BY THOMAS EDISON.................XXXXI - THE MYSTERY OF LIFE I believe all the old and accepted theories of the origin of life to be fundamentally wrong. Down in Florida, where I have a place, there is a bush which grows in the ocean---that is, it seems to be a bush. Really it is animal matter built into bush form by the efforts of thousands of insects; it is the work of highly organized individuals massed in a crowd for the purpose of the building. The unin- formed who see it, native whites and negroes, believe this insect-aggregate to be a vegetable individual---a sea-tree. Almost all men, even those whom we accept as best informed, make a similar mistake with regard to that which we denominate as a cat, or an elephant. We think the man a unit, that he is just a man; we think the cat a unit, that he is just a cat; we think the elephant a unit, that it is just an elephant. I am convinced that such thinking is basically in error. Like the “bush” in the sea near my Florida home, the man, the cat, the elephant are collections of units. The man does. The cat does. The elephant does. But it is only seeming. Each is made up of many individuals gathered in a community, and it is the community. The unit which makes it up may be too small even for the microscope to see. Everything which we can see is a manifesta- tion of community, not of individual effort. The mystery of life would be inexplicable were it not for this. We say a man dies. Perhaps, in a sense, the term is accurate when the aggregate which we have called a man ceases to function as an aggregate and therefore no longer can be called a man; but the expression is not at all accurate if by it we mean that the life which kept that man at work or at play ceases to exist. Life does not cease to exist. The life-units which have formed that man do not die. They merely pass out of the unimportant mechanism which they have been inhabiting, which has been called a man and has been mistaken for an individual, and select some other habitat or habitats. Perhaps they become the animating force of some- thing else or many other things. The theory which generally maintains about the origin of life seems to me to be unreasonable. We can’t get something out of nothing. Life can’t make life. Life is. It is not made. Another thing which continually puzzled me, for a long time, was that nature seemed to be so horribly cruel. I could not acount for it . Finally, I have come to the conclusion that it is not true. It is only apparent. Really those things which seem to be manifestations of nature’s cruelty are merely episodes of competition between groups which covet one another’s machines, one feeling that the possession of another’s might help it better to meet the exigencies of the environment with which it finds itself surrounded. Take the supposed cruelty of the shark toward the cod for example; it probably is the effort of the vast swarm of individuals which make up the shark to obtain for its own purposes the mechanism of the group which inhabits the cod, has built the cod, and has given it the appear- ance and the functions of what we call “individual life.” Real life is not lost at all in such a struggle. Thus, I believe that really it is not cruelty at all when the battle brings a complete and not merely a partial victory, when the victim is “killed,” as we er- roneously say and think, and not wounded and left “living” and in pain. That is the only theory which seems reasonable to me with regard to that which we have denominated the “life-and-death struggle.” Then, if the individual is not the unit, what is? Ob- viously, the unit must be the smallest complete entity among those which make up the aggregate which we erroneously have called the individual. Very well. Then how small can a unit be and how compli- cated? That must depend upon the fineness of matter. Smallness of units must accord with the ultimate fine- ness of matter. And life is individual to the unit and not to the aggregate of units. It is probable that the units are so small that, as yet, no microscope powerful enough to distinguish them as individuals has been created. If we accept this as fact, another question arises: Is matter fine enough to permit units of such minute size to be very complicated? We need not worry about that. The electron theory gives to it a reply which is wholly satisfactory. I have had the matter roughly calculated mathematically and have at hand the data of the calculation. I am sure that a highly organized entity, consisting of mil- lions of electrons, still remaining too small to be vis- ible through any existing microscope, is possible. Ink your fingers, as the police might that of a crimi- nal, and then press it upon paper, thus recording the many tiny whorls which indent its skin. Then seriously burn it, so as to take the skin all off, and when it heals----that is, when the forms anew---ink it again and again press it upon paper. It will record whorls precisely similar to those which you had burned away. Who built the new in duplicate of the old? Nature? No. Nature would not take the trouble to remem- ber such unimportant details. The new were built by thev units of the swarm, and the exactness with which the old were reproduced is due to the fact that the swarm has memory. If a bridge falls, we rebuild it. If there should come along an outsider, say, a man from mars with eyes so coarse in their functioning (a reasonable thought) that he could not see anything so small as a human workman, but acute enough so that he could see the the ruins of the old bridge and the new structure erected to take its place, he would say that the old bridge had died and nature had grown a new one. Again, If this creature, unable to see anything as small as a man, but