationality ? 
 
 The consciousness of organisms on the earth con- 
 sists in a personal, inward and limited feeling of the 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 Ladd, Psychology. 
 
 3 James, Principles of Psychology. 
 
 103 
 
104 Conscience. 
 
 world. Consciousness defies description, but every 
 sentient being knows from his own experience the 
 nature of consciousness, which is considered by all 
 beings as a reality, whether the outer world of matter 
 is considered real or not. But this inner conscious- 
 ness depends upon the external, material world for 
 its own existence, and has outer Nature as its object 
 of contemplation. " To Be is the unsolved, unsolv- 
 able wonder. To Be, in its two connections of in- 
 ward and outward, the mind and nature. The 
 wonder subsists, and age, though of eternity, could 
 not approach a solution. But the suggestion is 
 always returning, that hidden source publishing at 
 once our being and that it is the source of outward 
 nature. Who are we and what is Nature have one 
 answer in the life that rushes into us." 1 There is 
 one life force of the universe, the common source of 
 Matter and Spirit. Consciousness did not arise sud- 
 denly in the universe, only at the stage when a planet 
 evolved organic life on its surface; it has existed 
 from the first. The primordial substance light, 
 whence have evolved the hosts of heavenly bodies that 
 constitute the physical world or outer Nature,, is con- 
 scious, rational energy as well. 
 
 Most of the evidence that the heat which is gener- 
 ated during brain-activity, is closely connected with 
 consciousness, must be obtained from a consideration 
 of the facts collected by " physiological psychology," 
 " the science of the phenomena of human conscious- 
 
 J Emerson, Natural JJistory of the Intellect, 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 105 
 
 ness in their relations to the structure and functions 
 of the nervous system." 1 " It is now universally ad- 
 mitted that the brain is the grand nervous centre of 
 thought and feeling the material instrument of the 
 mind, and that all mental actions are accompanied 
 and conditioned by physiological actions." 2 
 
 If heat were the conscious force in the brain, it 
 would be dependent for its existence upon and would 
 vary in intensity as the physiological combustion of 
 the brain substance. Now it is a fact that conscious- 
 ness depends for its existence upon brain activity, and 
 varies in intensity in proportion as the brain activity 
 varies. " Psychical processes are always accom- 
 panied by and dependent upon physiological pro- 
 cesses in the central nervous system." 3 " The phe- 
 nomena of consciousness are exalted or depressed by 
 purely physical conditions." 4 
 
 The nervous system is of course suited by its chem- 
 ical composition and its structure to the needs of the 
 mind, which uses it and which finds support from it. 
 The theory that heat is the conscious force in the 
 nervous system will be strengthened, if the chemical 
 composition of the nervous substance is found to be 
 especially well suited to the task of generating heat, 
 and if the nervous structure is found to be peculiarly 
 fitted to conduct currents of this heat-substance which 
 is motor in its very nature. 
 
 iLadd, Physiological Psychology. 
 2 Huxley and Youmans, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 s Schenck and Gtirber, Human Physiology. 
 * Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain. 
 
106 Conscience. 
 
 " In the nervous substance itself, ... we 
 find the same chemical elements which exist every- 
 where in nature; these are, especially, the four ele- 
 ments, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. We 
 have no reason to believe that the essential laws of 
 the combination and dissolution of these elements 
 are different in this substance from those known to 
 have control elsewhere." 1 When, then, oxygen gas 
 is brought by the blood to the brain, it unites chem- 
 ically with the complex compounds that compose the 
 nervous substance, the process generating heat. In 
 the lowest organisms the nervous substance and the 
 general body substance are identical, but in the highly 
 specialized organ the human nervous system, the 
 nervous substance has a higher fuel-value than has 
 the general body substance, since the highly com- 
 bustible elements phosphorus and sulphur are con- 
 spicuous constituents. " The most significant con- 
 stituents of the substance of the nerve-centres, from 
 the point of view both of chemistry and of physiolog- 
 ical psychology, are certain complex phosphorlzed 
 fats. These bodies are highly characteristic of the 
 centres of the nervous system." 2 Besides these phos- 
 phorized fuels, there are present slower fuels which 
 are similar in nature to those found in other parts of 
 the body. " Of the solids composing the nervous sub- 
 stance, more than one-half in the gray and about one- 
 quarter in the white consist of certain proteid or 
 
 iLadd, Physiological Psychology. 
 2Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 107 
 
 albuminous bodies. Such bodies are the only ones 
 never absent from the active living cells; they exist 
 in all vegetable and animal organisms. Very little 
 is known of the peculiar chemical constitution which 
 these proteid bodies take in the nerve-centres. They 
 may be said to represent there the presence of that 
 general matter of life which is the physical sub- 
 stratum of all vital phenomena. Three other non- 
 phosphorized bodies are found in the nervous tis- 
 sues." 1 " Like every other natural material struc- 
 ture, the nervous system is obviously adapted to a 
 peculiar kind of work. Chemically considered, it has 
 two very important characteristics : its constitution is 
 extremely complex, and the compounds that enter 
 into it are highly unstable." 2 
 
 Since the blood carries oxygen gas and fresh fuel 
 to the tissues which it bathes, the rate of the circula- 
 tion of the blood in the brain determines how much 
 oxygen is supplied for the combustion process and 
 how much fuel replenishes that already consumed, 
 and consequently how much heat is generated. We 
 find that consciousness likewise is dependent upon the 
 circulation of the blood, and varies in intensity as the 
 rate of circulation varies. " That the unceasing 
 change of matter which oxygen and other agents pro- 
 duce throughout the system, is accompanied by a 
 genesis of nerve-force, is shown by various facts; 
 by the fact that nerve-force is no longer generated, if 
 
 1 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 2 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
108 Conscience. 
 
 oxygen be withheld, or the blood prevented from cir- 
 culating; by the fact that when the chemical trans- 
 formation is diminished, as during sleep with its slow 
 respiration and circulation, there is a diminution in 
 the quantity of nerve-force; in the fact that an ex- 
 cessive expenditure of nerve-force involves excessive 
 respiration and circulation, and excessive waste of 
 tissue." * " Among the known conditions of all con- 
 scious mental activity is the character and amount of 
 the brain's blood supply. To stop this supply results 
 in putting an end for the time to all consciousness ; 
 to impede or corrupt it disturbs and depresses con- 
 sciousness ; to alter its character changes the character 
 of consciousness." 2 " That peculiar kind of ( work ' 
 of the nervous substance of the higher 
 cerebral centres is an indispensable condition, and in 
 some way at least a rough measure of the so-called 
 activity or intensity of consciousness." 3 " If the 
 cerebral circulation is lowered, mental activity is 
 diminished; if accelerated, the mind's action is ex- 
 alted." * Mosso deduced from experiments the con- 
 clusion "that there was an extra amount of blood 
 sent to the brain in the case of cerebral excitement 
 of any kind, and that the brain was anaemic during 
 sleep." 5 As the light of a lamp depends for its in- 
 tensity upon the amount of oil that is being oxidized, 
 
 1 Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
 2 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 3 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 * Huxley and Youmans, Physiology and Hygiene, 
 York Sun, Jan, 11, 1902, 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 109 
 
 so the light of consciousness in the brain depends 
 upon the quantity of oxygen and fuel the circulating 
 blood supplies, and this light of consciousness becomes 
 extinguished and " sleep " ensues when the brain be- 
 comes ansemic. 
 
 The oxidation in the brain is more rapid than in 
 any other organ of the body, consequently heat in- 
 tense enough to be luminous and to constitute in- 
 tense or " higher " consciousness is here generated, 
 while weak, non-luminous, sub-conscious heat is gen- 
 erated elsewhere. " The brain is ... not 
 only, like all other parts of the body, subject to 
 the double metamorphosis of waste and repair, but 
 the transformations take place in this organ with 
 more rapidity than in any other part of the system. 
 Upon these changes the mental operations are vitally 
 dependent, and if in any way they are interfered 
 with, there is disturbance of the intellectual proc- 
 esses." " The free circulation of arterial blood, 
 with its supply of oxygen, is necessary to the central 
 organs for the proper fulfillment of their functions. 
 It has been calculated that, while the weight of the 
 entire encephalon is about one forty-fifth of the body, 
 the supply of blood used up in the encephalon is 
 about one-eighth or one-ninth of that required by the 
 whole body." 2 " The brain, and particularly the 
 gray matter, receives an enormous volume of blood. 
 In no other part of the body is the nutritive function 
 
 1 Huxley and Youmans, Physiology and Hygiene, 
 
 2 kadd, Physiological Psychology, 
 
110 Conscience. 
 
 so active or so rapid." 1 " The abundance of blood 
 in the brain and the fact that stoppage of blood sup- 
 ply paralyzes the nerve cells in a few minutes, indi- 
 cate that the metabolism is very energetic." 2 
 
 " An increase in the gross waste of tissue can be 
 shown to be the accompaniment and physical cor- 
 relate of mental work. This waste is indicative of 
 brain-work. . . . The quantity of sulphates 
 and phosphates excreted, in comparison with the quan- 
 tity carefully estimated as entering into the diet, is 
 noticeably increased by increasing the mental work. 
 To yield these sulphates and phosphates, the highly 
 complex compounds of the phosphorized constituents 
 of the brain have been disorganized." 3 
 
 The following is further proof that heat is inti- 
 mately connected with consciousness : " It has been 
 known for some time that a rise and fall of tempera- 
 ture in the substance of the brain is connected with 
 changes of the psychical states. . . . All the 
 sensory impressions which arrive at the hemispheres 
 produce a rise of temperature by their very transmis- 
 sion. But, furthermore, psychical activity, inde- 
 pendently of the sensory impressions, develops a 
 certain degree of heat in addition to that developed 
 by the impressions themselves. . . . The con- 
 clusion seems warranted that these changes of cere- 
 bral temperature are not due simply to changes in 
 
 1 Halleck, The Education of the Central Nervous System. 
 
 2 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 s Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. Ill 
 
 the arterial circulation. They appear independent of 
 the rhythm of respiration, but dependent on the 
 rhythm of metabolic activity/' " Brain-activity 
 seems accompanied by a local disengagement of 
 heat." 2 Lombard found by experiment that " any 
 intellectual effort . . . caused a general rise 
 of temperature, which rarely exceeded a degree Fah- 
 renheit. . . . Schiff concluded from . . . 
 experiments that sensorial activity heats the brain- 
 tissue. . . . Dr. Amidon . . . found 
 that when different muscles of the body were made 
 to contract vigorously for ten minutes or more, dif- 
 ferent regions of the scalp rose in temperature, that 
 the regions were well focalized, and that the rise of 
 temperature was often considerably over a Fahren- 
 heit degree. To a large extent these regions cor- 
 respond to the centres for the same movements 
 assigned by Ferrier and others on other grounds ; only 
 they cover more of the skull." 3 It is in short " a 
 proved fact that all forms of mental exercise produce 
 a rise of cerebral temperature." 4 
 
 A study of the structure of the elements of the 
 nervous system further confirms the view that the 
 conscious force in the brain is heat. " The undoubt- 
 edly nervous elements of the substance of the nervous 
 system are of two kinds, as respects their structural 
 
 1 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
 3 James, Psychology. 
 
