The composition of matter and the evolution of mind; immortality a scientific certainty
From the introduction:
Man has ever been seeking to find his way backwards through effects to cause; and, paradoxical as it appears, the measure of his progress backwards marks his progress forward. It follows that in the origin of man we find the key to his destiny; and the missing link in the evolution theory — or. Whence came life? — is to be looked for in the composition of matter.
In this chapter, I shall refer briefly to obvious and well-known facts, and to the recent revelations of science, and outline new and fundamental facts that are to be made plain in subsequent chapters. Causal law is observable in all evolutionary transformations; a knowledge of the Cause would seem to be necessary as a basis for reasonable conclusions. Did all that is, by some fortuitous process, evolve from the physical substance, or are all transformations traceable to the actual and structural operation of inherent spirit?
A late and most important discovery in physical chemistry is that the ultimate division of matter is not the atom, but the electron, which is a corpuscle of force, or an electric charge of force; and that the variety of things composing the material world — that is, all visible substance — are aggregations of force, in infinitely varying " mass " and modes of combination informed by, and structurally attracted in, a universal trend toward the Source and Common Centre.
The atoms composing all things are, we are told, true planetary systems of electrons, and that one body differs from another in being composed of spheres (electrons) that differ even in their unthinkable minuteness as truly as one star differs from another.
Briefly, I shall make plain that these differences are in the same ratio as are the differences in planets and stars; that the cause of movement, whether of sun or electron, is the same; and that the infinite diversities of substance — solid, liquid, gaseous, and spiritual — are differences in quantitative, not qualitative, mass or value.
We understand something of the gravitational relation of each planet in the solar system to the sun, its visible centre. Reasoning from analogy and observed effects, we know that the solar system itself, with its full-orbed, glorious centre, is circling ' "Mass" in gravitational value, every unit of energy differing from every other in tension round a greater centre; and that all systems, from the incomprehensibly great to the unthinkably minute, are circling and intercircling around the Source which is the Central Energy, the Supreme, Omniscient Spirit.
All power, whether physical, mental, or psychical, is gravitational; and we cannot too often recall that power is only seen in effects, and that all that is actual is unseen. That that which is seen is made of the unseen is not a metaphysical statement, but an actual fact. Gravitation is an unseen force; its source or being is the persistence of radiant energy from the Central Source in everything that has being; thus, structurally, there is the universal attraction of all things toward the Source and common centre.