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Topic: Keely Information Section: Lux Naturae part 1 Table of Contents to this Topic |
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LUX NATURAE: NERVE SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE. a New Demonstration of an Old law. BY DAVID SINCLAIR, AUTHOR OF A NEW CREED, VERA VITA, ETC. ÒNature, with the same voice, speaks to all, and in no country is her tongue a foreign language.Ó LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1894 [Copyright.] CHAPTER I. Science stage of the development of truth Ñ Evolutionary truth forces its sway Ñ Nature's revelations mark the epochs of civilization Ñ Nature's universal sympathy Ñ Omnipresence, etc., of the Deity scientifically a simple truth Ñ Natural law is inviolable Ñ Whistling of birds, and all sounds, are proofs of aerial telephones. THERE is nothing useless or merely ornamental in Nature. She has no forces which are not at the service of man, nor is there any secret about the working of her laws into which he may not successfully inquire without presumption. No scientific research for truth is, in itself, a presumption; and in no case can its true course lead to ideas of infidelity, or to anything derogatory to the highest interests of man. Science has recently, with extraordinary success, provided lever, fulcrum, and power to raise civilization such as no other stage of its development has supplied. The first dark whispers of geology, being insuppressible, now I loudly attest the truth. The truths announced by Darwin stand boldly out as no mere insinuation can stand, while his side-lights of what seemed true, but are not have already vanished like a Will-o'-the-wisp. The works of great men in their laboratories, by the revelation of quondam secrets, have exalted truth as Moses raised the brazen serpent. Just as sure as there is any provision made for created beings, just as sure are the preservation, development, evolution and dominance of truth, by law, provided for; and no agent of progress has done more towards this highest evolution than science has with dry, hard, matter-of-fact revolutionary revelations. There are things hidden in Nature which are not invisible in the sense that they cannot be seen. Visible trees have necessarily hidden roots, and there is just as much wrong Ñ and no more Ñ done by an inquiring mind examining these hidden roots as there is in researching the hidden truths of Nature. If it be wrong to inquire into any truth whatever, however lofty, then it is wrong for man to make a natural use of his strongest natural gifts, and the chief complaint against him at last must be that he has not hid his talents away in a napkin. He is not only permitted, but expected, to know the truth. Perfection awaits humanity at its final goal, but before that goal is reached all truth must be the common property of the race; and if man does not acquire that enviable attainment by his own means (as he is capable of doing), then it will be forced upon him by a natural development brought about in strict accordance with fixed laws, whose gradations of evolution may seem slow, but are certainly unfailing and unflagging. Whether there be truth in the evolution of man or any other animal, it is as clear as historical facts can bear record that the knowledge of truth has been an evolutionary development through periods of long and slow but steadily progressive stages, with ages, or times, when war, religion, superstition, literature, science, etc., have been the specially predominant agents of advancement. Now this, now that civilizing power has seemed to obliterate the facts of some former power; yet each and all have left their age a little in advance of the predecessor on the upward march. The lamentation about present decay, and the mourning over the good old but dead past, however genuine, does not affect the fact that the human race is progressing even when nations are decaying. No stage of the evolutionary progress of truth has been so rapidly traversed as that in which science has triumphantly led the way. Science, although it has already done a giant's work, is only in its infancy in the work of revealed truth, and although in the opinion of many it has been the matrix of infidelity, yet, in fact, religion has never had a better co-worker. No knowledge that reveals truth can ever be antagonistic to true religion, for truth can never be antagonistic to itself. Science has revealed many of the powers of many of the latent forces in Nature, as well as the laws that govern the universe, and the elucidation of these powers and laws throws an electric light upon the Divine part of our human lives that enables us to prove with scientific demonstration what formerly were mysteries of our being. Through the indisputable discoveries of science it is now made most manifestly clear that there is necessarily a connecting link between mind and matter, between the creature and his Creator, and that in this connecting medium the ordinary laws in Nature, everywhere protected by the most subtle and powerful latent forces, are universally and continually working out the great evolutionary problem of creation, satisfactorily in the highest degree to common-sense and to science. When the proper end of a sounding pitchfork is placed on the teeth, the musical vibration is distinctly heard and felt in the head, the sound being much greater than in the free air. When the great organ is played in a large hall, the transmission of musical vibrations along the wooden floor is so strong as to be felt by the feet while the seat shudders or vibrates without moving. Examples, familiar to all, of vibrations