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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

Solid Matter Abolished—Nothing Exists but Corpuscles of Electricity

Solid Matter Abolished—Nothing Exists but Corpuscles of Electricity.

Accompanying the foregoing developments must be mentioned the discovery of the X Rays and the recent declaration of Scientists that there is no such thing as solid matter. That which we call solid matter has been found to consist of an aggregation of atoms—infinitely small, so small, in fact, that 100,000 of them would only cover a square inch—and these atoms appear to be subdivided into something infinitely smaller still. These latter inconceivably minute particles have been named electrons by certain physicists, and corpuscles of electricity by others. So that in the final analysis we find nothing but electricity as the basis of all matter.

The whole universe is one vast ocean of electric energy—heaving, pulsating, always in a state of flux and incessant activity. It was Sir William Crookes, the brilliant British Scientist, who first advanced this theory some thirty years ago, and he has lived to see it accepted by the more celebrated of his gifted colleagues. Amongst these is Professor Edgar Lucien Larkin, the well-known Astronomer and Director of the famed Lowe Observatory, in California, who has recently contributed a striking series of erudite articles on the subject to the columns of the Harbinger of Light From these articles I cull the following extracts relating to what he describes as "the recent mighty discoveries in those almost inscrutable realms of the new higher Science of electricity—

"The Science began when that great pioneer, William Crookes, made his first and now classical and historical experiments with his glass, high vacuum tubes. Human eyes for the first time saw matter put on an entirely new condition. It became radiant. He called it Radiant Matter, or matter in a Fourth State. This was in 1879. At once every physical, chemical and electrical laboratory in the world became scenes of the most intense activity. After classes were dismissed, University professors locked the doors and worked all night delving and digging round about the base of Nature.

"The most skilful glassblowers were employed to make new, strange, and perfect tubes. And mechanical skill was taxed to the limit in making air-pumps to exhaust the air in these new tubes, so that finally less than the one-millionth part remained. This was for the purpose of allowing the electrical particles to fly from end to end as free as possible from collision with the molecules of air. These almost empty tubes of hard glass had page 8 platinum terminals or electrodes fused through the end walls, and these were connected by wires to sources of electricity at enormous pressures. When the electricity was turned on, wonders entirely unknown were displayed.

"I was astonished when I made my first demonstration before students with a Crookes' tube. The bombarding particles were turned on platinum, and this obdurate metal became white hot in an instant. Strange but supernal lights glowed in the vacuum. These were of surpassing beauty, and were at once sent into the spectroscope for analysis. Illimitable wonders were again revealed, and every Scientific man in the world buckled on armour in which to explore this new and infinitely wide field, in which everything was new.

"With rare prescience and with a sagacity always characteristic of Crookes, he said that the streams through the tubes consisted of negatively electrified bodies—each inconceivably small. This statement is the basic rock now lying under the most wonderful of all Sciences, if indeed one can be called more wonderful than another. For all those engaged in these studies can now see, and are fully aware, that the universe is—what shall I say?—hundreds of millions of times more majestic, complex and intricate than ever conceived by the most vivid imagination. It is one grand homogeneous unit, and we humans are integral parts thereof, especially our minds. Crookes said that the particles flying at terrific speed were charged negatively. In 1895 Perrin proved this to be true.

"Crookes' particles are now called corpuscles. A few physicists call them electrons. But the point is that nothing else, whatever, is in existence. Thus everything—all atoms of matter and of mind—are made of corpuscles, and these are made of pure electricity, and nothing else. This is the inevitable tendency and trend of the latest Science, mental and material. For the entire activity of the universe consists of concentration and radiation—a flux and flow of corpuscles toward and away from a centre.

"Telepathy consists of a flow of corpuscles away from a mental centre and impact on another. And telekinesis is caused by the motion of corpuscles. So is everything. There is no such thing as a phenomenon. The universe and all within are in the clutch of law. Thoughts are things—currents of real corpuscles. Cells in brains are transmitters and receivers of corpuscles, and these only. The body and its organs, together with the brain and nerves, unite into one complex electro-bio-mental machine. Its sole output is corpuscles, and it receives corpuscles only. Life and mind are electrical.

"Since the discovery of hydrogen, its atom has been the smallest and lightest body known. It is so small that the most powerful minds—those of the world's ablest mathematicians, have never been able to think, or even begin to think, how minute it is. Yet it weighs as much as 1700 corpuscles ! These are the carriers, makers, workers, and builders. They made the entire visible and invisible universes, one within the other."

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Professor Edgar Lucien Larkin,

Professor Edgar Lucien Larkin,

Director of Lowe Observatory, California.

"You know how strenuously I have written for 40 years all over the world in 70 different papers and magazines on Natural Science and rigid Materialism—over 4000 articles which I now see clearly were on the wrong side. Now I am studying and writing all the time on Psychology and Mental Subjects."

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Elaborating still further on the theme Professor Larkin says :—

"Matter is chemically inert unless nascent. Thus the most recent and world-astounding declaration of Science is that nothing exists but electricity in the form of inconceivably small discrete particles or bodies called corpuscles. . . Corpuscles in a nascent state vibrate, oscillate, undulate and revolve with velocities far and ever beyond hope of comprehension. These motions, and these only, constitute the entire life of the Universe. Then our minds, our very thoughts, conscious and sub-conscious, are flows of corpuscles. Radium sends out flows of corpuscles, and so do cells in the brain. Positively thoughts are as real as are these corpuscles . . and doubtless our own marvellous minds are made of corpuscles.

"Thus the Universe is a unit, although there are actually billions of suns, and, without doubt, trillions of minute invisible planets like the earth and other planets of our little solar system, all of which, even up to trillions, amount to next to nothing in the mighty cosmical edifice. . .

"Now, since all suns are composed of like phases of matter, and as all matter known to spectroscopists can be resolved into corpuscles, it can be said that nothing is in existence beside. But when the corpuscles are obtained the ablest physicists and chemists cannot possibly detect any difference between them and electricity. So we say that the entire Universe and all things it contains are made of electricity. But corpuscles are so far beyond all powers of imagination that no hope can be had of thinking about their ultimate nature."

After perusing these mind-whirling statements, the reader will probably want to stop and "take breath"! They, are, however, endorsed, amongst others, by that brilliant astronomer, M. Camille Flammarion, who last year published a work in which he declares that matter, of which we make so much, does not really exist, and that the Universe is a mighty organism which is ruled by dynamics of a psychic order. That which we term matter, then, is simply an agglomeration of tiny particles of electricity attracted to each other by some inscrutable Law of Affinity. It is not a solid at all. It is a mosaic of electric corpuscles and perhaps this fact furnishes an explanation of its being so easily penetrable by the marvellous X Rays.