 * Halleck, The Education of the Central 'Nervous System, 
 
112 Conscience. 
 
 form: these are nerve-fibres and nerve-cells." The 
 fibres are " the outgrowth of the cell, . . . pro- 
 longations of the cell-body. ... In the pe- 
 ripheral system the fibres stretch from their point of 
 origin in the cord to the most distant portions of the 
 limbs. ... In each instance . . . the 
 fibre reaching for this distance is the continuous out- 
 growth from a single cell-body." 2 " Taken together 
 the cell and its fibre may be considered an anatomical 
 unit." 3 " The elements of the nervous system are 
 fitted to form ( tracts/ along which the nerve-com- 
 motion may run. Every nerve-fibre constitutes one 
 such tract, capable, it would seem, of subdividing 
 at either end into a considerable number of fibrils or 
 subordinate tracts. The nerve-cells, too, seem fitted 
 to serve as tracts for the propagation, and perhaps 
 also as centres for the distribution and modification 
 (' shunting places ' they have sometimes been called) 
 of the same nerve-commotion. The processes which 
 they give off whether directly or only indirectly, 
 or both, . . . serve to bring them into connec- 
 tion with other nerve-elements of the same kind ; and 
 through the peripheral nerves, with the muscles and 
 special organs of sense. Both Tcinds of nerve-ele- 
 ments are certainly adapted to serve the purpose of 
 ' conductivity ' in an exceedingly complex system of 
 
 1 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 2 Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain. 
 
 s Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 113 
 
 interrelated organs." 1 " The mental mechanism 
 consists essentially of millions of cells and fibres, the 
 former of which are the generators and the latter the 
 transmitters of force." 2 
 
 The infant does not begin life possessed of an 
 already active mind and " innate ideas " ; conscious- 
 ness is awakened in the brain only when stimuli cause 
 nerve impulses to flow to the brain-cells. If nerve 
 impulses are precursors of higher consciousness, what 
 is their nature ? " Under natural conditions 
 nervous impulses do not arise in nerve 
 fibres, but in nerve cells or in special structures con- 
 nected with the ends of nerves, as the sense organs. 
 Experiments have shown that a nerve fibre merely 
 conducts the nervous impulse, but has no share in its 
 formation or modification." 3 " Whenever a nervous 
 impulse is started in a nerve an electrical change, { 
 known as the ' negative variation ' or ' action current,' 
 is started at the same time, from the same point, and 
 travels along the nerve at the same rate. ... It 
 is an outward sign and the only known one of the in- 
 ternal change." 4 " Aside from these electrical 
 changes, the nerve impulse can only be detected by the 
 effects which it has upon the end-organ (muscular 
 contraction in the motor nerves, sensation in the 
 sensory nerves)." 6 
 
 1 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 2 Huxley and Youmans, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 s Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 
 4 Martin, The Human Body. 
 
 5 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 
114 Conscience. 
 
 "In many points the phenomena presented by 
 nerve fibres as transmitters of disturbances are like 
 the phenomena of wires as transmitters of electricity, 
 and when the phenomena of current electricity were 
 first observed there was a great tendency, explaining 
 one unknown by another, to consider nervous im- 
 pulses merely as electrical currents. The increase of 
 our knowledge concerning both nerves and electrical 
 currents, however, has made such an hypothesis al- 
 most, if not quite, untenable. In the first place, nerve 
 fibres are extremely bad conductors of electricity, so 
 bad that it is impossible to suppose them used in the 
 Body for that purpose; and in the second place, 
 merely physical continuity of a nerve fibre, such as 
 would not interfere with the passage of an electric 
 current, will not suffice for the transmission of a 
 nervous impulse. For instance, if a damp string be 
 tied around a nerve, or if it be cut and its two moist 
 ends placed in contact, no nervous impulse will be 
 transmitted across the constricted or divided point, 
 although an electrical current would pass readily." 1 
 To the second objection the answer may be given that 
 a feeble current cannot do as much as a stronger cur- 
 rent; the average nerve impulse is a faint current 
 which would be absorbed by the water in the string 
 tied around its nerve-channel, or would be dispersed 
 in the small but highly-resisting air-space that would 
 intervene between the parts of a cut and thus discon- 
 tinuous nerve. 
 
 i Martin, The Human Body. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 115 
 
 The chief argument brought forward to prove that 
 the nerve impulse cannot be an electrical current is 
 that " nerve fibres are extremely bad conductors of 
 electricity, so bad that it is impossible to suppose 
 them used in the Body for that purpose." The car- 
 bon fibre used in the ordinary electric light bulb is 
 likewise a very poor conductor of electricity, but in 
 that very property lies its value. If a coarse copper 
 wire that is a good conductor were substituted for the 
 carbon filament, there would be no impeding and con- 
 centrating of the electric current by a highly-resisting 
 path, and consequently no light. If, as we are at- 
 tempting to prove, higher consciousness is a property 
 of intense or luminous heat, the fine, highly-resisting 
 nerve threads serve in the nervous system the same 
 purpose that fine carbon threads serve in the electric 
 light bulb : by virtue of being " extremely bad con- 
 ductors of electricity," they concentrate and intensify 
 into light what were formerly faint currents of non- 
 luminous heat. " The resistance of living nerves to 
 the electrical current is probably about the same as 
 that of the muscles ; it has been given at 50,000,000 
 times that of copper wire." * 
 
 The resistance of a wire to an electric current de- 
 pends not only upon the substance of which the wire 
 is made, but also upon the fineness of the wire, re- 
 sistance increasing as the area of the cross section 
 diminishes. Not only is the living nerve mads of a 
 substance that is a poor conductor, but it is of small 
 
 i Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
116 Conscience. 
 
 diameter, being merely a slender thread, and this 
 thread becomes finer as the nervous system becomes 
 higher. " As compared with many animals, the 
 cranial nerves in man are small, and . . . this 
 small size is not only relative, but absolute." * " In 
 the white matter of the spinal cord the medullated 
 fibres vary in size from isW to s^Vs of an inch ; but 
 near the gray matter of the cord, they are sometimes 
 not more than rs 1 ^ of an inch. The fibres are much 
 finer in the gray matter of the cord and brain ( ToVs 
 to i^tnr of an inch in diameter) ; they are finest of 
 all in the superficial layers of the brain, or in the 
 nerves of special sense. In some instances the axis- 
 cylinder may be not more than nn&rnr of an inch in di- 
 ameter." 2 Thus where sensation is keenest, the nerve- 
 fibres are found to be finest and to offer the greatest 
 resistance. Impeding and concentrating the nerve 
 current has then the effect of intensifying the 
 conscious force. " In the spinal cord and in the 
 brain the speed of the nervous impulses is, in general, 
 much slower than in the peripheral nerves." 3 " All 
 consciousness seems to depend on a certain slowness 
 of the process in the cortical cells. The rapider cur- 
 rents are, the less feeling they seem to awaken." 4 
 Instead of the electric current or nerve impulse flash- 
 ing through the nervous system over a well-conduct- 
 ing path with a velocity somewhat comparable to the 
 
 i Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain. 
 2Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 s Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 * James, Principles of Psychology. 
 
,The Science of Consciousness. 117 
 
 velocity of light or electricity moving in empty space, 
 it has a highly-resisting path to pursue, and moves 
 slowly as a concentrated current which has the neces- 
 sary strength and time to ignite the fuel of the nerve- 
 cells and start the heat production process. 
 
 The view that the nerve current is a flowing sub- 
 stance and not merely a molecular change is confirmed 
 by the fact that there are anatomical gaps between 
 the various cells of the nervous system. " It was for- 
 merly supposed that the nerve cells were connected 
 with each other by means of their branches and axis- 
 cylinders, but it has recently been shown that each 
 nerve cell with its branches and axis-cylinder forms 
 an anatomical unit." * " After nerve fibres leave a 
 cell, they have never been seen, even with the strong- 
 est miscroscope, to enter another cell. There is some 
 mysterious physiological, but no anatomical, connec- 
 tion." 2 " The discovery that nerve cells are not con- 
 tinuous with each other by means of their fibres, but 
 that each cell and its branches, including the axis- 
 cylinder, forms a distinct unit, complicates the prob- 
 lem of the real nature of the nervous impulse." s 
 These gaps in the nervous structure must be of real 
 service, otherwise they would not be present. Their 
 need cannot be explained on the molecular theory of 
 heat and of the nerve impulse; their presence is in 
 fact a serious blow to the molecular theory of the 
 nerve impulse. " There is evidence that, when a 
 
 1 Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 
 2 Halleck, The Education of the Central Nervous System. 
 
 3 Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course. 
 
118 Conscience. 
 
 nerve is irritated, a something, probably a change in 
 the arrangement of its molecules, is propagated along 
 the nerve fibres." 1 It would be difficult to explain 
 how the nerve impulse, if a molecular disturbance, is 
 transmitted across the anatomical gaps, and still 
 harder to explain the purpose of these gaps, for con- 
 tinuity of structure would be more advantageous for 
 the transmission of a molecular impulse than occa- 
 sional breaks in the structure. If on the other hand 
 the nerve impulse is a current of the substance heat, 
 it is well known that electric currents of sufficient 
 strength overleap gaps in their paths. In order to 
 surmount the gap, the feeble electrical impulse would 
 have to become intensified by being concentrated in 
 front of the gap. Then the gaps in the nervous struc- 
 ture may serve the all-important function of intensi- 
 fying the electrical impulse into a spark of fire which 
 leaps across the anatomical gap into the phosphorized 
 fats and other fuel of the nerve cell and ignites com- 
 bustion in the cell, thus " stimulating " the brain cell. 
 If there were no gaps, feeble impulses could not ignite 
 the cell-fuel. Just as man has learned the value of 
 using highly-resisting carbon for conducting elec- 
 tricity in the arc-lamp, and the further need of an 
 air space or gap between parts of the conducting 
 carbon, in order to obtain the concentration of elec- 
 tricity into light; so Nature uses highly-resisting 
 carbon threads to conduct the electrical impulse in 
 
 i Huxley and Youmans, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 119 
 
 the nervous system, and places gaps in this conduct- 
 ing path of cells and fibres, in order to secure the 
 concentration of the heat current into a spark of 
 light that can kindle combustion in nerve cells. 
 
 In the fishes known as the Torpedo and the Gym- 
 notus, " we have a genesis of electricity that is not in- 
 cidental on the performance of their different func- 
 tions by the different organs ; but one which is itseli 
 a function, having an organ appropriate to it. The 
 character of this organ in both these fishes, and its 
 largely-developed connections with the nervous cen- 
 tres, have raised the suspicion, which various experi- 
 ments have thus far justified, that in it there takes 
 place a transformation of what we call nerve-force 
 into the force known as electricity; this conclusion 
 being more especially supported by the fact that sub- 
 stances such as morphia and strychnia, which are 
 known to be powerful nervous stimulants, greatly in- 
 crease the violence and rapidity of the electrical dis- 
 charges." * 
 
 If the nerve impulse be an electric current, the 
 medullary sheaths which are present on some of the 
 nerve fibres are used as insulators. The need for 
 insulation of nerve fibres would arise as the nervous 
 system became higher and the electric impulses had 
 finer nerve threads to flow through, for the currents, 
 would be more concentrated and intense. " Each 
 fibre is distinct and may act independently of every 
 other. Most fibres are, in fact, insulated by connec- 
 
 i Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
120 Conscience. 
 
 tive tissue and fatty matter, as are the wires of a 
 cable by rubber." x The medullated fibres are known 
 as the white matter of the nervous system, owing to 
 their white sheaths. " At the lower end of the cord 
 scarcely any white matter is found; the amount of 
 such matter increases from below upwards, and is 
 largest in the cervical region." 2 Of the two kinds 
 of nerve fibres, the medullated and the non-medul- 
 lated, " the former belong particularly to the brain 
 and spinal cord; they are found only in vertebrate 
 animals. The latter belong particularly to the sym- 
 pathetic system." 3 In short, the insulation of fibres 
 increases as the nervous system advances, appearing 
 only in the nervous systems of vertebrates, and in- 
 creasing in the latest-evolved and highest portions of 
 their systems. 
 
 Nerve fibres are merely the conducting paths of 
 electrical impulses. " No processes of metabolism 
 have ever been demonstrated in the stimulated or 
 unstimulated nerve. The metabolism is, at any rate, 
 even in stimulated nerves, very slight, for nerves do 
 not appear susceptible to fatigue, and the supply of 
 blood to them is small." 4 On the other hand, " the 
 cell of the nervous tissue ... is the essential, 
 living part. In it go on the mysterious . . . 
 changes which are presented to us as nervous action. 
 To it the surrounding structures are entirely sub- 
 
 1 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 2Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 8 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 *8chenck and Gurber, Human Physiology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 121 
 
 servient. ... It is upheld by the connective 
 tissue; it is nourished by the capillaries and lym- 
 phatics ; it is drained by the venules." * " The irri- 
 table cell is often pictured as a powder magazine to 
 which a small spark,, the stimulus, may be applied, 
 with the result of causing an explosion that liberates 
 a quantity of force many times .greater than that rep- 
 resented by the spark. ... In the nerve cell 
 the larger stimulus is followed by the larger explo- 
 sion." 2 " More wonderful still, the nervous sub- 
 stance may be said to make its own powder as fast 
 (within certain limits) as it is burned. It is itself 
 the seat of a chemical synthesis, which results in con- 
 structing the peculiar bodies " which compose it 
 " from the material furnished by the blood. Such 
 bodies have a high value as combustibles/' 3 The 
 nerve impulse, being an electric current which flows 
 through a highly-resisting fibre and which leaps as a 
 concentrated spark across anatomical gaps, ignites 
 the highly inflammable substance of the cell, and this 
 cell activity generates luminous heat or conscious 
 power. 
 