able to see big things, like our larger ships and say, sky-scrapers, were to examine our world, he would think the ships and sky-scrapers were natural growths. He never would dream that man had built them, for he never would be able to see man. The fact that we attribute to nature so many creative achievements is proof of our ignorance and the inadequacy of our power of observation. The individuals in the aggregate which we call a “man,” the members of the swarm which (to some extent by chance) have collected to make that man, are ninety-five per cent workers and five per cent directors. The workers cannot loaf or stop, even though something may compel them from their habitat, that which has been the “body.” of a “man.” They must go to something else to build, as, for in- stance, to corn, a tree, grass---whatever may be---al- ways working under the direction of the higher type among them. These, by the way, will be responsible, as they dominate or fail to, or in accordance with their aspirations, for the character of that which now is built. In the case of a “man,” for example, he may be “bad” or “good,” in accordance with the trend of these dominant individuals or in accordance with the majority quality of the individuals which have gath- ered, more or less by chance, in the swarm which makes him up. He is “good” if “good” individuals are more numerous in it and dominate, and “bad” if the reverse occurs. The theory explains many things. Among these is the hitherto mysterious force called the “subconscious mind.” Instances of startling ability, such as that, for e ample, which characterizes a Rockefeller, are begin ning to indicate to me the chance gathering into swarms of individuals in which qualities of a certain kind are paramount. In the institute which bears the Rockefeller name, and which, by the way, was endowed with some of the millions which the collective genius of the assem- bled Rockefeller intelligence has gathered, parts of a chicken “killed” years ago---that is to say then dis- membered so completely that,werethe oldbeliefs accurate, the process must have caused death and must have been followed by decay unless some method of artificial preservation had been resorted to----still “live” and “grow” in gelatine-filled glass jars pro- vided for the purpose of the experiment. The cells-- that is, the communes or groups of individuals which originally built that chicken---still are sending out workers, and these continue building. This is because the environment surrounding them is kept constantly favorable to their work despite the “death” of the “individual”----the aggregate called a “chicken”s. Now, let us think about that chicken’s origin. The accepted age-old theory is that it was the develop- ment of an egg to which the life of the mother hen had imparted part of itself, and that this developed until, within the egg, an embryonic chick was formed, which, growing, became perfect and strong, broke the shell, and appeared, a fully developed baby fowl. As a matter of fact, if the theory upon which I work is accurate, the egg from which the chicken came held the nucleus indeed, but held nothing which could be responsible for all that afterward brought about the formation of the chicken. That, I am beginning to believe, entered this egg from the outside. It is generally contended that all which is neccessary in order that a chicken may be built is fertilized egg, and that, under favorable conditions, this egg devel- ops into the chicken through the working of forces within itself. I do not believe this. I believe that what I have called a “swarm,” liberated from something else, finds this nucleus from the outside, and, accept- ing it as its new home, goes into it and starts to build this or that kind of chicken according to the indica- tion of the nucleus. Then comes the inevitable question: “Can life come out of life in unlimited reproduction?” Already I have expressed a negative opinion, with regard to this by saying: “Life can’t make life. Life is.” I do not believe the affirmative reply, which so generally is accepted. Had that affirmative theory been accurate, the earth long since would have been covered and smothered with all kinds of life. It is obvious that there must be some limit to reproduction. “Bad years” and “good years” for corn, for instance, could not explain the situation as it really is. We don’t know what the units of life are or what the requisites of their existence. It maybe that they can live and prowl about in the ether of space and do not in the least require our atmosphere or soil. If so, earth-life can have accessions from the mysterious realms beyond our atmosphere. Probably that is how we got here in the first place, how life got here. The thought that life originated on this insignificantly little and comparatively unimportant sphere to me seems inconceivably egotistical. As a matter of fact, the manner of the genesis of life upon this earth, I think, was this: After the earth cooled of the great heat of its assemblage,life-units came to it through space, into which they had been thrown from some other more developed sphere or spheres. Reaching the earth, they adapted themselves to the environment they found here; and then began the evolution of the various species as we have them, each “growing” individual being a collection of cell- communes. I think this theory will explain special abilities better than any other. It will rid the world of harmful superstitions such as those of spiritualism. It will bring order out of the chaos of much of that puzzle- ment which we endeavor to accept as reasoning with regard to the creation and the genesis of man. I have spoken about extraordinary developments of so-called genius in individuals. Special