THE CREATIVE WILL.

In our first lesson of this series, we stated that among the other qualities and attributes that we were compelled, by the laws of our reason, to think that the Absolute possessed, was that of Omnipotence or All-Power.  In other words we are compelled to think of the One as being the source and fount of all the Power there is, ever has been, or ever can be in the Universe.  Not only, as is generally supposed, that the Power of the One is greater than any other Power,—­but more than this, that there can be no other power, and that, therefore, each and every, any and all manifestations or forms of Power, Force or Energy must be a part of the great one Energy which emanates from the One.

There is no escape from this conclusion, as startling as it may appear to the mind unaccustomed to it.  If there is any power not from and of the One, from whence comes such power, for there is nothing else outside of the One?  Who or what exists outside of the One that can manifest even the faintest degree of power of any kind?  All power must come from the Absolute, and must in its nature be but one.

Modern Science has recognized this truth, and one of its fundamental principles is the Unity of Energy—­the theory that all forms of Energy are, at the last, One.  Science holds that all forms of Energy are interchangeable, and from this idea comes the theory of the Conservation of Energy or Correlation of Force.

Science teaches that every manifestation of energy, power, or force, from the operation of the law of gravitation, up to the highest form of mental force is but the operation of the One Energy of the Universe.

Just what this Energy is, in its inner nature, Science does not know.  It has many theories, but does not advance any of them as a law.  It speaks of the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed, but pronounces its nature to be unknowable.  But some of the latter-day scientists are veering around to the teachings of the occultists, and are now hinting that it is something more than a mere mechanical energy.  They are speaking of it in terms of mind.  Wundt, the German scientist, whose school of thought is called voluntarism, considers the motive-force of Energy to be something that may be called Will.  Crusius, as far back as 1744 said:  “Will is the dominating force of the world.”  And Schopenhauer based his fascinating but gloomy philosophy and metaphysics upon the underlying principle of an active form of energy which he called the Will-to-Live, which he considered to be the Thing-in-Itself, or the Absolute.  Balzac, the novelist, considered a something akin to Will, to be the moving force of the Universe.  Bulwer advanced a similar theory, and made mention of it in several of his novels