 Darwin considered it " rather difficult to form a 
 judgment how the long hair on our heads became de- 
 veloped." " Some ground, perhaps, exists for the 
 conclusion that the greater or less development of 
 hairs is in part immediately due to increase or de- 
 
 1 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 2 Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, 
 
 3 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 * Darwin, The Descent of Man. 
 
122 Conscience. 
 
 crease of demand on their passive function, as non- 
 conductors of heat." x The long hair may well have 
 been developed over the human brain to serve as an in- 
 sulating material which would prevent too rapid a 
 loss of heat by the chief bodily organ designed for 
 heat-production. Nature herself protects man's most 
 vital organ, while she leaves the clothing of the rest 
 of his body to his own intelligence. By his use of 
 artificial clothing of either conducting or non-conduct- 
 ing materials, man can regulate the radiation of his 
 body-heat according to the demands of the various, 
 climates of the globe. 
 
 " All animals of whatever degree of organization 
 show in life the quality of irritability or response to 
 external stimulus. Contact with external things pro- 
 duces some effect on each of them, and this effect is 
 something more than the mere mechanical effect on 
 the matter of which the animal is composed. In the 
 one-celled animals the functions of response to ex- 
 ternal stimulus are not localized. They are the prop- 
 erty of any part of the protoplasm of the body." 2 
 " In the biological sense the mind is the collective 
 name for the functions of the sensorium in men and 
 animals. It is the sum total of all psychic changes, 
 actions, and reactions. Under the head of psychic 
 functions are included all operations of the nervous 
 system as well as all functions of like nature which 
 may exist in organisms without specialized neirre 
 
 1 Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
 2 Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 123 
 
 fibres or nerve cells. As thus defined, mind would 
 include all phenomena of irritability, and even plants 
 have the rudiments of it. The operations of the mind 
 in this sense need not be conscious. With the lower 
 animals almost all of them are automatic and uncon- 
 scious. With man most of them must be so. All 
 functions of the sensorium, irritability, reflex action, 
 instinct, reason, volition, are alike in essential nature 
 though differing greatly in their degree of specializa- 
 tion. In another sense the term mind is applied only 
 to conscious reasoning or conscious volition. In this 
 sense it is mainly an attribute of man, the lower ani- 
 mals showing it in but slight degree." * " The chem- 
 ical constituents and minute structure of the elements 
 which compose all nervous substance are largely the 
 same. . . . It is the way in which the elements 
 are combined into organs, and the development and 
 elaboration of function as dependent upon these or- 
 gans, which constitute the marked differences between 
 the nervous system of man and that of the lower ani- 
 mals." 2 
 
 " The physical basis of human consciousness is cer- 
 tainly pre-eminently . . . the convoluted cor- 
 tex of the cerebrum." 3 Psychology seeks to learn 
 the nature of the 'mind, as it is revealed by its relation 
 to the body and to the objects of the external world 
 of which it takes cognizance. The stimulations 
 
 1 Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life. 
 
 2 Ladd, Physiological Psychology. 
 
 3 Ladd, Physiological Psychology, 
 
124 Conscience. 
 
 " which act upon the living body substance . . . 
 either have their origin in the body itself and serve 
 to regulate the relation existing between the indi- 
 vidual organs, or they originate in the external world 
 and serve by their stimulating effect to connect the 
 body with its environment. To receive these external 
 stimulations, the body is provided with special organs, 
 the sense organs. The stimulation is carried from 
 the sense organs by means of a special apparatus, the 
 nervous system, to the muscles in which the transfor- 
 mation of energy chiefly takes place." * The nervous 
 system plays the role of a " uniting anatomical and 
 physiological bond." 2 " Meynert . . . calls 
 the cortex of the hemispheres the surface of projec- 
 tion for every muscle and every sensitive point of the 
 body. The muscles and the sensitive points are rep- 
 resented each by a cortical point, and the Brain is 
 little more than the sum of all these cortical points." 3 
 The nervous system is " for receiving impressions and 
 discharging reactions preservative to the individual 
 and his kind. . . . Anatomically, therefore, 
 the nervous system falls into three main divisions 
 comprising 1. The fibres which carry currents in ; 
 2. The organs of central redirection of them ; and 3. 
 The fibres which carry them out. Functionally, we 
 have sensation, central reflection, and motion to cor- 
 respond to these anatomical divisions." * Psycholog- 
 
 1 Schenck and Gurber, Human Physiology. 
 
 2 Martin, The Human Body, 
 
 3 James, Psychology. 
 * James, Psychology, 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 125 
 
 ically, the " three fundamental conscious processes " 
 are " Sensation," " Cerebration or Intellection," and 
 the " Tendency to Action." * " The highest centres 
 . . . probably contain nothing but arrangements 
 for representing impressions and movements, and 
 other arrangements for coupling the activity of these 
 arrangements together. Currents pouring in from 
 the sense-organs first excite some arrangements, which 
 in turn excite others, until at last a discharge down- 
 wards of some sort occurs. . . . All the cur- 
 rents probably have feelings going with them, and 
 sooner or later bring movements about." 2 
 
 Sensations are "First things in the way of con- 
 sciousness. They are the immediate results upon 
 consciousness of nerve-currents as they enter the 
 brain, and before they have awakened any suggestions 
 or associations with past experience. . . . 
 Prior to all impressions on sense organs, the brain is 
 plunged in deep sleep and consciousness is practically 
 non-existent. Even the first weeks after birth are 
 passed in almost unbroken sleep by human infants. 
 It takes a strong message from the sense-organs to 
 break this slumber." 3 " Incoming nerve-currents 
 are the only agents which normally affect the brain." * 
 " The brain or other nerve centre sits in darkness sur- 
 rounded by a bony protecting box. To this main 
 nerve centre, or sensorium, come the nerves from all 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. ^*~ R R /-?>^ 
 
 3 James, Psychology. f^- * * * r 
 
 4 James, Psychology 
 
 OF THE 
 [ UNIVERSITY } 
 
 OF 
 
126 Conscience. 
 
 parts of the body that have sensation, the external 
 skin as well as the special organs of sight, hearing, 
 taste, smell. With these come nerves bearing sensa- 
 tions of pain, temperature, muscular effort all 
 kinds of sensation which the brain can receive. These 
 nerves are the sole sources of knowledge to any ani- 
 mal organism. Whatever idea its brain may contain 
 must be built up through these nerve impressions. 
 The aggregate of these impressions constitute the 
 world as the organism knows it." * 
 
 The lowest organism is sensible of the external 
 world only in a crude and narrow way. It knows 
 roughly the immediate environment with which its 
 body surface comes into contact or " touch." But as 
 organic life evolves, the surface of the body becomes 
 more sensitive to the delicate shadings and variety 
 in nature; the special sense-organs arise from the 
 once uniform skin that had only the general sense of 
 touch. "All our sensations are thus modifications of 
 one common primary sensibility, represented by that 
 of the skin, or rather by the primitive representative 
 of the skin in such an animal as the Hydra." 2 " From 
 a general exterior surface responding equally readily 
 to many external natural forces, we get a surface 
 modified so that its various parts respond with dif- 
 ferent degrees of readiness to different external 
 forces ; and these modified parts constitute the essen- 
 tial portions of our organs of special sense." 8 
 
 1 Jordan and Kellogg, Animal Life, 
 
 2 Martin, The Human Body. 
 
 3 Martin, The Human Body, 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 127 
 
 The matter of which the external world is composed 
 has assumed four widely different forms, known as 
 the luminous, gaseous, liquid and solid states, each of 
 these states having special and peculiar qualities. 
 There are accordingly on the highly differentiated 
 body-surface of man four special sense-organs, each 
 one of which is peculiarly adapted to receive impres- 
 sions of matter that is in one of its four states. The 
 organ of sight is sensitive to luminous matter only, 
 that of smell to gaseous matter only, the organs of 
 taste and touch to both liquid and solid matter. Since 
 man lives on the solid land, he comes in direct contact 
 with solid matter, and learns through his general 
 sense of touch to know the peculiar qualities of solids : 
 their rough or smooth surfaces, their hardness or soft- 
 ness, their weight, temperature, and so on. Since 
 man lives immersed in a sea of air or gaseous matter, 
 his fifth special sense, that of hearing, enables him 
 to learn of the movements of objects that are not in 
 contact with his body through their characteristic 
 effects upon the intervening air, which thus acts as a 
 medium of communication. The eye and the ear are 
 end organs that appear in the higher animals and 
 serve to acquaint them with a broader world than is 
 known to beings that depend upon " touch " or direct 
 contact exclusively. Objects not in touch with the 
 body produce characteristic effects upon the substances 
 air and light in contact with them, and these media 
 as thus modified act upon the ear and eye, the animal 
 becoming acquainted with . these remoter objects 
 
128 Conscience. 
 
 through experience of their effects upon the air and 
 light. The air acting upon the ear reproduces there 
 the vibrations or waves of sound which the external 
 object caused in it as it moved through and displaced 
 this sea of air. The eye being the special organ for 
 luminous matter, distant illuminated objects become 
 known to the organism through their modifications of 
 the white sunlight which is reflected from them to the 
 eye. This white light falling upon bodies on the 
 earth's surface is weakened in various degrees by con- 
 tact with various substances, each substance absorb- 
 ing a characteristic quantity of the heat of the orig- 
 inally white ray; the light will vary in color when 
 reflected from the object, the color depending upon 
 how intense the light remains after loss of some heat 
 by contact with the object. All light that is reflected 
 to the retina is completely absorbed by this black film, 
 the characteristic effects of external objects upon this 
 light being thereby preserved intact. The light im- 
 ages the external world through the effects of the ex- 
 ternal objects upon it: the light that penetrates 
 through the " translucent film " or retina to the visual 
 centres of the brain images by its modified nature the 
 outer object that caused that modification. Objects 
 not in contact with the body thus become known in- 
 directly through the medium light. 
 
 By the sense of touch the lowest beings gain their 
 knowledge of their immediate surroundings, all 
 that they need to know of the vast universe amid 
 which they seek to continue their existence. By the 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 129 
 
 highly specialized organ of sight, man becomes aware 
 of a world that extends beyond the one encompassed 
 by his other senses. Light from the heavenly bodies 
 in the remotest realms of space reaches the planet 
 upon which he is confined and imprints upon his 
 brain the consciousness of their existence. 
 
 If nerve impulses be electric currents, then when 
 end organs are stimulated by the objects of the outer 
 world, electric currents flow from these end organs 
 up the sensory nerves to the sensory centres of the 
 brain. The electric impulses are the effects of the 
 action of the external objects upon the organism. 
 For example, the volatile substances tested by the 
 sense of smell are substances that " have in a high 
 degree the power of getting at the olfactory nerves 
 by penetrating their mucous investment ; " 1 these 
 gases do not themselves flow up the nerve-channels to 
 the brain, but they act chemically upon the body 
 substance in the immediate vicinity of the nerve, and 
 the heat that is evolved by this chemical action is 
 conducted by the nerve to the sensory cells. Again, 
 " there is abundant evidence that the sensation of 
 taste is due to the chemical actions set up by par- 
 ticles which find their way through the membrane 
 covering the nerves of taste; for . . . sapid 
 substances all belong to the class of crystalloids, which 
 are able rapidly to permeate animal tissue, while 
 colloids, which cannot pass through animal tissue, 
 
 * Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
130 Conscience. 
 
 are all insipid." 1 The various external objects will 
 produce each its unique and characteristic effect upon 
 the living body with which it comes in contact, and 
 the resulting nerve impulse will derive its distinctive 
 character from the nature of the action which gen- 
 erates it. The organism thus learns to know external 
 bodies not in an absolute manner, but in terms of 
 their heat-effects upon it. As the primordial sub- 
 stance has assumed the myriad and varied forms that 
 constitute the external world, so it assumes an equally 
 wonderful variety of forms within the brain, that 
 stand as images and effects of the outer world as re- 
 lated to the individual organism. " We are the 
 photometers, we the irritable gold-leaf and tinfoil 
 that measure the accumulations of the subtle element. 
 We know the authentic effects of the true fire through 
 every one of its million disguises." 2 
 
 The organism has not only present sensations from 
 outer stimuli, but also memories of past sensations. 
 The incoming sensory currents are heat or force, and 
 in the language of physics, forces or stresses produce 
 more or less permanent strains in plastic bodies upon 
 which they act. The nervous substance is unusually 
 plastic, it has been likened to wax; thus transient 
 nerve impulses imprint more or less enduring strains 
 or structural memories in nerve cells. These modi- 
 fied cells mould later streams of heat in the image of 
 the original stresses that made these strains in them, 
 
 1 Spencer, Principles of Biology. 
 
 2 Emerson, Spiritual Laws. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 131 
 
 just as an old river bed gives later volumes of water 
 which pass over it the character and form of earlier 
 currents which made the channel. " Sensations, 
 once experienced, modify the nervous organism, so 
 that copies of them arise again in the mind after the 
 original outward stimulus is gone." 1 " Every living 
 structure carries in itself, in some sort, the history 
 of what has happened to it up to the present time, 
 and of all that it has done under the influence of the 
 different forms of stimuli which have acted upon it. 
 . . . Every portion of the nervous system falls 
 under the physiological laws which give conditions 
 to this so-called ' organic memory.' " 2 
 
 " Our mental images are aroused always by way 
 of association; some previous idea or sensation must 
 have ' suggested ' them. Association is surely due to 
 currents from one cortical centre to another. Now 
 all we need suppose is that these intra-cortical cur- 
 rents are unable to -produce in the cells the strong 
 explosions which currents from the sense-organs oc- 
 casion, to account for the subjective difference be- 
 tween images and sensations, without supposing any 
 difference in their local seat. To the strong degree of 
 explosion corresponds the character of ' vividness ' 
 or sensible presence, in the object of thought ; to the 
 weak degree, that of faintness or outward un- 
 reality." 3 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 Ladd, Psychology. 
 