ability must result if, by some fortuitous chance, a collection, or swarm (I find myself accepting that word as de- scriptive) chances to be made up of entities of vary high class along one particular line. Affinity, the at- traction of like for like, probably plays its part i the formation of such collection. There have been hun- dreds of cases of extraordinary significance. Another question which must be answered before I can proceed on the intelligent development of this theory is: “Could such a little thing as I have in mind travel through the ether of space or only through the air?” If it could travel through the air only, then its progress would be slow. If it could travel through the ether, it could proceed at the rate of a hundred and eighty thousand miles a second, going, a distance equivalent to the circumference of the earth in one- four-hundred-and-twentieth of a minute. There, as elsewhere in the general problem, is work for a math- ematician who is very expert. There is work here, also, for an expert botanist, because the line between animal and vegetable life is so very narrow. And there remains for determina- tion the line between “live” and “dead” matter and between movable and fixed life. In the early moments of this paper, I spoke about what seems to be but is not a “sea-bush” that grows in the water near my winter place in Florida. A cer- tain class of organized, living beings, large enough even to be seen with the naked eye, builds structures which appear to be but are not plants, being nothing more nor less than swarms of insects gathered in that form in order that they may get food conveniently. Consider the sponge. It seems vegetable, but is ani- mal. Investigate further, and you will find it to be an aggregate which has been built by a group of insects. It is impossible to accept as fact all the apparent testimony of appearances. In geological ages, all of a certain type of crustacean creatures suddenly dis- appeared, and quite a different type came into being. The swarms that had built the first had not been annihilated, but the environment had changed, and, in order to meet its new conditions, they built mecha- nisms of another pattern. One mechanism has been replaced by another of a different type many times in the world’s history. Changed conditions not only require but force new forms. When a new evniron- ment replaces an old one, old forces build in new ways, in order to adapt themselves to altered circum- stances. Doubtless something of the sort will happen many times again. Certain animals that we know much about have been changed entirely in order to meet altered environment, and of this we have incontro- vertible evidence. For instance, the elephant used to be a woolly beast. He ceased to be. He didn’t change himself. The animal doesn’t know anything about such changes. It is the group which changes him, working quite beyond his consciousness. The indi- vidual members of the swarm---that is, its leaders--- realize the new necessities and begin to meet them gradually and with invariable intelligence. They stop building the old forms; they stopped building wool on the outside of the elephant when the elephant’s environment became tropical. When the swarm finds wool unnecessary, wool, then, is dispensed with. Swarms do it all. The daisy has been the same for, say, fifty thousand years. Then comes a variation. Perhaps the daisy becomes blue. How could one daisy do that? Some disturbance of the swarm that built that daisy must be responsible for the change. The absurdity of our present theories seems pitiful to me. “Nature does it!” What of that remark? It really means nothing, takes us nowhere. Botanists and allied scientists may prove me to be all wrong in saying that. That will not worry me if they will produce something which really will be reasonable. It will take thought, deep thought, and that high mathematical skill which I have mentioned to dis- cover how many individuals can live in each cell; for a cell cannot be the unit of organized matter; it must be a group of organisms---a fixed commune. I want some one to start along a new line of thought with regard to these and kindred subjects. We have been accepting old-established theories a complacency unworthy even of our present imper- fect mental grasp. We need fresh brain-energy among our scientists, new bravery, new initiative. Einstein has shown the world the sort of thought it needs, and it needs it along many lines. The more Einsteins we can get, the better . I wish we had an Einstein in every branch of science. Many great discoveries remain to be made. We must start anew in many things, rejecting the old theories as Einstein did, building along new lines as Einstein did, fearing nothing any more than Einstein did. It is not impossible that, when we find the ultimate unit of life, we shall learn that the journey through far space never could harm it and that there is very little that could stop it. Remember that it is smaller, infinitely, than anything the microscope can see . I believe the ultimate life-particle could go through glass with the greatest case, and that not the highest or the lowest temperature known to human science could harm it. Such units of life could have come, and possibly still are coming, without injury through the cold of space. We know of microbes which will endure through four degrees above absolute zero, and some are so small that they can be forced through porcelain. We human beings are colloids, not crystals; and we are in the best possible general environment for col- loids. We never use crystals in our body-building if we can avoid them. It is quite conceivable that these entities with which life starts have intelligence sufficient for the initiation of new lines