THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF COSMIC HABITFORCE 1027travel from Lancaster, Massachusetts, to Santa Rosa, California, where
he established a nursery and experimental farms.
His objective to improve the quality of plants in order to increase
the world's food supply inspired such worldwide interest that he was
recognized by an Act of Congress.
Burbank was also a freethinker, which he kept private until motivated
by two events to go public. The first was the Scopes "monkey tria/" of- A strong believer in Darwinism, he felt he had to speak out. The
second was when Henry Ford went public with his views in favor of
reincarnation. Ford was a friend of his, but when interviewed by a reporter
for the San Francisco Bulletin about his reaction to Ford's theories, Bur-
bank expressed his doubts about God and about an afterlife:
"... I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look
for survival only in the spirit of the good we have done in passing through.
This is as feasible and credible as Henry Ford's own practice of discarding
the old models of his automobile. Once obsolete, an automobile is thrown
to the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise
served its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. There
is no need for another. "
On January 22, 1926, the front-page story appeared in the San
Francisco Bulletin under the headline "I'm an Infidel, Declares Burbank,
Casting Doubt on Soul Immortality Theory. "
The article was reprinted around the world, creating shock waves, and
Burbank was inundated with hate mail. In a desperate effort to make
people understand, he attempted to reply to all the letters. But the physical
task of doing so, especially amid all the harassment, was so overwhelming
for the seventy-seven-year-old that Burbank took ill and died.
Twenty years ago Edwin C. Barnes formed a difinite purpose in his
mind. That purpose was to become the business partner of Thomas
A. Edison. At the time his purpose was chosen, Mr. Barnes had no
qualification entitling him to a partnership with the world's greatest