 3 James, Psychology, 
 
132 Conscience. 
 
 The organism develops mentally by learning more 
 and more about the world through the accumulation 
 of sense impressions; present stimuli recall certain 
 past experiences, and this broader knowledge guides 
 the animal's reaction. A simple sensation is " an 
 abstraction never realized in adult life. Anything 
 which affects our sense-organs does also more than 
 that: it arouses processes in the hemispheres which 
 are partly due to the organization of that organ 
 by past experiences, and the results of which in con- 
 sciousness are described as ideas which the sensation 
 suggests. The first of these ideas is that of the thing 
 to which the sensible quality belongs. The conscious- 
 ness of particular material things present to sense 
 is ... called perception." * The various sug- 
 gestions are " one and all products of the same psycho- 
 logical machinery of association. . . . The 
 chief cerebral conditions of perception are old paths 
 of association radiating from the sense-impression." 2 
 
 Perception " differs from sensation by the con- 
 sciousness of farther facts associated with the object 
 of the sensation. . . . Sensational and repro- 
 ductive brain-processes combined, then, are what give 
 us the content of our perceptions." 3 " Part of what 
 we perceive comes through our senses from the object 
 before us, another part . . . always comes out 
 of our own mind." 4 " All perception is interpreta- 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
 3 James, Principles of Psychology. 
 * James, Psychology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 133 
 
 tion ; and from partial or mistaken interpretation all 
 degrees and kinds of illusions and hallucinations re- 
 sult." * " In every illusion what is false is what is 
 inferred, not what is immediately given." 2 
 
 The diverse impressions of the outer world that 
 man receives through incoming sensory currents be- 
 come more and more connected and related, the proc- 
 ess being known as " association." The sensory cells 
 in which the structural memories are imprinted are 
 connected with one another by means of their out- 
 growths or fibres ; thus " the fibres furnish the phys- 
 ical basis of association." 3 Since the fibres are 
 merely cell-outgrowths, and since use causes growth, 
 the oftener nerve-currents flow from a given cell to a 
 second cell, the longer will grow the fibre connecting 
 the two and the smaller will become the anatomical 
 gap between them; the path between the two cells 
 thus becoming more continuous and the resistance 
 lower, currents will seek more readily this easy chan- 
 nel. " The psychological law of association of objects 
 thought of through their previous contiguity in 
 thought or experience would thus be an effect, within 
 the mind, of the physical fact that nerve-currents 
 propagate themselves easiest through those tracts of 
 conduction which have been already most in use." 4 
 " The associative fibres probably increase in number 
 as the individual grows older and connects his knowl- 
 
 iLadd, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
 a Halleck, The Education of the Central Nervous System. 
 
 * James, Principles of Psychology. 
 
134 Conscience. 
 
 edge by thought relations." 1 " While the nerve cells 
 are complete in number in childhood, yet their 
 branches and consequently their means of communi- 
 cating with other cells are not fully developed until 
 much later." 2 
 
 Concepts are formed from the sense percepts. " We 
 come ... to think of whole classes of things 
 as well as of single specimens ; and to think of the spe- 
 cial qualities or attributes of things as well as of the 
 complete things in other words, we come to have 
 universals and abstracts . . . for our objects." 3 
 " In the course of our education, objects at first ap- 
 pearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects 
 appearing separately are brought together and appear 
 as new compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and 
 synthesis are thus the incessantly alternating mental 
 activities, a stroke of the one preparing the way for a 
 stroke of the other." 4 Imagination " is in some sort 
 an underlying and unifying mental activity " which 
 " binds the data of immediate experience into an 
 ideal whole, in preparation for the supreme synthesis 
 of the reasoning faculty." 5 
 
 " Much of our thinking consists of trains of images 
 suggested one by another, of a sort of spontaneous 
 revery of which it seems likely enough that the higher 
 brutes should be capable. This sort of thinking 
 
 1 Halleck, The Education of the Central Nervous System. 
 
 2 Martin, The Human Body, Briefer Course, 
 s James, Psychology. 
 
 * James, Psychology. 
 BLadd, Psychology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 135 
 
 leads nevertheless to rational conclusions, both pra&- 
 tical and theoretical. The links between the terms 
 are either ' contiguity ' or ' similarity/ and with a 
 mixture of both these things we can hardly be very 
 incoherent. As a rule, in this sort of irresponsible 
 thinking, the terms which fall to be coupled together 
 are empirical concretes, not abstractions. . . . 
 Our thought here may be rational, but it is not rea- 
 soned, is not reasoning in the strict sense of the term. 
 In reasoning, although our results may be thought 
 of as concrete things, they are not suggested imme- 
 diately by other concrete things, as in the trains of 
 simply associative thought. They are linked to the 
 concretes which precede them by intermediate steps, 
 and these steps are formed by abstract general char- 
 acters articulately denoted and expressly analyzed out. 
 . . . Eeasoning helps us out of unprecedented 
 situations situations for which all our common as- 
 sociative wisdom, all the ' education ' which we share 
 in common with the beasts, leaves us without re- 
 source. . . . Let us make this ability to deal 
 with novel data the technical differentia of reason- 
 ing." 
 
 Passing from this brief survey of Sensation and 
 Intellection, we find in the third fundamental con- 
 scious process, the Tendency to Action, additional 
 evidence of heat being the conscious power in the 
 brain. If heat were conscious force, motion would 
 
 i James, Psychology. 
 
136 Conscience. 
 
 be the characteristic of consciousness, since heat is 
 motive power and energy. Now it is a fact that " all 
 consciousness is motor," * and the terms " stream of 
 consciousness " and " nerve currents " are used to ex- 
 press this characteristic. " Consciousness is in its 
 very nature impulsive. We do not first have a sen- 
 sation or thought, and then have to add something 
 dynamic to it to get a movement. Every pulse of 
 feeling which we have is the correlate of some neural 
 activity that is already on its way to instigate a 
 movement. Our sensations and thoughts are but 
 cross-sections, as it were, of currents whose essential 
 consequence is motion, and which have no sooner run 
 in at one nerve than they are ready to run out by 
 another. . . . Movement is the natural imme- 
 diate effect of the process of feeling, irrespective of 
 what the quality of the feeling may be. It is so in re- 
 flex action, it is so in emotional expression, it is so in 
 the voluntary life." 2 
 
 Actions of external bodies upon the organism lead 
 to reactions of the organism upon them. " The affer- 
 ent nerves, when excited by some physical irritant 
 . . . convey the excitement to the nervous cen- 
 tres. The commotion set up in the centres does 
 not stop there, but discharges through the ef- 
 ferent nerves, exciting movements which vary with 
 the animal and with the irritant applied." 3 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
 3 James, Psychology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 137 
 
 " The whole neural organism ... is, physi- 
 ologically considered, but a machine for con- 
 verting stimuli into reactions; and the intellectual 
 part of our life is knit up with but the 
 middle or -' central ' part of the machine's opera- 
 tions." x The force that operates, guides and utilizes 
 the bodily machine is heat, which becomes intensi- 
 fied into conscious energy by the high resistance of- 
 fered to its passage through the cerebral cortex, where 
 its course is not pre-determined by the presence of 
 much used and well connected paths of cells and 
 fibres, as is the case in the lower centres where cur- 
 rents flow swiftly and with slight concentration and 
 subconsciousness along little-resisting, well-formed 
 channels. While conscious energy is dependent 
 for its generation upon the chemical processes of 
 the body, the body exists as the means towards, 
 this end. Each conscious life seeks to continue its 
 existence, and since this is dependent upon 
 the preservation of the body, the mind and the 
 body have a common purpose to fulfill amid 
 their surroundings. The external objects that act 
 upon the organism tend either to exalt or to depress 
 the indwelling life, and this vital heat is perpetuated 
 by proper reactions upon the outside world. " The 
 essence of mental life and bodily life are one, namely 
 ' the adjustment of inner to outer relations.' 
 . . . Primarily . . . and fundamentally, 
 
 J James, Psychology. 
 
138 Conscience. 
 
 the mental life is for the sake of action of a pre- 
 servative sort." * 
 
 " All stimulations which heighten vitality give the 
 organic basis of pleasure. . . . The stimula- 
 tions which the organism tends towards are those 
 which heighten its vitality, which give it pleasure, and 
 those from which it draws back are those whose effect 
 upon it is the contrary the damaging, the painful 
 ones. This is ... the most natural thing in 
 the world for nature to do to endow her creatures 
 with a great power of self-preservation and self-im- 
 provement." 2 " In this fundamental division 
 of movements, . . . expansions, heightened 
 motor energy, and excess discharge, on the one hand, 
 and contractions, lowered energy, inhibited discharge, 
 on the other hand, we have ' hedonic ex- 
 
 pression/ with the law of its twofold manifestation. 
 . . . All expression, properly so-called, is hedonic 
 expression, which is the reflection, in the organic and 
 muscular functions, of the relative influence of ex- 
 perience of any kind upon the vitality of the organ- 
 ism." 3 As " present pleasures are tremendous rein- 
 forcers, and present pains tremendous inhibitors of 
 whatever action leads to them, so the thoughts of 
 pleasures and pains take rank amongst the thoughts 
 which have most impulsive and inhibitive power." * 
 Acts of response have, then, " usually the common 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 Baldwin, Mental Development. 
 s Baldwin, Mental Development. 
 4 James, Psychology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 139 
 
 character of being of service. They ward off the 
 noxious stimulus and support the beneficial one; 
 whilst if, in itself indifferent, the stimulus be a sign 
 of some distant circumstance of practical importance, 
 the animal's acts are addressed to this circumstance 
 so as to avoid its perils or secure its benefits, as the 
 case may be." * " The adjustment is to immediately 
 present objects in lower animals and in infants. It is 
 to objects more and more remote in time and space, 
 and inferred by means of more and more exact proc- 
 esses of reasoning, when the grade of mental devel- 
 opment grows more advanced." 2 Man finally 
 seeks his higher self and broader life in learning how 
 Nature considered as a unity relates to him and 
 how he should conduct himself towards this grand 
 whole. 
 
 We begin life with instinctive and general reactions 
 to the immediate environment; these functions are 
 chiefly the vegetative ones and are performed by the 
 lower centres reflexly and subconsciously, for incom- 
 ing heat currents are conducted rapidly along well 
 connected paths already present in the structure. 
 Our mental development consists in specializing 
 through the faculty of reason what were once general 
 reactions, and of reacting to an environment that 
 grows broader and more complex. An organism 
 " develops by getting habits formed ; and second, it 
 develops by getting new adaptations which involve the 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
140 Conscience. 
 
 breaking up or modification of habits." * In time a 
 man arrives at the stage where he reacts upon ideas, 
 and not merely upon present sensory stimuli, and 
 expends his mental power no longer exclusively in 
 instigating proper present reactions, but in reflec- 
 tion and abstract reasoning at the expense of bodily 
 activity, the nerve currents pursuing their course 
 through various regions within the brain itself, in- 
 stead of seeking an outlet in muscular action. 
 