of endeavor from time to time, as occa- sion or necessity for new lines arises. There is that hairless elephant; there is that blue daisy; there are countless changed and changing forms. That is the De Vries theory, which opposes the Darwinian theory of the origin of species. The little entities are fine chemists. They can make an alkali so strong that it will displace from its salts the chemist’s master alkali, potassium, and they must be close to ultimate matter, for they decompose salt into sodium and hydrochloric acid. Obviously, will take great chemical as well as great mathemati- cal knowledge to cope with the problems which they offer, but the world has, or will have, men who can do it. Even now there is the wonderful Japanese, Takamini, who discovered adrenalin, that extraordi- nary astringent which is manufactured by a gland and controls blood-pressure. There is a significant instance, an illustration! It is the product of a gland not an effort of intelligence, which controls blood-pressure. The brains of men have little to do with the control of the bodies of men. Tell me that our brains are the sole seat of our intelligence? Why, seven-tenths of the action of our bodies is quite automatic---that is, entirely be- yond and dissociated from brain---control. The brain does not control the circulation of the blood, the action of the lungs, stomach, or bowels, growth of any of the vital processes. It is controlled by them. Nothing could be more absurd than to regard the brain as the exclusive seat of knowledge. Knowledge is everywhere throughout our being and throughout all other beings, inanimate, perhaps, as well as ani- mate. It is everywhere. In the animal, human or other- wise, the head is merely the chief office in which orders are originated and from which they are dis- tributed. The five senses realize, understand, and meet the conditions which exist outside the body. The brain is occupied by the high-class workers. They have charge. The balance are, I might say, the proletariat. But it is dangerous (as many politicians have discovered ) to assume that any proletariat is without intelligence. Those among this proletariat who show special ability may achieve promotion, moving upward to the higher tasks, I think, as men developing special talents in industry may move up- ward. Perhaps it is this process which slowly is mak- ing us more civilized. Now, I shall express another thought which may seem startling. I believe these swarms, or, at least, the individuals which make up these swarms, live forever. Individuals among the entities which form them may change their habitat, leaving one swarm and joining another, so to speak, building corn, for instance, to-day and chickens to-morrow, in accord- ance with the material which they find at hand to work with. It is not impossible that the chief workers may keep together, from time to time changing their environment as circumstances may dictate, but I think evidence exists that the workers separate when a job on which they have been occupied is finished, and go to find new tasks with little or no regard for old companionships. This simply is a repetition, and perhaps the fundamental pattern of those processes which we find necessary in our ordinary lives. The personality-swarm abides within the fold of Broca, which, from eighty-two surgical operations, is known to be the seat of memory. If this swarm keeps together after body-death, our personality still lives. It is the most complicated of subjects, opening up very novel lines of reflection. That thought of the swarms is fascinating. A swarm, any swarm, easily might contain beings which knew how to build us as we were when we were chimpanzees or even as we were when we were fishes; I understand that in one period while we are in embryo we have the gills of fish, which slowly slough away before our actual birth. I think it is certain that, if our environment in future changes as materially as it has in the past, alterations as great as that from fish to man and from gills to noses will occur in the course of future ages. Then what shall we be? I have very vivid recollections of a motor journey through Switzerland not long before the World War began. As it progressed, I saw the effect of environ- ment upon myself. If we went to a hotel in a small town far from steam- or water-power,and therefore without electric light, we found everyone in it going to bed at half-past eight or nine o’clock. In other towns, where there was electric light, product of developed water-power from the Alps, the people didn’t go to bed till half-past eleven or midnight . They were alive and very likely out on the streets during those extra hours. We are virtually dead when we are asleep; that is, that is, we then have no productive mental life,and no mental life which is not produc- tive counts. Where there was light, we lived longer in the same length of time. Put a developed human being into an environment where there is no efficient artificial light and he must degenerate. Put an un- developed human being into an environment where there is artificial light and he will improve. Environment makes immense changes in animals, and it is interesting and hopeful to note that the en- vironment of human beings is improving more rap- ily than that of other animals. Perhaps, for an ant or a gnat, it is not changing at all, although primary changes are progressing in the world itself. Earth- quake shocks, like those which recently occurred in Mexico, prove that the world is shrinking . They are the convulsions attending permanent alterations in the earth’s size and shape, and indicate the release of strains. A Great Deal is being written and said about spiritu- alism these days, but the methods and apparatus used