A Journey in Other Worlds [87]
froth of which you now see in thunderstorms, and the electricity
and magnetism of your own bodies. There is also molecular and
sympathetic vibration, by which Joshua not understandingly
levelled the walls of Jericho; and the power of your minds over
matter, but little more developed now than when I moved in the
flesh upon the earth. By lowering large quantities of
high-powered explosives to the deepest parts of the ocean bed,
and exploding them there, you can produce chasms through which
some water will be forced towards the heated interior by the
enormous pressure of its own weight. At a comparatively slight
depth it will be converted into steam and produce an earthquake.
This will so enlarge your chasm, that a great volume of water
will rush into the red-hot interior, which will cause a series of
such terrific eruptions that large islands will be upheaved. By
the reduction of the heat of that part of the interior there will
also be a shrinkage, which, in connection with the explosions,
will cause the earth's solid crust to be thrown up in folds till
whole continents appear. Some of the water displaced by the new
land will also, as a result of the cooling, be able permanently
to penetrate farther, thereby decreasing by that much the amount
of water in the oceans, so that the tide-level in your existing
seaports will be but slightly changed. By persevering in this
work, you will become so skilled that it will be possible to
evoke land of whatever kind you wish, at any place; and by having
high table-land at the equator, sloping off into low plains
towards north and south, and maintaining volcanoes in eruption at
the poles to throw out heat and start warm ocean currents, it
will be possible, in connection with the change you are now
making in the axis, to render the conditions of life so easy that
the earth will support a far larger number of souls.
"With the powers at your disposal you can also alter and improve
existing continents, and thereby still further increase the
number of the children of men. Perhaps with mild climate,
fertile soil, and decreased struggle for existence, man will
develop his spiritual side.
"Finally, you have apergy, one of the highest forces, for it puts
you almost on a plane with angels, and with it you have already
visited Jupiter and Saturn. It was impossible that man should
remain chained to the earth during the entire life of his race,
like an inferior animal or a mineral, lower even in freedom of
body than birds. Heretofore you have, as I have said, seen but
one side in many workings of Nature, as if you had discovered
either negative or positive electricity, but not both; for
gravitation and apergy are as inseparably combined in the rest of
the universe as those two, separated temporarily on earth that
the discovery of the utilization of one with the other might
serve as an incentive to your minds. You saw it in Nature on
Jupiter in the case of several creatures, suspecting it in the
boa-constrictor and Will-o'-the-wisp and jelly-fish, and have
standing illustrations of it in all tailed comets-- luminosity in
the case of large bodies being one manifestation--in the rings of
this planet, and in the molecular motion and porosity of all
gases, liquids, and solids on earth; since what else is it that
keeps the molecules apart, heat serving merely to increase its
power? God made man in his own image; does it not stand to
reason that he will allow him to continue to become more and more
like himself? Would he begrudge him the power to move mountains
through the intelligent application of Nature's laws, when he
himself said they might be moved by faith? So far you have been
content to use the mechanical power of water, its momentum or
dead weight merely; to attain a much higher civilization, you
must break it up chemically and use its constituent gases."
"How," asked Bearwarden, "can this be done?"
"Force superheated steam," replied the spirit, "through an
intensely heated substance, as you now do in