being transmitted through solid bodies might be given endlessly. Surely no one is under the impression that the atoms in such solid transmitting bodies are rattled together like dice in a box by the generating musical sound. It is difficult to think that anyone could believe that the solid body actually trembles or undulates like waves of the sea, or like a pliable rope. The vibration is not communicated through the so-called atoms at all, but through the ether lying between the interstitial spaces between the atoms and disintegrated atoms. The channel of conductivity for such vibratory currents is cut out from the solids, but the current matter itself is ether, and the vibration of the ether produces as a resultant the musical sound. So all sounds, from the loudest thunder in the heavens down to the most minute conceivable one on a finely adjusted microphone, be they harmonious or discordant, are the resultants of vibrations. So, too, every mental, moral, and spiritual sound, as all such emotions may justly be called, is the resultant of the vibration of the most subtle, universal, and volatile substance in creation; for the laws in Nature are not territorial, but universal, in their action. Every remarkable step of advancing civilization has been made with the utilization of some new-discovered truth or law in Nature, and, therefore, the progress of mankind is evidently regulated by man's knowledge of Nature, and his use of that knowledge. As the hidden stores of latent forces have come to light and to his services, his high position in life has become more clearly defined and certain. While the lowest savages are utterly ignorant of the forces and laws of Nature as such, these forces and laws are the commonplace servants of the highest ranks of civilization. Savagery, superstition and science are three widely different stages of the human existence, and yet not one of them can reasonably be said to be the normal condition of the race, and it is clear, according to our own ideas of humanity, that the scientific acquirements of this age are only bringing us nearer to what we imagine is the naturally normal condition of man embracing mind and soul. The knowledge of Nature exalts man in the highest and noblest sense, and makes him a true lover of all that is beautiful, good and true. While the rise and progress of civilization have invariably been accompanied by the new acquirement of some natural truth, the downfall of great nations has been in direct disregard of truth in Nature. All blood-stained, epoch-making revolutions of the world have been caused by the opposition given to the inflowing influences of Nature at the time; so, too, have the silent revolutions of peace been caused by acquiescence to Nature's silent dominance. Fighting for the faith in the Church, or for political principles in the country, has originated in the finding out of some new light in Nature. The butcheries of Neros, the massacres of St. Bartholomew, and all martyrdoms, have been vain efforts to keep back the rising waves of revealed truth. Kings and kingdoms have been overthrown because they have not yielded to the irresistible power of the revealed truth of their time; and subjects, ignorant of all the sympathetic influences of Nature, have been trodden under foot by ruling tyrants who have been wise in their generation. Deaths of kings are not the historical dates of the world, nor are the epochs of time the rise and fall of nations. Each new evolutionary revelation of natural truth is an epoch in creation, a landmark in time, a new starting point for fresh progress. Some are great, some are small, but all are influential for human good and Divine glory. By the explorations of science most of the recently discovered powers in Nature have been unearthed. Earth, air, and water have discovered themselves to science, in the interests of revealed truth, more freely and more substantially than ever they have done to philosophy or religion. The birth of truth may be retarded, but truth itself can never be injured by any investigation whatever, and to science all humanity owes a debt of gratitude. All animals when in trouble seek the most sympathetic company to be found, and in the case of wild herds that destroy their sickly members the troubled ones seek solitude, not through fear, but through sympathy. Men seek the solitudes of Nature for health of body soundness of mind, and inspiration of soul. Within hearing of the ceaseless sound of the ocean, in the deep silence of the sheltered valleys, and in the life-giving ozone of the wind-swept mountains, the solitary thinker rejoices to know that Nature speaks to him as never man spake. To the ill-conditioned person whose mind is laden with a knowledge of guilt, the society of solitary Nature is simply unbearable, because she has no sympathy with what is wrong or unnatural. She has health for the weak, consolation for the oppressed, joy for the sad, truth for the inquirer, harmony for all natural life, and discord for all unnatural. The more her acquaintance is cultivated, the more liberally she bestows her boundless bounties. Even at the very fountain-head of purity it is easy to make the clear stream muddy and revolting in appearance, but that is only by adding to the water qualities which it does not naturally possess. So, too, Nature does not always speak with soothing sympathy because of the mingling of corrupt human thoughts with her purity of language. Nature, in her own speech, ministers to every mind, and if any mind seek an over-indulgence, that is, an unnatural and abnormal supply, then Nature will give it even to satiety, which is the true beginning of disappointment in life. Retribution