are just a lot of unscientific nonsense. I don’t say that all these so-called mediums are simply fakers scheming to fool the public and line their own pockets. Some of them may be sincere enough. They may really have gotten themselves into such a state of mind, that they imagine they are in communication with spirits. I have a theory of my own which would explain scientifically the existence in us of what is termed our “subconscious minds.” It is quite possible that those spiritualists who declare they receive communi- cations from another world allow their subconscious minds to predominate over their ordinary, everyday minds, and permit themselves to become, in a sense, hypnotized into thinking that their imaginings are actualities, that what they imagine as occurring, while they are in this mental state, really has occurred. But that we receive communications from another realm of life, or that we have---any means, or method through which we could establish this com- munication is quite another thing. Certain of that methods now in use are so crude, so childish, so un- scientific, that it is amazing how so many rational human beings can take any stock in them. If we ever do succeed in establishing communication with per- sonalities which have left this present life, it certainly won’t be through any of the childish contraptions which seem so silly to the scientist. I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us. If this is ever accomplished, it will be accomplished, not by any occult, mysterious, or weird means, such as are employed by so-called mediums, but by sci- entific methods. If what we call personality exists after death, and that personality is anxious to com- municate with those of us who are still in the flesh on this earth, there are two or three kinds of appa ratus which should make communication very easy. I am engaged in the construction of one such appa- ratus now, and I hope to be able to finish it before very many months pass. If those who have left the form of life that we have on earth cannot use, cannot move, the appa- ratus that I am going to give them the opportunity of moving, then the chance of there being a hereafter of the kind we think about and imagine goes down. on the other hand, it will, of course, cause a tre- mendous sensation if it is successful. I am working on the theory that our personality exists after what we call life leaves our present ma- terial bodies. If our personality dies, what’s the use of a hereafter? What would it amount to? It wouldn’t mean anything to us as individuals. If there is a hereafter which is to do us any good, we want our personality to survive, don’t we? If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical and scientific to assume that it retains memory, in- tellect, and other faculties and knowledge that we acquire on this earth. Therefore, if personality exists, after what we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave this earth would like to com- municate with those they have left here. Accord- ingly, the thing to do is to furnish the best con- ceivable means to make it easy for them to open up communication with us, and then see what happens. I am proceeding on the theory that in the very nature of things, the degree of material or physical power possessed by those in the next life must be extremely slight; and that, therefore, any instrument designed to be used to communicate with us must be super-delicate ---as fine and responsive as human ingenuity can make it. For my part, I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected, or moved, or manipulated----whichever term you want to use---by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something. I cannot believe for a moment that life in the first instance originated on this insignificant little ball which we call the earth---little, that is, in contrast with other bodies which inhabit space. The particles which combined to evolve living creatures on this planet of ours probably came from some other body elsewhere in the universe. I don’t believe for a moment that one life makes another life. Take our own bodies. I believe they are composed of myriads and myriads of infinitesimally small individuals, each in itself a unit of life, and that these units work in squads---or swarms, as I pre- fer to call them---and that these infinitesimally small units live forever. When we “die” these swarms of units, like a swarm of bees, so to speak, betake them- selves elsewhere, and go on functioning in some other form or environment. These life units are, of course, so infinitely small that probably a thousand of them aggregated to- gether would not become visible under even the ultra- microscope, the most powerful magnifying instrument yet invented and constructed by man. These units, if they are as tiny as I believe them to be, would pass through a wall of stone or concrete almost as easily as they would pass through the air. The more we learn the more we realize that there is life in things which we used to regard as inanimate, as lifeless. We now know that the difference between the lowest-known forms of animal life and trees or flowers or other plants is not so very great. Small as these units of life are, they could still contain a sufficient number of ultimate particles of matter to form highly organized entities or indi- viduals, with memory, certain varieties of skill, and other attributes of living entities. We, in our igno- rance of all that pertains to life, have come to imagine that if certain things happen to a human being or an animal its whole life ceases. This notion has been repeatedly disproved in recent years. The probability is that among units of life there are certain swarms which do most of the thinking and