 An incoming sensory current, reinforced by the 
 heat generated by the stimulated nerve cells, seeks 
 through the nerve centres a course that will lead to a 
 useful reaction, the current finally escaping through 
 those efferent nerves that lead to the muscles that are 
 to produce the reaction. Reactions may be classed as 
 those of instinct, of habit, of will, and of reason. 
 All reactions are rational, but they differ in the ease 
 with which they are performed. A novel stimulus 
 requires to be reacted upon in a novel way; reason- 
 ing is the more or less difficult process by which a 
 new reaction is found that is adapted to the novel 
 object. Through the process of reason the current 
 makes for itself a new path through the nerve centres 
 to a useful motor outlet, certain central cells being 
 traversed in succession which have not been used to- 
 gether previously and which are therefore not con- 
 nected with one another by their outgrowths or fibres. 
 When a reaction has once been reasoned out and 
 
 i Baldwin, Mental Development, 
 
f 
 
 OF THF 
 
 The Science of Consciousness. 141 
 
 executed, its memory remains and it can be repeated. 
 Through will, a slightly used, poorly connected and 
 highly-resisting path to a purposeful action is pur- 
 sued, heat concentration and reinforcement from cell- 
 combustion being the means by which the current 
 overcomes with effort the resistance of the path. The 
 oftener the voluntary action is repeated, the better 
 connected becomes the path as a result of the growth 
 of the fibres, and the swifter, less concentrated and 
 less conscious the current that uses that path, until 
 voluntary reaction shades into habit. An habitual re- 
 action perfects more and more the connections of the 
 path, until finally the well-formed path becomes a 
 part of the nervous structure and is inherited by the 
 next generation. Instinct is the use of an inherited 
 path through the nerve centres to a useful motor dis- 
 charge. Instinctive reactions are subconscious and 
 reflex, owing to the well-formed path. In short, a 
 reasoned reaction is the finding by a conscious cur- 
 rent of a new path through the nerve centres to an 
 adapted response to a novel stimulus, a voluntary re- 
 action is the using of a once-reasoned but still poorly 
 connected and difficult path, habit is the use of a path 
 well connected from frequent use ; and instinct is the 
 use of an inherent path in the nervous system. The 
 easier the path, the less concentrated and less con- 
 scious the current. The higher centres were evolved 
 later than the spinal cord; while the paths of the 
 spinal cord are inherent in the structure, the paths in 
 the cerebrum are still poorly connected or yet to be 
 
142 Conscience. 
 
 made, and here the currents are concentrated by the 
 resistance into conscious energy. 
 
 " An emotion is causally accounted for, as the 
 arousal by an object of a lot of reflex acts which are 
 forthwith felt." 1 " The bodily changes follow di- 
 rectly the perception of the exciting fact, and 
 our feeling of the same changes as they oc- 
 cur is the emotion." 2 " The particular organic and 
 muscular states which are associated with the emo- 
 tions, such as fear, anger, etc., and called popularly 
 their expression, must have arisen not , . . 
 as expressions of anything, but as co-ordinations and 
 associations of reactions which proved useful to the 
 organism in maintaining and improving its vitality. 
 All of them, then, were originally utility reactions, 
 and arose each in its place, and the system of them 
 as a whole, as special adaptations." 3 
 
 Since consciousness is rational energy which ac- 
 complishes its purpose, a current, when confronted 
 with two or more possible ends, has the power and 
 free will to decide upon the end it will attain. The 
 easily-conducting path leading to the attainment of 
 the more habitual end tends to draw off the current, 
 and the conscious power and effort of the current 
 has to be exerted to attend to and consider the pos- 
 sibility of realizing a more ideal end, and to overcome 
 the great resistance of that new path leading to its 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
 s Baldwin, Mental Development. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 143 
 
 attainment. Where two ends are presented to a 
 current, not the brain-path to either end, but the cur- 
 rent's own power and rational consciousness deter- 
 mines its course. If the path determined the cur- 
 rent's course, the easier path would of course be the 
 one taken, whereas moral action " is action in the line 
 of the greatest resistance." * The essence of con- 
 sciousness is rationality; conscious currents do not 
 drift powerlessly and aimlessly in the easier paths re- 
 gardless of whither those paths lead. To attain 
 higher and more difficult ends, by the exercise of in- 
 creasing will power, is the purpose and meaning of 
 man's life. " If the f searching of our heart and 
 reins ? be the purpose of this human drama, then 
 what is sought seems to be what effort we can make. 
 . . . The huge world that girdles us about 
 puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests 
 us in all sorts of ways. . . . We an- 
 swer by consents or non-consents and not by 
 words. What wonder that these dumb responses 
 should seem our deepest organs of communication 
 with the nature of things ! What wonder if the ef- 
 fort demanded by them be the measure of our worth 
 as men ! What wonder if the amount which we ac- 
 cord of it were the one strictly underived and original 
 contribution which we make to the world ! " 2 
 
 When nerve currents from the sensory areas, re- 
 inforced by heat from stimulated cells, have flowed 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 James, Psychology. 
 
144 Conscience. 
 
 either reflexly over well-connected paths or volun- 
 tarily over highly-resisting paths through the centres 
 to definite motor cells, they flow thence along efferent 
 nerves to certain muscles. Currents are subconscious 
 in their course from motor cells to muscles, since ef- 
 ferent fibres, which are the continuous outgrowths of 
 motor cells and are coarse threads as compared with 
 the fibres within the nerve centres, are paths which do 
 not offer sufficient resistance to concentrate the cur- 
 rents into conscious energy. " It is of the essence 
 of all consciousness (or of the neural process which 
 underlies it) to instigate movement of some sort." * 
 " The muscles . . . are essentially organs of mo- 
 tion. . . . By means of muscles the varied and 
 wonderful movements of the body are performed." 2 
 The muscles are " contractile,, spindle-shaped cells, 
 which are held together in bundles by a cement-like 
 substance." 3 " The contraction of the muscle takes 
 place when it is stimulated." 4 The stimulus is the 
 heat current from a motor nerve, which ignites the 
 muscle fuel and starts combustion and heat pro- 
 duction. " In a stimulated muscle the physiological 
 combustion is increased, whereby energy is set free 
 which produces the contraction and performs the 
 work." 5 " In the active muscle the processes of com- 
 bustion are enormously increased. During muscular 
 
 1 James, Psychology. 
 
 2 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 3 Walker, Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene. 
 
 4 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 B Schenck and Gtirber, Human Physiology. 
 
The Science of Consciousness. 145 
 
 activity the consumption of oxygen and the formation 
 of carbon dioxide may be increased to four or five 
 times that during rest." 1 " A muscle works by the 
 oxidation mainly, if not entirely, of carbon and hy- 
 drogen, much as a steam-engine does ; the proteid con- 
 stituents of the muscle answer roughly to the metallic 
 parts of the engine, to the machinery using the energy 
 liberated by the oxidations, but itself only suffering 
 wear and tear bearing no direct proportion to the 
 work done." 2 
 
 The mind can control the body and use the muscles 
 as tools for the attainment of its purposes, since 
 nerve currents are heat currents which can ignite the 
 fuel of whatever muscles they flow into and thereby 
 generate force for the work to be accomplished. "All 
 nerves, such as motor or secretory, which can throw 
 working tissues into activity, are in a certain sense 
 thermic nerves ; since they excite increased oxidation 
 and heat production in the parts under their con- 
 trol." 3 
 
 The " stream of consciousness " is a stream of heat 
 energy as it flows through an individual brain as its 
 channel. The organic memories of past experience 
 form part of the structure of the brain, and the char- 
 acter of the conscious stream will be moulded by the 
 structures of the various parts of the brain traversed. 
 The mind seeks to preserve the body, on which it de- 
 
 1 Schenck and Giirber, Human Physiology. 
 
 2 Martin, The Human Body. 
 
 3 Martin, The Human Body. 
 
146 Conscience. 
 
 pends for its support, amid the physical environment 
 which acts upon it, and seeks to realize its own higher 
 life and purposes through a proper use of the bodily 
 organs as tools for the work it wills to do. The 
 primordial substance luminous heat, as it streams 
 in all its power and activity through the brain of an 
 organic being as its path, constitutes the individual 
 soul and conscious force. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, OR CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Within the last century physicists have assumed the 
 existence of an all-pervading substance ether as their 
 means of explaining the nature of swiftly moving 
 light. If ether is not conceived logically, one is jus- 
 tified in questioning it as a reality of the external 
 world ; and if ether is not a physical reality, light it- 
 self is a substance. The facts of nature that scientific 
 experiments bring to man's knowledge are indisput- 
 able, but not so the scientific theories that arise as in- 
 terpretations and explanations of these various facts. 
 " Modern science is not more distinguished for its 
 widely extended and carefully guarded observation 
 than for its subtile and stupendous theories. But 
 every theory is the product, of necessity and by virtue 
 of its very nature as theory, of the constructive im- 
 agination. It is a synthesis explanatory of facts by 
 reference to an ideal principle. And what a marvel- 
 lous complex equipment of entities and laws is that 
 with which the devotee of the natural sciences finds 
 himself possessed whenever he resorts to this treas- 
 ure-house of the picture-making faculty! Here are 
 beings and modes of behavior, not only unlike any- 
 thing that comes within the sphere of perceptive 
 
 147 
 
148 Conscience. 
 
 reality, but even combining within themselves the 
 idealized potencies of most contradictory real quali- 
 ties. Such are the luminiferous ether, the electricity 
 that is a physical entity, perchance, without having 
 mass, the atoms that are too large to be imagined 
 as mere points, and yet not large enough to be 
 imagined in terms of sensuous imagination, whether 
 of sight or touch. The changes which are ceaselessly 
 going on in these beings, and which theoretically un- 
 derlie and account for all physical change, make the 
 most exhausting demands upon constructive imag- 
 ination, if we are to have any idea whatever as to 
 what these beings are really about." 1 
 
 If light is a substance, the several sciences blend 
 into a philosophy of nature through this substance: 
 the universe has evolved as the various metamor- 
 phoses of primordial light in void space. In nebula? 
 of light all Matter, Energy, Life and Consciousness 
 have their origin. In the beginning were the Light 
 and the Void, and the forms of creation have arisen 
 from the process of the ever-increasing diffusion of 
 the once concentrated substance through space. At 
 equal periods of time clouds of white light or 
 " nebulae " have in succession entered space from 
 their source, the eternal, immutable, perfect Light 
 beyond the void. Once in space, a nebula begins the 
 age-long process of gradual diffusion. Some of the 
 light concentrated in the nebula constantly radiates 
 into space, thus leaving the nebula's exposed surface 
 i Ladd, Psychology. 
 
Conscience. 149 
 
 less concentrated or a substance no longer continuous 
 but with infinitesimal voids or pores. This cooling 
 surface flame thus slowly evolves into an atmosphere 
 of weaker flames or " elements " of matter. In due 
 time the atmosphere of heavy, dense elements is cast 
 off by, or rather breaks away from, the swiftly moving 
 nucleus of imponderable light, and becomes a planet, 
 controlled in its motion by the gravitational force 
 of the sun from which it sprang. The planetary mat- 
 ter continues the process of the radiation of heat into 
 space, and evolves into new and complex forms 
 through the union of two or more elements; while 
 radiated heat from the sun partly counteracts and 
 further complicates the cooling process of this planet- 
 ary matter. This primordial substance light from 
 which all forms of matter have evolved as stages in 
 its diffusion or " cooling " in space is, further, the 
 energy and the life-force and the conscious power of 
 the universe. 
 
 " There is one animal, one plant, one matter, and 
 one force. The laws of light and of heat translate 
 each other ; so do the laws of sound and of color ; 
 and so galvanism, electricity, and magnetism are 
 varied forms of the selfsame energy." * " Then we 
 see that things wear different names and faces, but 
 belong to one family; that the secret cords or laws 
 show their well-known virtue through every variety, 
 be it animal, or plant, or planet, and the interest is 
 gradually transferred from the forms to the lurking 
 1 Emerson, Poetry and Imagination. 
 
