What Is Truth?
By Wallace D. Wattles
The Nautilus
Holyoke, Massachusetts
Vol. XI Nos. 6-11
April-September, 1909
I.
TIME.
A BALLOON GOES UP; A STONE FALLS TO EARTH; WHY? ONE FORCE IN NATURE—G R A V I T Y.
The science of theology and medicine are necessarily very closely allied, both having to do with the saving of men from the consequences of wrong living; and it follows that in religion and medicine we are always seeking for realities; searching the truth; seeking the ultimate, spiritual and physical facts upon which to base our theories, and from which to proceed in making our demonstrations of health and wholeness. And since our demonstrations must and will be complete or incomplete just in proportion to the completeness of our grasp of the realities, the importance of the search for truth becomes apparent; the very first thing we have to do is to penetrate through all the appearances of life, and ascertain the differences between what is really true and what is only apparently true; for there is often a vast difference between the appearance and the reality. The sun appears to rise and set, and to go around the earth; but it does not. A balloon goes up; and a stone falls to the earth; in appearance there are two forces at work, but in reality there is only one—gravity. The reality behind the going up of the balloon and the coming down of the stone is the same. And to seek for the realities behind the appearances of life; behind its goings up and comings down, its goings out and comings in,—that is science, and that is what we are going to try to do.
The first of the realities with which we will deal is Time. It is the fashion with some metaphysical writers to assert that there is no time; but the arguments advanced in support of this claim are superficial. Time is not an entity having substance, but it is an existing reality, nevertheless. Time is not an idea; a fiction by which we measure and record the motions of the heavenly bodies; time would go on just the same and at exactly the same rate if the heavenly bodies were motionless. Do not misunderstand me in my use of the word “time.” Many people suppose that time began when man began, and must end when man ends as a mortal and physical being, and that the periods before and after the earth life of the human race are to be called eternities; in other words that there can be no time except so long as there is a mortal man to measure it; but this is erroneous. Days, weeks, months and years must have gone on before man came on earth, just as they do now; and if man disappeared from the earth, they would still go on. If the earth ceased to revolve around the sun, and to turn on its axis, the succession of the seasons and of day and night would cease; day would be continuous on one side of the earth, and night upon the other, but hours and minutes would go on just the same, and if the sun, moon, planets, stars and all else were to disappear and be succeeded by black, silent, formless chaos, hours and minutes would go on forever. Clocks do not make time; an hour would have the same duration if there were no clocks. In eternity there must still be time; time is duration in eternity. Eternity is endless time.
Time can never end. If you try to think of a point at which time should end, you can only think of it as a point beyond which there must be still more time. Also, then, time can never have had a beginning; for if you try to think of a point at which time began, you can only think of it as a point beyond which there must have been still more time. Do not say that endless time is unthinkable; you can very easily think endless time, if you do not try to think of the end of it. You cannot comprehend endless time, for that means to contain it in your mind, or to go around it; but you can know what it is, and you can know that it is.
Time is; and we must use it, whether we will or no. And the use we make of present time decides the use we shall be able to make of future time; just as the use we made of past time has fixed our place in present time. The use we make of today decides the use we shall be able to make of tomorrow. To be strong and wise is to be able to use time well; and to use time well is to become continually stronger and wiser. Success, growth and development are only attained by the right use of time; and we are failures today in exact proportion as we have erred in our use of time past To know the right use of the present moment is therefore of immense importance; and to have the will to make the right use of it is more important still. If man can—and will—make the right use of every moment of time, he must certainly become a being of marvellous power and wholeness. Oh, the wasted time! The misspent time! The lost time!
We close this chapter, then, by claiming the demonstration of our first fact; that time is a reality.
II.
SPACE.
CAN SPACE HAVE BOUNDARIES?
Bear in mind that in the first chapter we prove that time is an existent reality; in this chapter we shall try to prove that space also exists. Space is the place where a thing is; and it is also the place where no thing is. Space is the place where the earth is; the earth’s diameter being about 7,925 miles, it fills so much space; if the earth were to disappear, the 7,925 miles of space would still exist, but it would then be empty space whereas now it is filled space. The sun, also, fills space, and the distance between the earth and the sun is space; beyond the sun is more space, and beyond the earth still more; and so on. It does not matter whether space is occupied or unoccupied; empty or filled; it is space, all the same. Space is a reality. Distance is a portion of space between two given points. Endless distance would comprise all of space in one direction.
Space has three dimensions: Length, breadth and thickness. It could never have a beginning, and can never have an ending. If all created things, and all substance should disappear, space would still exist; it would be merely blank, empty space, where now is filled space. Also, space can have no boundaries. If you try to think of a boundary to space, what will you think of as lying beyond the boundary? Something solid? Then that something solid must itself occupy space, while if there is nothing there, that nothing must be unfilled space. So, beyond any boundary that you can set for space, there must be still more space. Space is a reality; beginningless, endless, boundless. Time is a reality; and yet, neither time nor space are substantial things. They possess no power. They do not act, neither can they be acted upon. Time can be used, and space can be occupied; and that is what we do with them; we occupy space and make use of time.