directing for other swarms. In other words, there are probably bosses, or leaders, among them, just as among humans. This theory would account for the fact that certain men and women have greater in- tellectuality, greater abilities, greater powers than others. It would account, too, for differences in moral character. One individual may be composed of a larger percentage of the higher order of these units of life than others. The moving out of myriads of what we may call the lower type of units of life and the influx of myriads of units of a higher order would explain the change which often takes place in the personality and character of individuals in the course of their existence on this earth. The doctors long ago told us that our whole bodies undergo complete transformation every seven years, that no particle that entered into the composition of our bodies at the beginning of one seven-year period remains in our bodies at the end of seven years later. this means that matter is discarded, new matter being replaced by the working life-units or individ- uals. This rough-and-ready way of describing the dis- carding of defective matter that is constantly going on in our make-up would not be inconsistent with the theory I have evolved. A common saying is, “We are creatures of environ- ment.” This is true, at least up to a certain point. We have seen how environment has wrought changes upon animals, and even wiped out certain species altogether---as the discovery of numerous skeletons of mammoth animals of prehistoric days has proved. Units of life, it is perfectly reasonable to deduce, require certain environment to function in certain ways, and when environment undergoes complete change, they seek other habitats, other dwellings, so to speak, for the carrying on of their functions. Numerous experiments conducted by medical sci- entists have revealed that the memory is located in a certain section of the human brain called the fold of Broca. Now, to return to what is called “life after death.” If the units of life which compose an indi- vidual’s memory hold together after that individual’s “death,” is it not within range of possibility, to say the least, that these memory swarms could retain the powers they formerly possessed, and thus retain what we call the individual’s personality after “dissolution” of the body? If so, then that individual’s memory, or personality, ought to be able to function as before I am hopeful, therefore, that by providing the right kind of instrument, to be operated by this per- sonality, we can receive intelligent messages from it in its changed habitation, or environment. I CANNOT conceive of such a thing as a spirit. Imagine something that has no weight, no material form, no mass; in a word, imagine nothing. I cannot be a party to the belief that spirits exist and can be seen under certain circumstances, and can be made to tilt tables and rap chairs and do other things of a similar and unimportant natures. The whole thing is so absurd. I have been thinking for some time of a machine or apparatus which could be operated by personalities which have passed on to another existence or sphere. Now follow me carefully; I don’t claim that our per- sonalities pass on to another existence or sphere. I don’t claim anything because I don’t know anything about the subject. For that matter, no human being knows. But I do claim that it is possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate that if there are personalities in another existence sphere who wish to get in touch with us in this existence or sphere this apparatus will at least give them a better oppor- tunity to express themselves than the tilting tables and raps and ouija boards and mediums and the other crude methods now purported to be the only means of communication. In truth, it is the crudeness of the present methods that makes me doubt the authenticity of purported communications with deceased persons. Why should personalities in another existence or sphere waste their time working a little triangular piece of wood over a board with certain lettering on it? Why should such personalities play pranks with a table? The whole business seems so childish to me that I frankly cannot give it my serious consideration. I believe that if we are to make any real progress in psychic in- vestigation, we must do it with scientific apparatus and in a scientific manner, just as we do in medicine, electricity, chemistry, and other fields. Now what I propose to do is to furnish psychic investigators with an apparatus which will give a scientific aspect to their work. This apparatus, let me explain, is in the nature of a valve, so to speak. That is to say, the slightest conceivable effort is made to exert many times its initial power for indicative pur- poses. It is similar to a modern power house, where man, with his relatively puny one-eighth horse-power, turns a valve which starts a 50,000-horse-power steam turbine. My apparatus is along those lines, in that the slightest effort which it intercepts will be magnified many times so as to give us whatever form of record we desire for the purpose of investigation. Beyond that I don’t care to say anything further regarding its nature. I have been working out the details for some time; indeed, a collaborator in this work died only the other day. In that he knew exactly what I am after in this work, I believe he ought to be the first to use it if he is able to do so. Of course, don’t of personality; I am not promising communication with those who have passed out of this life. I merely state that I am giving the psychic investigators an apparatus which may help them in their work, just as optical experts have given the miscroscope to the medical world. And if this