150 Conscience. 
 
 method." * " Air is matter subdued by heat. As 
 the sea is the grand receptacle of all rivers, so the air 
 is the receptacle from which all things spring, and 
 into which they all return. The invisible and creep- 
 ing air takes form and solid mass. Our senses are 
 skeptics, and believe only the impression of the mo- 
 ment, and do not believe the chemical fact that these 
 huge mountain-chains are made up of gases and roll- 
 ing wind. But Nature is as subtle as she is strong. 
 . . . All things are flowing, even those that 
 seem immovable. The adamant is always passing 
 into smoke. . . . The earth burns, the moun- 
 tains burn and decompose, slower, but incessantly. 
 . . . Intellect is a fire ; rash and pitiless it melts 
 this wonderful bone-house which is called man. 
 . . . All thus burns, the universe in a blaze 
 kindled from the torch of the sun." 2 " In that Fire- 
 whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed to- 
 gether ; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, 
 do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin 
 themselves." 3 " All Nature is a torrent of ceaseless 
 change. We are but parts of a grand system, and the 
 elements we use are not our own." * " Through the 
 substance of the universe, as through a torrent, pass 
 all particular bodies, being all of the same nature, 
 and all joint workers with the universe itself, as in 
 one of our bodies so many members among them- 
 
 1 Emerson, Poetry and Imagination. 
 
 2 Emerson, Society and Solitude, Farming. 
 
 3 Carlyle, Sartor Resartus. 
 * Steele, Chemistry. 
 
Conscience. 151 
 
 selves." * " All, were it only a withered leaf, works 
 together with all, is borne forward on the bottomless, 
 shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual 
 metamorphoses." 2 
 
 " The one Spirit's plastic stress 
 
 Sweeps through the dull, dense world, compelling there 
 
 All new successions to the forms they wear; 
 
 Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; 
 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 
 From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light." 3 
 
 From the earliest times man has recognized the 
 power and the mystery of fire. " ' Know ye/ said an 
 Ojibway prophet, that the fire in your huts and the 
 life in your bodies are one and the same thing.' 
 The sun, as the source of heat, gives life 
 to the earth; and it was natural to suppose that the 
 hearth, ' the sun in the house/ as the younger Edda 
 calls it, radiated life likewise. . . . Life was 
 compared to a flame, to a torch; and no comparison 
 is more true. Modern chemistry having proved that 
 animal life is a constant burning of oxygen, the an- 
 cient myth was not far from the truth when it said 
 that Prometheus animated the figure of clay by put- 
 ting into it a spark of fire. . . . The opinions 
 and beliefs which most primitive populations have 
 entertained on the nature of fire in the hearth were 
 applied by them to the great cosmic fire: both were 
 
 1 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. 
 
 2 Carlyle. 
 
 3 Shelley, Adonais. 
 
152 Conscience. 
 
 life-givers, one to the family and the other to the 
 universe; both were parts of the same substance or 
 element. It was taught by Aristotle that Zeus was 
 a name given to the fire of heaven, and by Plato 
 and Euripides that the same Hestia burned in the 
 humblest hut and the highest sky." * According to 
 the doctrine of Ovid, fire was " the very soul of na- 
 ture. . . . From Jupiter to the fly, from the 
 wandering star to the tiniest blade of grass, all be- 
 ings owed existence to the fiery element. This 
 theory, more or less distinctly expressed, obtained 
 among the Aztecs, who invoked in their prayers ' fire 
 the most ancient divinity.' " 2 " Heraclitus and other 
 ancient philosophers " held that fire " was the primi- 
 tive material out of which the universe was formed." 3 
 The created earth may be traced back to its source, 
 the sun, and the sun to its source, the infinite Light 
 beyond space. 
 
 " The sun, looking down on the earth, 
 Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must 
 
 everywhere trace 
 The results of his past summer-prime." * 
 
 " The sun warms, enlivens, and animates the earth. 
 . . . Up to the sun ... we trace all the 
 hidden manifestations of power. Yet the energy 
 that produces such intricate and wide-extended 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fire. 
 
 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fire. 
 
 3 Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, Fire. 
 * Browning, 
 
ur <TV *' 
 
 Conscience. 
 
 changes is only one twenty-three hundrea millionth 
 part of the tide that flows in every direction from 
 this great central orb. But what is our sun itself 
 save a twinkling star beside great suns like Sirius, 
 Regulus, and Procyon, whose brilliancy in the far-off 
 regions of space drowns our little sun as the dazzling 
 light of day does the smoldering blaze of some 
 wandering hunter ? " 1 From the earth-planet in 
 the centre of space we behold the other heavenly 
 bodies as faint lights in the vast distance; even our 
 imagination cannot soar to a full realization of the 
 actual grandeur and glory of these myriad, great, 
 swiftly circling spheres of light that constitute crea- 
 tion, the fiery suns and their illuminated planets 
 that form the great belt of the Milky Way, the daz- 
 zling white nebulae that lie towards the outer bounds 
 of space. Whence those worlds of light, " those fires 
 divine, so grand, so countless ? " There is but one 
 answer, " God is Light." " There flows onward, with 
 the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream 
 of life, and power, and action, which issues from 
 the original source of all life, from Thy life, O 
 Infinite One ! for all life is Thy life, and only the re- 
 ligious eye penetrates to the realm of true Beauty." 2 
 Light is the " great First Cause, least under- 
 stood," 3 its nature baffles and transcends man's finite 
 understanding. Man's inextinguishable wonder " be- 
 
 1 Steele, Popular Chemistry. 
 
 2 Fichte. 
 
 s Pope, The Universal Prayer. 
 
154 Conscience. 
 
 trays his conviction that behind all your explanations 
 is a vast and potent and living Nature, inexhaustible 
 and sublime, which you cannot explain. He is sure 
 no book, no man has told him all. He is sure the 
 great Instinct, the circumambient soul which flows 
 into him as into all, and is his life, has not been 
 searched." * " The multitude of false churches ac- 
 credits the true religion. Literature, poetry, science 
 are the homage of man to this unf athomed secret, con- 
 cerning which no sane man can affect an indifference 
 or incuriosity." 2 " Let that vain struggle to read the 
 mystery of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a 
 mystery which, through all ages, we shall only read 
 here a line of, there another line of. Do we not 
 already know that the name of the Infinite is Good, 
 is God?" 3 
 
 Philosophy is the effort of human reason to com- 
 prehend and unify the world, and to see in the light 
 of this knowledge man's place in Nature and the 
 purpose of his existence. " The mind cannot be ex- 
 pected to recognize the unity of God until it recog- 
 nizes the unity of nature ; when it sees nature to be 
 a whole, a universe or cosmos, it cannot but form 
 a conception of it which will be pantheistic, if the 
 unity of substance, law and evolution be alone 
 acknowledged, and monotheistic if a unity of causal- 
 ity, rational plan, and ethical purpose be also appre- 
 
 1 Emerson, Demonology. 
 
 2 Emerson, Nature. 
 
 3 Carlyle. 
 
Conscience. 155 
 
 bended." 1 " Either this universe is a mere con- 
 fused mass, and an intricate context of things, which 
 shall in time be scattered and dispersed again: or it 
 is an union consisting of order, and administered by 
 Providence." 2 Now " there is ... to be seen 
 in the things of the world, not a bare succession, but 
 an admirable correspondence and affinity." 3 Then 
 " faith in an order which is the basis of science " 
 should not " be dissevered from faith in an ordainer 
 which is the basis of religion." 4 Says Descartes, 
 " By the name God, I understand a substance infinite 
 [eternal, immutable], independent, all-knowing, all- 
 powerful, and by which I myself, and every other 
 thing that exists . . . were created." 
 
 Since all men have been seeking the same God, 
 the Creator and Source of all, one is not surprised at 
 " the agreements, the identities, in all the religions of 
 men." 5 " The Persians, from the highest point of 
 their mountain-worship, elevated their thoughts and 
 their affections, or prayers, to the Only God; 
 . . . they looked upward through the sun of 
 earth, as the highest created type of the Sun of 
 heaven ; thus to their Creator and Preserver." 6 The 
 Hebrews early arrived at monotheism. " Hear, O 
 Israel : the Lord our God is one Lord ; " 7 He " is 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Theism. 
 
 2 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. 
 
 3 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. 
 
 4 Asa Gray. 
 
 5 Emerson. 
 
 e Ellis, Skepticism and Divine Revelation, 
 i Deuteronomy, 
 
156 Conscience. 
 
 the former of all things ; " * " God the Lord, He that 
 created the heavens, and stretched them forth; He 
 that spread abroad the earth and that which cometh 
 out of it ; He that giveth breath unto the people upon 
 it, and spirit to them that walk therein." 2 In the 
 Vedas of India one finds written : " Without cause, 
 the first of all causes; all-ruling; all-powerful; the 
 Creator, Preserver, Transformer, of all things; such 
 is the Great One, Brahm." Says a follower of the 
 Christ: "And this is the message which we have 
 heard from Him, and announce unto you, that God is 
 light, and in Him is no darkness at all." 3 " Behold, 
 even the moon hath no brightness, and the stars are 
 not pure in His sight ; " 4 " who only hath immortal- 
 ity, dwelling in light unapproachable." 5 " Nature 
 is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in 
 everywhere." 6 
 
 Since there is unity in nature and all things are 
 parts of one vast system, and since " all life, every- 
 where, in so far as it is life, has conscious meaning, 
 and accomplishes a rational end," 7 the question arises 
 as to man's place in Nature's system and as to the 
 meaning of his life. Not blind forces and charfce, 
 but conscious, rational energy is the power at work in 
 creation, and through " the ages one increasing pur- 
 
 1 Jeremiah. 
 
 2 Isaiah. 
 s 7. John. 
 4/o6. 
 
 57. Timothy. 
 
 Emerson, The Preacher. t 
 
 TRoyce, The World and The Individual, 
 
Conscience. 157 
 
 pose runs." * Before the Copernican theory of the 
 earth's motion was accepted as the truth, the earth 
 was considered to be at rest in the centre of space, 
 all other heavenly bodies revolving around it. The 
 planet on which man lived thus occupying a unique 
 and central position in the universe, man concluded 
 that he himself, the superior of all beings on the earth, 
 was the chief end of creation. When Copernicus 
 convinced men that the earth was rotating and re- 
 volving, the former unique position of the earth was 
 gone, it was simply one of several planets that re- 
 volved about one of many suns. No longer could man 
 feel that he held a special and important place in the 
 cosmic system, the stars did not even form one sys- 
 tem. ~No evidence remained that creation centred in 
 man, and a pessimistic philosophy resulted: man is 
 but an insignificant creature in a boundless universe, 
 and beings far higher and nobler than himself may 
 have been evolved on some of the numerous other 
 planets in space. 
 
 Let us consider what evidence may be adduced to 
 prove that man occupies a significant place in na- 
 ture, " that the universe is no inhospitable wander- 
 ing place, but his own home ; that the mighty sweep 
 of its events from age to age is but the working out of 
 a cosmic drama in which his part is the leading one; 
 and that all is an endless manifestation of one all- 
 pervading creative Power, protean in its myriad 
 
 J Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 
 
158 Conscience. 
 
 phases, yet essentially similar to the conscious soul 
 within us." 
 
 " The result so far reached by astronomers as the 
 direct, logical conclusion from the whole mass of 
 facts accumulated by means of powerful instruments 
 of research, which have given us the new astronomy, 
 is that our sun is one of the central orbs of a globular 
 star cluster, and that this star cluster occupies nearly 
 the central position in the exact plane of the Milky 
 Way." 2 There are " the three startling facts that 
 we are in the centre of a cluster of suns, and that the 
 cluster is situated not only precisely in the plane of 
 the Milky Way, but also centrally in that plane." 3 
 " Our sun is thus shown to occupy a position very 
 near if not actually at the centre of the whole visible 
 universe, and therefore, in all probability, in the 
 centre of the whole material universe." 4 
 
 Since heat is motive power, the heavenly bodies 
 that are the substance intense white heat in their 
 nuclei the suns and nebulae move with enormous 
 velocities. Since it is a recognized fact that light 
 moves swiftly, if the stars are spheres of the sub- 
 stance light, the apparent daily revolution of the 
 heavens must be real, and the earth itself must be at 
 rest. If the earth is at rest, the sun of our system 
 moves through a smaller diurnal circle than does any 
 other star. If the path of the intensest white light is 
 
 1 Fiske, Evolution and the Present Age. 
 
 2 Wallace, Maw's Place in the Universe. 
 s Wallace, Man's Place in the Universe. 
 * Wallace, Man's Place in the Universe, 
 
Conscience. 159 
 
 straight, and the curvature of the path increases as the 
 light grows weaker through steady loss by radiation, 
 then our sun, having the stellar path of greatest cur- 
 vature, is the star that has radiated most light into 
 space, that is to say, it is the oldest star in the 
 heavens. The earth planet, with its solid crust of 
 great age, has, as a result of the advanced stage in the 
 cooling process which its matter has undergone, be- 
 come too heavy to be drawn any longer through space 
 by the ever-weakening sun-force. Since the earth is the 
 only planet of the sun that has come to rest, it is the 
 first planet to reach a state of rest and is therefore the 
 heaviest, most cooled, and thus oldest planet of the 
 sun, itself the oldest star. The earth then, the oldest 
 planet of the oldest star, lies at rest in the centre of 
 the universe, farthest from the youngest heavenly 
 bodies, the nebulae of light, that glide swiftly through 
 regions that are along the outer borders of space. 
 
