22 THE UNIVERSE 



the solar system, six billions of miles in diameter. 

 Of this electricity, it uses for its own light, heat, 

 and vital force what it needs, and the balance is 

 thrown off to its luminous corona or photosphere, 

 where it is shot by the law of electric repulsion in 

 the sun and electric attraction in the planets to the 

 earth and plants. The brilliancy of the sun is caused 

 by its surplus electricity creating a luminous aurora 

 which extends from its poles to its equator. 



Newton discovered an imaginary force. Newton 

 had an imagination which the scientific plodders 

 who came after him lacked. They have dug in the 

 dirt, while he sailed through azure seas and linked 

 suns and worlds together by the mere sweep of the 

 imagination, without any explanation or conceiv- 

 able cause, and called it gravity. He might just 

 as well have called it weight or ponderosity, which 

 means the same as gravity. And the scientists fol- 

 lowed him and accepted his theory of gravity, which 

 means nothing and explains nothing. It was the 

 best they could do, as he had an imagination and 

 an idea and they had none. Thus the blind led 

 the blind for two centuries, until electricity and its 

 invisible forces were discovered, and a new field for 

 thought and causation was opened up. 



Let us suppose that space and the invisible atoms 

 or star dust which permeate it are seized by electric 

 energy, creating a boundless sea of invisible electro- 

 magnetism, which began to vibrate to the law of 

 action and reaction, attraction and repulsion. Un- 

 der this law every atom became a tiny magnet, 

 and electric centers are formed which are the foun- 

 dation stones and nuclei of growing suns and 

 worlds; and invisible atoms, nebulas and finally 