comes from Nature by an overdose of one's own desires Ñ not gratifications Ñ perhaps the hardest moral punishment conceivable. Nature's laws are congenial to all true nature, but woe betide all opposition, or even connivance at restraint. Her secret forces may all be used by man as she uses them, but not otherwise. Everybody knows that Nature is continually making some mysterious speech-like communication, apparently in sympathy with each one's feelings at the time, yet no attempt has been made to account for or interpret her system of language, and so it is loosely and wrongly concluded she has no system. Such a belief is most inconsistent in this most systematically arranged creation. One may not understand the system, but that ignorance cannot alter the fact. Although I do not understand a foreign language, still, I am capable of being made to understand it, and although that language may be as Greek to the Hindoo, it is not Greek to everybody. Comparatively few people can, by name, distinguish one musical note from another, although the composed notes may strike with most effective harmony on the heart strings. Many intelligent persons could not name more than, perhaps, half a dozen of the ordinary colours, although they could easily distinguish a difference between the others. These are parallel and analogous cases with the conditions of Nature, whose language is known to some extent by everyone. According to the laws that govern the evolution of truth, this language of Nature could not have been studied successfully until now, when Science has cleared a way with her accepted physical demonstrations of the actions and truth of the laws of vibrations, etc. That there are incomprehensible (?) uncertainties in life all acknowledge, but that they are part of the Divine plan is impossible of belief. If such uncertainties be Divinely designed, then man's existence has all the appearance of being less enviable than that of the blind mole. If they be ordained, then the highest and the lowest classes of creatures are equal in that they both grovel in impenetrable darkness, but man must ever carry the palm of degradation, because his darkness must exceed all others in proportion to his endowment of reason to show him what a vile unfinished foundling he is. Compared with the life of such a man, the life of a dog is sublime. The idea of man being such a waif and stray is repulsive, and is found to be untenable by true researchers for truth, although those who have made shipwreck of their lives by their opposition to Nature do entertain such notions as a kind of conscience-clause of probabilities. In all creation, as far as man has been able to ascertain, there is nothing but simple perfection of architecture, supreme wisdom, providential consideration, and immeasurable affection from the Creator to the creature. Why should there be any imperfection in regard to man alone? There is no imperfection; man is practically his own master, with Nature and all her laws and elements at his service; and he is capable of actually walking and talking with the Universal Creator. Science herself provides us with the physical demonstrations of the realities of this natural human condition. The lowest savages may have a more reasonable, more natural and truer idea of the Deity than the daily Bible-reading Christian, because with savages the belief is purely and simply a question of inherited faith that causes no friction with their worldly wisdom or ignorance, whereas the Christian of to-day justly boasts of his reasoning faculties, freewill, scientific attainments and higher-grade civilization, and yet believes, or persuades himself that he believes, what must be to him physical impossibilities. The savage knows no science, and to him blind faith is enough, and so he takes his spiritual food without bolting the impossibilities which the modern Christian must swallow, whilst knowing well the spiritual indigestion that awaits him. For instance, the personality and omnipresence of the Deity presents no difficulty to the undeveloped mind of the simple savage, but to scientific civilization its literal truth is a practical impossibility: yet the virtual truth is simplicity itself, provable by scientific demonstration and the physical necessities of the situation. This virtual truth is the same in regard to all the great attributes of the Deity, so thus His seeing and hearing all, and being everywhere, etc., are physical simplicities. Blind, ignorant worship cannot be desired by an omniscient Deity, yet the greatest happiness of the greatest number more nearly affects His Divine love than His majesty is affected by the partial ignorance of His fallible creatures, and therefore He accepts their homage according to their motives and knowledge, and grants indulgence to the wise and ignorant, knowing that He Himself will by His unbreakable, established laws, and the natural evolution of revelation, show in His own time the scientific truth to all. The wisest living man knows little compared with the vast amount left unknown, but the partial scientist who has an extra high opinion of himself and his knowledge must consider a Christian a simpleton when, in the agony of his soul, with an inaudible voice, he makes known his supplications to the Great Unknown, or when, in public, with his human voice that cannot reach the outside of his church, he prays to Him who dwells in heaven. To him the belief in theological dogmas may seem a mere quibble about words, but physical facts are barriers which cannot possibly be got over. Happily, Science herself shows that these barriers do not exist. The Deity has not created mysteries, but man, as a cloak