 In evolution, the latest stage represents the direc- 
 tion and goal towards which the process has been 
 tending. The earth, the oldest star's oldest planet, is 
 the most advanced stage of the vast cosmic evolution. 
 Turning then to the earth-planet to trace the evolu- 
 tion process farther, we find that the early " inorgan- 
 ic " period of the earth's history has led up to the later 
 period when organic life originated. The earth, be- 
 ing the oldest planet, will be the first to evolve or- 
 ganic life, and will contain the highest organic devel- 
 opment. The one-celled protoplasm of the earth has 
 in the course of ages evolved into man, who is 
 
160 Conscience. 
 
 highest stage of organic life. Man is thus the latest 
 chapter in the history of cosmic evolution, and the 
 purpose of creation must then culminate in him. 
 
 Turning to man himself, to trace the evolution- 
 ary process still farther, we find that man has evolved 
 from a low savage state to an ever advancing being. 
 " Man has risen, though hy slow and interrupted 
 steps, from a lowly condition to the highest standard 
 as yet attained by him in knowledge, morals, and re- 
 ligion." 1 There are two forces which operate in the 
 progress of man alone of all the earth's organic life, 
 lifting him ever higher above the brute world. His 
 material progress is due to his knowledge of the use 
 of fire, the power of nature. " Man is great by bor- 
 rowing the might of the elements." " Human cul- 
 ture may be said to have begun with fire, of which 
 the uses increased in the same ratio as culture it- 
 self." 2 His spiritual progress is due to the birth and 
 increasing development in him of conscience or the 
 moral nature. " Of all the differences between man 
 and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience 
 is by far the most important." 3 Moral action is the 
 goal and the latest evolved feature of mental develop- 
 ment. Lower animals and infants perform only vege- 
 tative functions for mere existence ; man's vegetative 
 functions are performed chiefly by reflex actions, 
 and his life is mainly voluntary, the will concern- 
 
 1 Darwin, Descent of Man. 
 
 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fire. 
 
 3 Darwin, Descent of Man. 
 
Conscience. 161 
 
 ing itself with the realization of a higher, spiritual 
 life. Industrial progress and social cooperation ren- 
 der the means of physical existence easier to obtain, 
 thus enabling man to devote his chief thought to the 
 living of his higher life. Man's material progress is 
 then only a means to the end, spiritual life. Cosmic 
 evolution culminates in the progress of man's moral 
 nature or conscience towards the goal of perfection. 
 To the argument that man is not of sufficient worth 
 to be the chief end of all this majestic and vast crea- 
 tion, one may answer in the words of Emerson that, 
 although " a man is but a little thing in the midst of 
 the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiat- 
 ing from his countenance, he may abolish all consid- 
 erations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the 
 majesty of the world." * " Inorganic " nature works 
 as one vast energy, in accordance with universal laws, 
 while " organic " beings on the earth are individuals, 
 with power and freedom to conduct themselves in 
 their own original way. Man reacts to a broadening 
 environment until finally he conceives of nature as a 
 unity, and the aim of his conduct becomes right rela- 
 tion to this Power. " The moral sentiment speaks to 
 every man the law after which the Universe was made ; 
 . . . there is a force always at work to make the 
 best better and the worst good." 2 The moral or re- 
 ligious force is, in the language of Matthew Arnold, 
 the power not ourselves which makes for righteous- 
 
 1 Emerson, Manners. 
 
 2 Emerson. 
 
162 Conscience. 
 
 ness. The goal of creation is man's realization of the 
 divine character and will, through his free individual 
 will. " Be ye therefore perfect, even as jour Father 
 which is in heaven is perfect," * this is the ideal 
 towards which man is to aim and progress. And that 
 man might have the model of perfection at which he 
 is to aim, when there had already been some moral 
 progress in mankind which could act as a foundation, 
 " the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and 
 we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten 
 from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . 
 !N~o man hath seen God at any time ; the only begot- 
 ten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He 
 hath declared Him." 2 Man's will is gradually to 
 perfect itself, through imitation of the model, the 
 perfect or Divine Will. 
 
 " Only as we presuppose morality at the heart of 
 things, and a moral creator of the universe, can we 
 explain the appearance of conscience or the moral 
 sense as the completion and crown of its develop- 
 ment." 3 According to the view of Kant, " nobody 
 can act morally without assuming that the constitu- 
 tion of the world furnishes a field adapted to moral 
 action, this necessary assumption being a belief in an 
 adapting God." Conscience has been defined as " the 
 consciousness of our organic relation to this divinely 
 rational and supremely moral unity." 4 
 
 i#. Matthew. 
 
 2 8. John. 
 
 a Knowlton, Origin and Nature of Conscience. 
 
 * Knowlton, Origin and Nature of Conscience. 
 
Conscience. 163 
 
 " These rules were writ in human heart 
 
 By Him who built the day; 
 The columns of the universe 
 Not firmer based than they." 1 
 
 The lonely savage guides his conduct by sensations 
 of personal pleasure and pain. But so soon as society 
 dawns, " so soon as a man understands that he is not 
 alone, so soon as he feels the sufferings of other men, 
 . . . then appears the conflict between desires 
 for personal happiness and conscience." 2 Our " deed 
 of will, or course of conduct, ordinarily concerns some 
 other being than ourselves, who is, like ourselves, a 
 moral and self-conscious or, at any rate, a sentient 
 being. It may be possible to show that rational right 
 conduct could not exist except under conditions of a 
 social community." 3 " All humanity is moving from 
 desire for personal happiness to the demands of con- 
 science. And if conscience is awakened in you, then 
 recognize once for all that life is only in the satisfac- 
 tion of the demands of conscience. . . . What, 
 then, is the conscience? Conscience is that supreme 
 law of every living being that each one finds in him- 
 self, not only by recognizing the rights of every 
 living being, but by love toward this living being. 
 The demands of conscience are what, in the language 
 of Christianity, are called the will of God. That 
 is why the meaning of life " consists " in this : To 
 do the will of God, understood by us in our conscience. 
 
 1 Emerson, The Sovereignty of Ethics. 
 
 2 Tolstoi. 
 
 s Ladd, Psychology. 
 
164 Conscience. 
 
 . . . And if what conscience asks be not clear to 
 you, then the Gospel will give you the answer." * 
 " Christianity lives in two great ideas personal 
 perfection and humanity. . . . The disciple 
 of Christianity finds that he cannot grow perfect ex- 
 cept by helping his fellow-men, and that he cannot 
 effectively help his fellow-men except out of the re- 
 sources of an ever-growing goodness in himself." 2 
 From the conception of God the Creator and Father 
 of all, springs the conception of the brotherhood of 
 man and the law of love. " Have we not all one 
 father ? hath not one God created us ? why do we deal 
 treacherously every man against his brother ? " 3 
 
 " 'Tis the sublime of man, 
 Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves 
 Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole ! 
 This fraternizes man, this constitutes 
 Our charities and bearings. But 'tis God 
 Diffused thro' all, that doth make all one whole."* 
 
 " Wondrous state of man ! never so happy as when he 
 has lost all private interests and regards and exists 
 only in obedience and love of the Author." 5 " How 
 we talk of submission! as if it were . . . the 
 last refuge of despair instead of being what it is 
 the fulfillment and consummation of our life. As if 
 you took the chisel which had been trying to carve by 
 
 1 Tolstoi. 
 
 2 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 3 Malachi. 
 
 * Coleridge, Religious Musings. 
 
 6 Emerson, The Sovereignty of Ethics. 
 
Conscience. 165 
 
 itself, and put it in the hand of Michael Angelo, so, 
 only infinitely higher, is it when you teach your soul 
 to say, ' O Lord, not my will but Thy will be 
 done.' " 1 
 
 From its small beginning in the primitive human 
 society, conscience has been slowly through the cen- 
 turies progressing toward the goal of its perfection 
 in the whole human race, through imitation by every 
 individual will of the perfect will of God as incar- 
 nated in the Christ; whereby will be realized the 
 kingdom of God on earth. " The Bibles of the world, 
 or the sacred books of each nation, which express for 
 each the supreme result of their experience, 
 are the majestic expressions of the universal con- 
 science." 2 These Bibles represent various stages of 
 the progress of the one moral law toward perfection, 
 for " the world of manners and actions is wrought of 
 one stuff." 3 
 
 The Bible of Christendom contains the most com- 
 plete record of the law. In it one can trace the pro- 
 gressive history of conscience, from the allegorical 
 description of its birth, when man first ate of " the 
 tree of the ; knowledge of good and evil"; through 
 the prophets, who raised their voices against the 
 evils of their times and looked forward to the incar- 
 nation of the Will of God ; to the perfection of con- 
 science in the Christ. The various books of history 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 2 Emerson, Society and Solitude, Books, 
 
 3 Emerson, Prudence. 
 
166 Conscience. 
 
 that are joined together under the name of the Bible 
 describe " a vast mixed movement of human life, 
 through which the creative, redemptive purpose of 
 God shines as the body of heaven for clearness. 
 . . . The Bible is a book of individual minds. 
 A single, controlling, divine purpose holds them to- 
 gether." * These books, " written as they were in the 
 broad day of history, enshrining as they do the divine 
 ideals for humanity at large, . . . must be 
 carried back into the midst of the common life 
 through which their inspiration came, in order to be 
 truly interpreted." 2 
 
 Conscience deals with two classes of actions: it 
 urges the shunning of evil and the doing of good. 
 The " Old Testament " or the Will of God as con- 
 ceived in early days, has to do chiefly with the nega- 
 tive side of morality, the prevention of evil ; for this 
 is fundamental, since human society could not remain 
 in existence unless certain individual actions injuri- 
 ous to other members of society were restrained. Soci- 
 ety preserves itself by implanting fear of punishment 
 for the doing of harm, in its individual members. 
 The " Old Testament " or early Law may be ex- 
 pressed as : Fear to do evil. " Behold, the fear of the 
 Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is un- 
 derstanding." 3 After the foundations of society are 
 laid, by prevention of harm to a large extent, empha- 
 
 1 Nash, History of the Higher Criticism. 
 
 2 Nash, History of the Higher Criticism. 
 
 3./06. 
 
Conscience. 167 
 
 sis can be given to the positive side of morality, to the 
 doing of good, which is the force that causes progress 
 of society to higher levels. The " New Testament " 
 or higher Law is : Love to do good. The New Testa- 
 ment completes and fulfills the Old : Love to do good, 
 and you will refrain from doing evil. Love lifts you 
 above doing injury to your fellow-beings, and urges 
 you onward towards the ideal of good. " Compul- 
 sion and fear keep us true to duty, but love makes us 
 larger and fitter for greater duty every day." 1 
 Christ gave the complete law or perfect will of God : 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
 This is the great and first commandment. And a 
 second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself. On these two commandments hangeth the 
 whole law, and the prophets." 2 " For the whole law 
 is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself." 3 " Love worketh no 
 ill to his neighbour; love therefore is the fulfillment 
 of the law." * " All things therefore whatsoever ye 
 would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also 
 unto them : for this is the law and the prophets." 5 
 " And be not fashioned according to this age ; but be 
 ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye 
 may prove what is the good and well-pleasing and per- 
 
 1 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 2 8. Matthew. 
 
 3 Galatians. 
 
 4 Romans. 
 
 5 8. Matthew. 
 
168 Conscience. 
 
 feet will of God." * " Be ye therefore imitators of 
 God, as beloved children." 2 " We all, with unveiled 
 face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are 
 transformed into the same image from glory to 
 glory." 3 Christ teaches that the temple where God 
 is truly to be worshipped is within, that worship is 
 spiritual and consists in the growth of the individual 
 will into the likeness of the perfect Will of God. 
 
