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Page 4
In order to know how worlds move and develop, we must create them;
we must go back to their beginning, give their endowment of forces,
and study the laws of their unfolding. This we can easily do by that
faculty wherein man is likest his Father, a creative imagination.
God creates and embodies; we create, but [Page 5] it remains in
thought only. But the creation is as bright, strong, clear,
enduring, and real, as if it were embodied. Every one of us would
make worlds enough to crush us, if we could embody as well as
create. Our ambition would outrun our wisdom. Let us come into the
high and ecstatic frame of mind which Shakspeare calls frenzy, in
the exigencies of his verse, when
"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
In the supremacy of our creative imagination let us make empty
space, in order that we may therein build up a new universe. Let us
wave the wand of our power, so that all created things disappear.
There is no world under our feet, no radiant clouds, no blazing
sun, no silver moon, nor twinkling stars. We look up, there is
no light; down, through immeasurable abysses, there is no form;
all about, and there is no sound or sign of being--nothing save
utter silence, utter darkness. It cannot be endured. Creation is
a necessity of mind--even of the Divine mind.
We will now, by imagination, create a monster world, every atom
of which shall be dowered with the single power of attraction.
Every particle shall reach out its friendly hand, and there shall
be a drawing together of every particle in existence. The laws
governing this attraction shall be two. When these particles are
associated together, the attraction shall be in proportion to the
mass. A given mass will pull twice [Page 6] as much as one of half
the size, because there is twice as much to pull. And a given mass
will be pulled twice as much as one half as large, because there is
twice as much to be pulled. A man who weighed one hundred and fifty
pounds on the earth might weigh a ton and a half on a body as large
as the sun. That shall be one law of attraction; and the other shall
be that masses attract inversely as the square of distances between
them. Absence shall affect friendships that have a material basis.
If a body like the earth pulls a man one hundred and fifty pounds at
the surface, or four thousand miles from the centre, it will pull
the same man one-fourth as much at twice the distance, one-sixteenth
as much at four times the distance. That is, he will weigh by a
spring balance thirty-seven and a half pounds at eight thousand
miles from the centre, and nine pounds six ounces at sixteen
thousand miles from the centre, and he will weigh or be pulled by
the earth 1/24 of a pound at the distance of the moon. But the moon
would be large enough and near enough to pull twenty-four pounds on
the same man, so the earth could not draw him away. Thus the two
laws of attraction of gravitation are--1, _Gravity is proportioned
to the quantity of matter_; and 2, _The force of gravity varies
inversely as the square of the distance from the centre of the
attracting body_.
The original form of matter is gas. Almost as I write comes the
announcement that Mr. Lockyer has proved that all the so-called
primary elements of matter are only so many different sized molecules
of one original substance--hydrogen. Whether that is true or not,
let us now create all the hydrogen we can [Page 7] imagine, either
in differently sized masses or in combination with other substances.
There it is! We cannot measure its bulk; we cannot fly around it in
any recordable eons of time. It has boundaries, to be sure, for we
are finite, but we cannot measure them. Let it alone, now; leave it
to itself. What follows? It is dowered simply with attraction. The
vast mass begins to shrink, the outer portions are drawn inward.
They rush and swirl in vast cyclones, thousands of miles in extent.
The centre grows compact, heat is evolved by impact, as will be
explained in Chapter II. Dull red light begins to look like coming
dawn. Centuries go by; contraction goes on; light blazes in
insufferable brightness; tornadoes, whirlpools, and tempests
scarcely signify anything as applied to such tumultuous tossing.
There hangs the only world in existence; it hangs in empty space.
It has no tendency to rise; none to fall; none to move at all in
any direction. It seethes and, flames, and holds itself together
by attractive power, and that is all the force with which we have
endowed it.
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