Extent Of Electric Agency

Categories: FIRST PRINCIPLES.
Sources: A Newly Discovered System Of Electrical Medication

When we have settled upon the position that the electricity of the

heavens and of the artificial machine are identical, and that their

identity is essentially one with galvanism, magnetism, the electro-vital

fluid of animal and the life-force of the vegetable kingdoms, it

requires no extravagant imagination, nor remarkable degree of

enthusiastic credulity, to suppose that all the forms of physical

attraction and repuls on are due, under God, to the diversified

modifications of the same all-pervading agent--ELECTRICITY. Indeed, for

myself, I feel no hesitation in expressing it as my belief that

electricity, in one phase or another, and controlled only by WILL, is

the grand motive-power of the universe. I believe that, in the form of

electro-vital fluid, the great Creator employs it as His immediate agent

to carry on all the functions of animal life; and that, in respect to

voluntary functions, He subordinates it as a servant to the will of the

creature, to effect such cerebral action and such muscular contractions

as are demanded by the creature's volitions. I am disposed to think

that, by the omnipotent power of His will, He controls and uses

electricity, in its various modifications, as the immediate moving-force

by which He accomplishes all the changes in the physical universe. It is

fast becoming a generally-received opinion among modern savans, that

every body in nature is really magnetic, more or less; and that all

visible or sensible changes are but the result of changing poles.

Chemical affinities and revulsions are believed to be only the more

delicate forms of electrical attraction and repulsion; the ultimate

particles of matter, no less than matter in masses, being subject to the

control of electrical laws. The imponderable agents, light and caloric,

under the ingenious tests of scientific scrutiny, are beginning to give

some very decided indications of being simply electric phenomena.

Indeed, the doctrine or theory that supposes caloric to be simply

atomic motion is even now being very generally accepted by the

scientific world. And that motion in the atoms of a body which causes in

us the sensation of heat is probably electric motion. And permit me to

observe that, though the operations of nature seem, at first thought, to

be wonderfully complex and mysterious, yet if the views here presented

be correct, the marvel is changed; and we are brought to a profound

admiration of the simplicity of the means by which the Almighty

conducts His material operations. A single agent made to perform

processes so infinitely numerous, diversified and apparently complex!

How amazing! Simplicity in complexity!--majestic, like the mind of God.