Excerpt from Electricity and Life

It enters into the truth about species to show that reprod uc tive germs are electrically, though not by set and fixed form, patterns that each germ, male as well as female, acts as a reprod uctive structure, all animals and all plants (with some very low exceptions) being two woven into one, the explana tion of a vast range of facts which Darwinism has put in a wrong light; and that the distinction of sex results from elec trical opposition of positive and negative. That insects have made the irregularities of the flowers which they visit; that cross-fertilization is Nature's better method, because only by it is adequate electrical opposition brought into play, and also because the two plants which are woven into one so often fail to develop evenly; and that insects greatly help by their elec trical intensity, are conclusions immediately resulting from the main doctrine of the true origin of species. It may be re marked also that the incessant reference made by Mr. Darwin to purpose, which allowed the old supernaturalism to survive through a large part of his system, disappears altogether with the new doctrine, which knows only natural result, irrespective of immediate design. Darwinism borrows the Maker of heaven and earth for the original speck of protoplasm, and beyond that knows no God; but of little gods in the slime and the bush it is full. These do not belong in a true system of nature, which at once completes materialism, and gives it a cosmic elevation and breadth suggestive of Infinite Reason in the inscrutable background of natural law.

Chemistry and magnetism have successively acknowledged the overruling influence of electricity and it is probable that every efiect depending upon the powers of Inorganic matter, and perhaps most of those relating to vegetable and animal life, will ultimately be found subordinate to it.

There Is an immensity of facts which justify us in believing that the atoms of matter are in some way endowed or associated with electrical powers, to which they owe their most striking qualities. It is wonderful to observe how small a quantity of a compound body is decomposed by a certain portion of electricity. One grain of water will require an electric current equal to a very powerful flash of lightning. This gives an almost overwhelming idea of the extract dinary quantity or degree of electric power which naturally belongs to the par ticles of matter the enormous electric power of each particle or atom of mat ter.

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