Space is the field in which we must operate, and contain the raw materials which we must use. The claim has been made that space is non-existent to mind or spirit, because it does not require appreciable time for the transference of thought; but the validity of this deduction has not been proved. The distances with which we are able to deal are very limited; it might require a measurable time to send thought to the sun, or to the planet Mars, or for a spirit to travel those distances. Again, the argument is advanced that the moon “acts” on the earth; and that, as a thing cannot act where it is not, there is no space between the moon and the earth; but this is puerile. The moon does not, and cannot act on the earth, because it does not touch the earth; if it affects the earth at all, it must act on something which is between them, and which in turn acts on the earth. And this something which is between the earth and the moon occupies space.
I have spoken of filled space and empty space. I do not know whether empty space exists or not, but it is quite thinkable that it should exist. There may be portions of empty space, surrounded by filled space; or there may be endless extensions of empty space, side by side with endless extensions of filled space; I do not know. I know that there is filled space, and that there may be empty space. But, if there is filled space, what fills it? The answer to this must be in one word—Substance. That which is not substance is not anything, and that which is not anything cannot fill space. Space is filled by substance, and cannot be filled by anything else; but what is substance, and how do we know that it exists? That we leave for the next chapter, closing this with the claim that we have demonstrated that we live in space, and that life consists in making use of time.
III.
SUBSTANCE.
REAL NATURE OF SUBSTANCE—A CURIOUS FACT CONCERNING THE GROWTH OF VEGETABLES—DOES SUBSTANCE OCCUPY ALL OF SPACE?—THE THREE GREAT REALITIES.
Substance is that which occupies space. In its more compact and rigid forms substance is perceptible by the senses, and is then called matter; but in its finer and more ethereal forms, when it cannot be perceived by the senses, substance is still matter, and is essentially the same. The apparently many substances of nature are in reality only varying forms of one Substance; the differences between them are due to varying degrees of pressure, and to the form and rate of vibration of the atoms which compose them. Ice is a solid substance; water a partially fluid substance; the vapor arising from water verges on the gaseous state; and oxygen and hydrogen are gases. But a piece of ice may be brought back through all these stages, and converted into oxygen and hydrogen, and no change is made in it except that in the fluid state the atoms are less firmly pressed together than in the solid state; and in the gaseous state the bond of cohesion is still weaker, and the atoms circulate or roll around each other more freely than in the fluid state. It is now a well-known fact that nearly all the growth of the vegetable kingdom comes from the atmosphere; trees, plants and flowers are solidified air. The furniture in our homes, and the walls of the houses in which we live are merely solidified gases; burn them, and they return to their original state, leaving only a handful of ashes as “material” evidence of their existence, and if we learn to treat these ashes with the right agencies, they, too, will vanish into the ethereal realm. The earth itself, so firm and solid under our feet, was indisputably once a ball of flaming gases and vapors, and in the stage before that, must it not have been still more ethereal? It is all solidified atmosphere. Our own bodies are compounds of gases; in the crematory the human form vanishes. All things came out from the ether, and all things are ether, changed to more or less solid forms by differences in atomic pressure and cohesion.
All this brings us to the conclusion that the many seemingly different substances—iron, wood, coal, lime, water, etc., are merely different forms of one thing; that there is only one elemental substance, from which all created things are shaped. As we find that solid things are the gaseous atmosphere, solidified by an increased atomic pressure, so we shall no doubt find that the gases are produced from one ether, being brought to the semi fluid state by increased pressure, and at last we must conclude that there is one perfectly fluid substance, of which are made all the things which do appear. This One Substance is the stupendous reality behind all the appearances of the material world.
We will now take up the study of this substance. First, we must get rid of the idea that there is anything else. Substance is all there is. We live, and move, and have our being in substance; we, ourselves, are substance. We must conclude that substance cannot have been created, for that it should have been formed out of nothing is unthinkable. Substance always was; forms have been created, and are being continually created, changed, and modified; but the substance of which those forms are made is the same, yesterday and today and forever. When I speak of forms, I mean the so-called “material” universe; suns, stars, planets, seas, continents, trees, plants, gases, and the bodies of animals and men; all these are varying forms of the One Changeless Substance, which is all, and in all. And as this substance has existed through all of time past, so it will exist through all of time future, for it is indestructible; we may change its forms, but not one particle of it can we destroy.
Does this substance occupy all of space? Evidently not, for the more nearly we carry its forms to their original state the more fluid they become; we go from solids back to gases, and from gases to ether, and so on; and we conclude that the one substance must be perfectly fluid, and if that be so, its particles cannot be solidly pressed together; there must be space between them, as in all fluids. Furthermore, if substance filled all space motion would be impossible; for substance can only move when there is unoccupied space to move into. And as we know that there is motion, so we know that there must be empty space. This is a matter of some importance when we come to the study of consciousness; for if one substance completely filled all space, it must be absolutely solid, with its atoms pressed rigidly against each other; and not only could there be no motion in any part, but there could be no separate consciousness in any part; if consciousness were possible at all in a perfectly solid substance, it could only be the consciousness of the whole. But if there is empty space, there is not only room for motion, but there is room for separate portions of substance, which may be conscious within themselves. If there is empty space, there is room for man, as a separate portion of original substance to move about and to have a consciousness of his own. There may be more than one conscious intelligence, though there is only one substance. We close this chapter with the claim that we have demonstrated the existence of three realities: time, space and a substance which moves in space. The next chapter will be devoted to the consideration of consciousness.