to his own ignorance, has determined that He shall be recognised as a mysterious God, and the evolution of truth can alone withdraw this monstrous delusion from the human mind. The laws that govern the universe are His, but they are also at the service of man, therefore it is for man's highest interest to study them and to understand them. His being is not apart from that of man's, nor has He some mysterious method of existence altogether different from man's. As He is so are we. We are capable of knowing all about the latent forces in Nature, and He already knows all. Of knowledge He is the Master, while we are the pupils who are able to know all things. We are in constant communication with Him, directly and indirectly, for as rays of light converge to the sun, so do the universal etheric chords, the telepath of all knowledge, converge at the Deity, the Source of truth and Centre of life. The language which He uses on this telepath is the language of Nature, known to all, the language in which all our human senses are addressed, the language of universal vibratory signals. There would be little majesty in the sea but for its great tempests, yet it is ignorantly called a cruel and greedy ocean when its overwhelming power devours the insufficiently protected lives of men. If there be any blame at all, surely it is attachable only to men who risk themselves and their fortunes on seas that again and again have declared their nature, and shown man that he must not oppose the action of the laws that control them. Who would think of blaming a fire for burning a child's finger, because the child averred that it did not know before that fire would burn a finger ? If a king and a beggar fall into a river both will get wet. If lightning were to strike an innocent child, the effect would be the same as when it struck some notorious blackguard. Nature is so consistent in all things that she is never out of harmony with herself, even to the extent of bringing calamity to the evil and the good. She spares no violators, and does not determine innocence and guilt by ignorance and knowledge. With her it is simply a question of guilty or not guilty: she considers no extenuating circumstances, and that ought to be seen as simply just, as it is seen to be simple justice that fire should burn a finger intruded in ignorance or knowledge. In the normal condition there is no discord in Nature. Every law is harmonious in itself, and works in harmony with every other law; but the calling into action of any latent force, like the throwing of a stone into a still pool, causes commotion in proportion to the action of that force, and this new-begotten commotion or discord may still be said to be harmonious, inasmuch as its action is invariable and never out of place. In fact, Nature's law cannot do wrong (much less the Law-maker). It is bound to do the inevitable, and what is the inevitable resultant of certain actions cannot be called wrong or unjust. It must come, and it cannot come in unawares. Evil is the inevitable resultant of breaking the laws in Nature which are the laws of God, therefore He is not unjust or wrong in permitting evil, the inevitable resultant of breaking His law. With all reverence be it said, the Deity cannot help Himself from permitting existent evils except by breaking His own laws, which could only produce greater inevitable evils. All evil is the resultant of law-breaking, wilfully or unwilfully, and the Deity Himself could not prevent this evil without breaking His own law and thus creating greater evil still, just as surely as the damming of an undesirable river would cause an overflow at the banks. All evil is discord in the harmony of Nature, from the slightest tinge of conscience to the agonies of hell. All discord is the resultant of interference with the action of some law. When the mysteries of former times have become revealed truths, they have been seen to be as simple as the truth that no rivers run up hill, or can do other than run down. The unknown is neither necessarily unknowable nor mysterious. There has not been a single physical discovery of late years that was not formerly considered past finding out. Man has been the creator of mystery, not the Deity, whose transcendent order of architecture is conspicuously simple when understood. The results of every scientific research prove this. Works of art of the highest order imitate this sublime simplicity, and nowhere in revealed religion or in evolutionary truth has reason been found for believing that the Deity has aimed at the mysterious. His wonders are not meant to be past finding out. All will yet become plain, not by any cataclysm or unnatural revolution, but by the simple and natural evolution of truth. The evolutions in Nature are as peaceful and harmonious as her changes from one season to another, and all great and permanent changes in the conditions of humanity are as harmonious in their unostentatious but powerful evolutions. There is no such thing as calamity, either in nations or individuals, if by calamity be meant some evil that comes out of the natural course of events. When an avalanche sweeps away an Alpine village, it is wrong to lay it as an unforeseen or improbable evil at the door of Nature or Deity. If calamities be brought about by supernatural agencies, then the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius was not a calamity, nor was the destruction of Lisbon by an earthquake. It has been shown that the ravages of plagues can be controlled by giving proper attention to sanitary laws, and therefore the scourges of plagues are unjustly called an evil visitation of Providence. The overthrow of great nations whose