 The Christian religion, embodying the ideal social 
 conscience, is the prime force in human progress. 
 The perfect conscience is the model given for all men, 
 and is one day to unite them into one society, a uni- 
 versal brotherhood, in which each member is to be 
 self-governed, by the law of God written on his heart. 
 " As soon as every man is apprised of the Divine 
 Presence within his own mind, is apprised that 
 . . . the basis of duty, the order of society, the 
 power of character, the wealth of culture, the perfec- 
 tion of taste, all draw their essence from this moral 
 sentiment, then we have a religion that exalts, that 
 commands all the social and all the private action. " 
 " The only significance of life consists in helping to 
 establish the Kingdom of God ; and this can be done 
 only by means of the acknowledgment, and profession 
 of the truth by each one of us." 5 
 
 The nineteenth century was the age of great scien- 
 
 
 
 1 Romans. 
 
 2 Ephesians. 
 8/7. Corinthians. 
 * Emerson. 
 
 5 Tolstoi, The Kingdom of God is Within 7ov. 
 
Conscience. 169 
 
 tific progress, the twentieth century needs to be made 
 the period of a correspondingly great moral and social 
 advance. " Compared with our astounding progress 
 in physical science and its practical application, our 
 system of government, of administrative justice and 
 of national education, and our entire social and moral 
 organization remain in a state of barbarism." 1 " We 
 think our civilization near its meridian, but we are 
 yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. 
 In our barbarous society the influence of character is 
 in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful 
 lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its 
 presence is hardly yet suspected." 2 " We still carry, 
 sticking to us, some remains of the preceding inferior 
 quadruped organization. . . . The age of the 
 quadruped is to go out, the age of the brain and of 
 the heart is to come in. The time will come when the 
 evil forms we have known can no more be organ- 
 ized." 3 " Trade and government will not alone be 
 the favored aims of mankind, but every useful, every 
 elegant art, every exercise of imagination, the height 
 of reason, the noblest affection, the purest religion 
 will find their home in our institutions, and write our 
 laws for the benefit of men." 4 There is a " move- 
 ment of the whole race forward toward goodness, 
 toward God," 5 and one day " the moral sentiment 
 
 1 Wallace. 
 
 2 Emerson, Politics. 
 
 s Emerson, Conduct of Life, Culture. 
 
 * Emerson, The Fortune of the Republic. 
 
 * Phillips Brooks. 
 
170 Conscience. 
 
 will write the law of the land." x " It is the interior 
 testimony to a fairer possibility of life and manners 
 which agitates society every day with the offer of 
 some new amendment. If we would make more strict 
 inquiry concerning its origin, we find ourselves rap- 
 idly approaching the inner boundaries of thought, that 
 term where speech becomes silence, and science con- 
 science. For the origin of all reform is in that mys- 
 terious fountain of the moral sentiment in man, 
 which, amidst the natural, ever contains the super- 
 natural for men. That is new and creative. That 
 is alive. That alone can make a man other than he is. 
 Here or nowhere resides unbounded energy, un- 
 bounded power." 2 " The history of mankind inter- 
 ests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and 
 right, in the incessant conflict which it records be- 
 tween the material and the moral nature." 3 
 
 Society in its early stage of development seeks to 
 secure morality by external government ; its motto is 
 the Old Law : fear to do evil ; and it upholds this law 
 through external force in the form of government, 
 based on justice or the science of retribution. Society 
 needs to advance to a greater realization of the New 
 Law: love to do good; the science of charity is the 
 attempt to " overcome evil with good." Since will 
 concerns actions, deeds and not bare faith are the true 
 measure of our religion ; good will bears the fruit of 
 
 1 Emerson, Politics. 
 
 2 Emerson, Lecture on The Times. 
 
 Emerson, West India Emancipation. 
 
Conscience. 171 
 
 good deeds or charity. As " evil " and " sin " arise 
 only as a result of human society, consisting in injury 
 of our fellow-men, so " right " and " goodness " are 
 likewise terms that have meaning only in human 
 society, and consist in benefit of our fellow-men, that 
 is, in charity. Since each man is a part of nature 
 and is not an isolated being, he has relations with the 
 other parts. His right relation to nature as a whole 
 can find outward expression only through right rela- 
 tion to his fellow-beings as creatures of the one Crea- 
 tor. Love is the great bond that unites the God of 
 nature and all His creatures. The command of the 
 Son of God is charity to our fellow-beings : " Inas- 
 much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
 my brethren, ye have done it unto me." * 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 
 All things both great and small; 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 2 
 
 Justice relies on the fear of punishment as the 
 power that will prevent crime ; and this is often inef- 
 fectual. Charity seeks to prevent evil-doing by going 
 to its root and removing the cause of evil, through re- 
 form of the character of the criminal and of the social 
 conditions that are in part to blame. Aristotle 
 thought that the criminal class was largely due to the 
 lack of property. The criminal is unsocial ; to con- 
 
 i 8. Matthew. 
 
 9 Coleridge, The Anoi$nt Mariner. 
 
172 Conscience. 
 
 vert the unsocial into the social being, the social law 
 or conscience must be awakened and developed in 
 him. Destroy, not the man himself, but his evil 
 ways; the cure of evil is development of character. 
 " No state that has abolished capital punishment has 
 found life any the less sacred in its borders." 
 " Social pathology will one day become as vast a sci- 
 ence as the pathology of the human body." * 
 
 Charity's chief duty is the solution of the difficult 
 problem, poverty. In the struggle for bread the fact 
 is that men are unequal in strength ; love and charity 
 urge that the strong and successful, who obtain the 
 lion's share of the world's material benefits, should 
 not waste, but out of their superfluity give to those 
 who are in want of the necessaries of life, the weaker 
 or the more unfortunate members of society. All 
 men require the material supplies as the fuel that sup- 
 ports their very life-fire. But the material necessi- 
 ties are not the end of life, but the means. Those 
 who make the luxuries given by wealth their chief 
 concern, seize hold only of the means of life and lose 
 their life itself, spiritual growth, in addition to wast- 
 ing what others are in need of for the support of life. 
 " Is not the life more than the food ? " 2 " He that 
 hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none ; 
 and he that hath food, let him do likewise." 3 The 
 earth produces enough to support all men ; the prob- 
 
 i Novicow, Conscience et Volonte Societies, 
 ^8. Matthew. 
 *8. Luhe. 
 
Conscience. 173 
 
 lem is one not of production, but of fair distribution. 
 As competition is essential to industry, and inequal- 
 ity of property the inevitable outcome of the struggle 
 for bread, charity must solve the problem of just dis- 
 tribution. " Love would put a new face on this 
 weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and 
 enemies too long." 1 
 
 " Have love ! not love alone for one, 
 
 But man as man thy brother call, 
 And scatter, like the circling sun, 
 Thy charities on all." 2 
 
 Charity as a science is a gigantic undertaking, and 
 will demand the highest reason and sincerest love of 
 men. But the elements themselves will aid in the 
 task. The increasing industrial progress, due to in- 
 ventions that enable man to borrow the strength of 
 the natural forces, makes human labor lighter and at 
 the same time more productive, and the problem of 
 elevating the standard of living for the masses easier. 
 " The triumphs of industrial genius have created con- 
 ditions by which millions can live in comfort and 
 hope, where thousands dwelt in poverty and despair." 
 " One year, God lifted the curtain from a hidden 
 continent, and gave His children a whole new world 
 in which to carry out His purposes." 3 " Let these 
 wonders work for honest humanity, for the poor, for 
 justice, genius and the public good. Let us realize 
 
 * Emerson, Man, the Reformer, 
 
 2 Schiller. 
 
 3 Phillips Brooks, - 
 
174 Conscience. 
 
 that this country, the last found, is the great charity 
 of God to the human race." 1 
 
 When humanity and not selfishness becomes the 
 concern of the nations, the cause of international 
 strife will vanish, and peace will afford opportunity 
 for progress which wars now destroy. " Learning 
 and art, and especially religion, weave ties that make 
 war look like fratricide, as it is. And as all history 
 is the picture of war, . . . so it is no less true 
 that it is the record of the mitigation and decline of 
 war." 2 " As soon as the world shall sincerely em- 
 brace the Christian religion, wars will cease to the 
 ends of the earth. Then shall men beat their swords 
 into ploughshares and their spears into pruning- 
 hooks, and learn war no more." 3 
 
 If creation will culminate in the spiritual perfec- 
 tion of the human race, what will be the future of the 
 universe when this aim has been accomplished? 
 Science predicts a future devoid of life ; the heavenly 
 bodies will continue to radiate their heat until the 
 energy of the universe becomes equally distributed 
 through space, and stagnation, darkness and death re- 
 sult. Byron thus draws the picture : 
 
 " I had a dream, which was not all a dream, 
 The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars 
 Did wander darkling in the eternal space, 
 Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth 
 
 1 Emerson, The Fortune of the Republic. 
 
 2 Emerson, War. 
 
 3 Alexander, Evidences of Christianity. 
 
Conscience. 175 
 
 Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; 
 Morn came and went and came, and brought no day. 
 
 . The world was void, 
 
 The populous and the powerful was a lump, 
 Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless, 
 A lump of death a chaos of hard clay. 
 
 The winds were withered in the stagnant air, 
 And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need 
 Of aid from them She was the Universe." 
 
 Light, not darkness, gave origin to the universe. 
 To hold the theory that the Light will continue 
 through future ages to diffuse through space until 
 finally a uniform distribution results and an era of 
 stagnation and death follows the present era of activ- 
 ity and life, is to deny that there is a rational energy 
 at work in the universe, and a purpose and goal to 
 creation, and all existence then becomes meaningless. 
 If it is true that man is the latest chapter of the 
 world's evolution and that creation's purpose culmi- 
 nates in the perfection of his free will through right 
 relations with the Divine Will, thereby giving rise to 
 children of the Creator and Father, does it seem logi- 
 cal to suppose that creation's purpose when attained 
 will then be rendered of no use, by the death of these 
 developed individual souls ? To what purpose did cos- 
 mic evolution form the biography of the individual 
 will, if, when it is perfected, it perishes ? " After 
 science begins, belief of permanence must follow in a 
 healthy mind. . . . Everything is prospective, 
 and the man is to live hereafter. That the world is 
 for his education is the only sane solution of the enig- 
 
176 Conscience. 
 
 ma." 1 " The future will be worthy of the past," 2 
 for " God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should 
 not perish, hut have eternal life. For God sent not 
 the Son into the world to judge the world ; but that the 
 world should be saved through Him." 3 " Jesus spake 
 unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he 
 that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but 
 shall have the light of life." 4 
 
 " As the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave 
 He to the Son also to have life in Himself." 5 Dur- 
 ing His life on earth Christ was transfigured by the 
 light of heaven that the disciples might have a sign 
 of the nature of individual resurrection : transforma- 
 tion into the eternal substance light. The last ap- 
 pearance of the risen Christ, before He ascended to 
 the realm of eternal light beyond space, was to Paul. 
 This appearance of the risen Christ as white light 
 more dazzling and glorious than the noon-day sun 
 gives man assurance of individual immortality, of 
 the transformation by God of the dependent, mortal 
 mind into the eternal light, by removal from space to 
 the realm of Light beyond. 
 
 When the goal of creation, the kingdom of God on 
 earth, has been attained, the light now diffused in 
 space as the created universe will again be concen- 
 
 1 Emerson, Immortality. 
 
 2 Emerson, New England Reformers. 
 38. John. 
 
 * 8. John. 
 
 * S. John. ...5 :!.4 , 
 
Conscience. 177 
 
 trated into primordial light and return to the Light- 
 realm beyond the void and darkness. " The day of 
 the Lord will come as a thief, in the which the heav- 
 ens shall pass away with a great noise, and the heav- 
 enly bodies shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and 
 the earth and the works that are therein shall be 
 burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to 
 be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be 
 in all holy living and godliness, looking for and 
 earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by 
 reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dis- 
 solved, and the heavenly bodies shall melt with fer- 
 vent heat ? But, according to His promise, we look 
 for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness." 1 
 
 " No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, 
 Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn; 
 But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, 
 One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze 
 Overflow thy courts; the Light himself shall shine 
 Reveal'd, and God's eternal day be thine! 
 The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, 
 Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away; 
 But fixed his word, his saving power remains ; 
 Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns." 2 
 
 1/7. Peter. 
 
 2 Pope, The Messiah. 
 
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