apparatus fails to reveal anything of exceptional interest, I am afraid that I shall have lost all faith in the survival of personality as we know it in this existence. I believe that life, like matter, is indestructible. There has always been a certain amount of life on this world and there will always be the same amount. You cannot create life; you cannot destroy life; you cannot multiply life. The question has been raised that if these life en- tities are so small, they cannot be large enough to include a collection of organs capable of carrying on the tasks which I am about to mention. Yet why not? There is no limit to the smallness of things, just as there is no limit as to largeness. The electron theory gives us a reply which is wholly satisfactory. I have had the matter roughly calculated and have at hand the data of the calculation. I am sure that a highly or- ganized entity, consisting of millions of electrons yet still remaining too small to be visible through any existing microscope, is possible. There are many indications that we human beings act as a community or ensemble rather than as units. That is why I believe that each of us comprises mil- lions upon millions of entities, and that our body and our mind represent the vote or the voice, whichever you wish to call it, of our entities. Of course, you say, it is nature. But what is nature? That seems to me to be such an evasive reply. It means nothing. It is just a subterfuge---a convenient way of shutting off further questioning by merely giv- ing an empty word for an answer. I have never been satisfied with that word “nature”. The entities are life, I again repeat. They are steady workers. In our bodies these entities constantly rebuild our tissues to replace those which are con- stantly wearing out. They watch after the functions of the various organs, just as the engineers in a power house see that the machinery is kept in perfect order. Once conditions become unsatisfactory in the body, either through a fatal sickness, fatal accident or old age, the entities simply depart from the body and leave little more than an empty structure behind. Being indefatigable workers, they naturally seek something else to do. They either enter into the body of another man, or even start work on some other form of life. At any rate, there is a fixed number of these entities, and it is the same entities that have served over and over again for everything in this uni- verse of ours, although the various combinations of entities have given us an erroneous impression of new life and still new life for each generation. The entities live forever. You cannot destroy them, just the same as you cannot destroy matter. You can change the form of matter; but of gold, iron, sulfur, oxygen and so on, here was the same quantity in today. We are simply working the same supply over and over again. True, we change the combinations of these elements, but we have not changed the rela- tive quantities of each of the elements with which we started. So with the life entities, we cannot destroy them. They are being used over and over again, in different forms, to be sure, but they are always the same entities. The entities are so diversified in their capabilities that it is difficult to identify their handiwork in all instances. Thus today the scientists admit the diffi- culty of drawing a line of demarcation indicating where life ends and inanimate things begin. It may be that life entities even extend their work to minerals and chemicals. For what is it that causes certain solutions to form crystals of a very definite and in- tricate pattern? Nature! But what is nature? Is it not fair to even suspect that life entities may be at work building those crystal? They don’t simply happen. Something must cause certain solutions always to form certain kinds of crystals. Now we come to the matter of personality. The reason why you are you and I am Edison is because we have different swarms or groups or whatever you wish to call them, of entities. After eighty-two re- markable surgical operations the medical world has conclusively proved that the seat of our personality is in that part of the brain known as the fold of Broca. Now it is reasonable to suppose that the directing entities are located in that part of our bodies. These entities, as a closely-knit ensemble, give us our mental impressions and our personality. I have already said that what we call death is simply the departure of the entities from our body. The whole question to my way of thinking, is what happens to the master entities---those located in the fold of Broca. It is fair to assume that the other en- tities, those which have been doing purely routine work in our body, disband and go off in various direc- tions, seeking new work to do. But how about those which have been directing things in our body? Do they remain together as an ensemble or do they also break up and go about the universe seeking new tasks as individuals and not as a collective body? If they break up and set out as individual entities, then I very much fear that our personality does not survive. While the life entities live forever, thus giving us the eternal life which many of us hope for, this means little to you and me if, when we come to that stage known as death, our personality simply breaks up into separate units which soon combine with others to form new structures. I do hope that our personality survives. If it does, then my apparatus ought to be of some use. That is why I am now at work on the most sensitive appa- ratus I have ever undertaken to build, and I await the results with the keenest interest.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 13:34:52 +0000
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