inhabitants have given themselves up to indulgence in luxurious living, and so degenerated their race, cannot be called a calamity brought about by the will of the gods. Honest poverty has no disgrace, but the starvation of masses of people who might be the backbone of their nation is an evil permitted by God, but it produced by man Ñ not necessarily by the immediate sufferer. All violent outbreaks from volcanoes, earthquakes and floods are natural resultants of given conditions, and in no case can it be said that the Deity does anything outside the lines of established law, neither to bring evil nor to bring good. As far as man has found out, there is no visible symptom of Divine interference with the operation of Nature's laws, so as to make them act contrary to their own principles. But to influence them to more or less action is a different matter. All intelligence that passes through our physical senses to the intellect is conveyed by vibrations, and the action of the laws that govern these vibrations is never interfered with by the Deity, so as to make the action untrue to its law. There is no room for a man to doubt the stability of the law. He can never say the result differs from day to day. The infallibility of the law is an insurance against doubt. The laws of vibrations are fixed and universal. All ideas suggested by Nature to the mind are by them transmitted, and there is no evidence to show their action is obstructed by Divine power so as to frustrate their lawful results. Why should knowledge not be so conveved to the soul by this universal system of vibration ? Where is the necessity for introducing a new system in opposition to the Universal one understood by every living creature and being ? Evil and calamity as such are not created, but are misfortunes that naturally befall man under given conditions, that might be avoided by knowledge of laws in Nature whose destructive action under the given conditions might be evaded. Beliefs are not inherited like blood and disease, but transmitted by education that begins at birth, when parents, etc., rear around the natural growth of the intellect scaffoldings of accepted superstitions, prejudices, and dogmas to nurse or buttress what is believed to be naturally and necessarily a weak, unhealthy, unfinished, and gangrenous germ of Divine creation. Whatever be the origin of ideas, it is a fact that they do get into the human mind and there perform certain work, and this alone, if there were no other proof, is sufficient to show that the human mind is an organism worked and regulated by fixed laws. We know much about the action of nutriment taken into the human system, and we know how steam operates an engine. Every organism that we do understand is worked on the most common-sense principles; why, then, should this mental organism not work on the same common-sense principle, whether the idea be fostered from the latent germ innate in the mind, or whether it be transmitted there from another mind ? There is certain work to be done in the organs of the mental mechanism. This work must be done on, or in, something, for science will not permit faith to say work can be done on, or in, nothing; that something must be material, however attenuated. Now, the idea that is admitted into the mind is knowledge; but knowledge is communicated language, whether that language be in word, symbol, picture, etc., therefore there must be a language of the mind, and that language can only be communicated through the material organism of the mind. All known language of Nature is in symbolic vibrations, and the only vibratory material in the mind is presumably the ether. How is it possible to evade the belief that ideas in the mind are code-signals of variations of vibrations of the ether ? In speaking through a telephone there is no sound except at the speaker's end, although the hearer may think he is listening to the sound in his own ear. There is simply a vibratory indication in his ear that certain disturbances are being made on the wave-line that enters his ear. When a bird sings on a distant tree, the singing may be heard all round, but the whistling sound is not all round. There is no sound between the bird and the hearing ear, just as there is no sound on the telephone wire between the speaker and the hearer. The air is vibrated, and the vibrations enter the ear; but the sound is not reproduced there, as in the case from an echo on a rock, else it would be possible for others to hear the singing of the bird in the hearer's ear. There is no sound in the intervening air, but simply certain vibratory signals produced by the whistling of the bird, and received into the ear, the most perfect instrument for receiving and reproducing vibrations, but not the sound; for when the sound is reproduced in the ear, there must be something very far wrong with that organ. So, when a colour is seen in the distance, the ray from that colour to the eye affects the organ of sight with certain fixed variations of vibrations, and the colour is known by the indicating signals, yet there is no colour between the object and the eye, nor is there any colour in the eye; the very same thing happens with all the senses, no matter where the object may be that originates the vibrations, and what is true in the physical is true in the spiritual and mental worlds. Between the creature and the Creator the most solemn communications may be made Ñ communications sacred to the hearer and secret to the world Ñ and yet there be nothing in the least remarkable or mysterious about the physical transaction, which is merely the action of the most commonplace law. |
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