Note.
Five years after this paper on Etheric force was written, Dr. Henry Wood, of Boston, wrote an article, which appeared in The Arena of October, 1891, having the title Healing through Mind. Dr. Wood says: “Truth may be considered as a rounded unit. Truths have various and unequal values, but each has its peculiar place, and if it be missing or distorted, the loss is not only local but general. Unity is made up of variety, and therein is completeness. Any honest search after truth is profitable, for thereby is made manifest the kingdom of the real ….
“We forget that immaterial forces rule not only the invisible but the visible universe. Matter, whether in the vegetable, animal, or human organism, is moulded, shaped, and its quality determined by unseen forces back of and higher than itself. We rely upon the drug, because we can feel, taste, see, and smell it. We are colour-blind to invisible potency of a higher order, and practically conclude that it is non-existent.”—Healing through Mind.
[1] The stretching of a catgut chord over a resonator set to the chord of B flat is precisely the same in its resultant issue as the steel wire set over the same resonator. [↑]
CHAPTER V.
ETHERIC VIBRATION. THE KEY FORCE.
Discovery is not invention.—Edison.
Science has been compared to a stately and wide-spreading tree, stretching outward and upward its ever-growing boughs. As yet mankind has reached only to its lowermost branches, too often satisfied with the dead calyxes which have fallen from it to the ground, after serving their uses for the protection of the vital germs of truth. The seed of the next advance in science can only germinate as the dry husk decays, within which its potentiality was secretly developed.
For upwards of ten centuries false portions of the philosophy of Aristotle enslaved the minds of civilized Europe, only, at last, to perish and pass away like withered leaves.
The most perfect system of philosophy must always be that which can reconcile and bring together the greatest number of facts that can come within the sphere of the subject. In this consists the sole glory of Newton, whose discovery rests upon no higher order of proof. In the words of Dr. Chalmers, “Authority scowled upon this discovery, taste was disgusted by it, and fashion was ashamed of it. All the beauteous speculation of former days was cruelly broken up by this new announcement of the better philosophy, and scattered like the fragments of an aerial vision, over which the past generations of the world had been slumbering in profound and pleasing reverie.”
Thus we see that time is no sure test of a doctrine, nor ages of ignorance any standard by which to measure a system. Facts can have a value only when properly represented and demonstrated by proof. Velpeau said nothing can lie like a fact. Sir Humphry Davy asserted that no one thing had so much checked the progress of philosophy as the confidence of teachers in delivering dogmas as facts, which it would be presumptuous to question. This reveals the spirit which made the crude physics of Aristotle the natural philosophy of Europe.
The philosophy of vibratory rotation, which is yet to be propounded to the world, reveals the identity of facts which seem dissimilar, binding together into a system the most unconnected and unlike results of experience, apparently. John Worrell Keely, the discoverer of an unknown force and the propounder of a pure philosophy, learned at an early stage of his researches not to accept dogmas as truths, finding it safer to trust to that “inner light” which has guided him than to wander after the ignis fatuus of a false system. He has been like a traveller exploring an unknown zone in the shade of night, losing his way at times, but ever keeping before him the gleam of breaking day which dawned upon him at the start. Scientists have kept aloof from him, or, after superficial examinations, have branded him as “a modern Cagliostro,” “a wizard,” “a magician,” and “a fraud.” Calumnies he never stoops to answer, for he knows that when his last problem is solved to his own satisfaction his discovery and his inventions will defend him in trumpet tones around our globe. Buchanan says, “Who would expect a society of learned men, the special cultivators and guardians of science, as they claim to be, to know as much of the wonderful philosophy now developing as those who have no artificial reputation to risk in expressing an opinion, no false and inflated conceptions of dignity and stability to hold them back, and who stand ready to march on from truth to truth as fast and far as experimental demonstration can lead them?”
Johnson tells us that the first care of the builder of a new system is to demolish the fabrics that are standing. But the cobwebs of age cannot be disturbed without rousing the bats, to whom daylight is death.
When has Nature ever whispered her secrets but for the advancement of our race on that royal road which leads to the subjugation of the power she reveals? But not until the inspiration of thought has done its work in applying the power to mechanics, can the tyrant thus encountered be transformed into the slave.
So was it with steam, so has it been with electricity, and so will it be with vibratory force. All experience shows that the steady progress of the patient study of what are termed Nature’s laws does not attract public attention until there are some practical results. Professor Tyndall has said that the men who go close to the mouth of Nature and listen to her communications leave the discoveries they make for the benefit of posterity to be developed by practical men. The invention of vibratory machinery for the liberation and the operation in mechanics of sympathetic force is an instance where practical application of the discovery may be made by the discoverer. After years of experiments with this force, what does the public know of its nature? Nothing; for as yet no practical results have been obtained. Here is a power sustaining the same relations to electricity that the trunk of a tree does to its branches,—the discovery of which heralds to the scientific world possibilities affecting motive industries, such as should command the attention of all men; and yet it is known only as a theme for jest and ridicule and reproach! And why is this? Partly from the mismanagement of a prematurely-organized Keely Motor Company, and partly because men competent to judge for themselves have preferred to take the opinion of others not competent, instead of investigating each for himself.
Attempts to interest scientists in the marvellous mechanism by which etheric force is evolved from the atmosphere have failed, even as Galileo failed at Padua to persuade the principal professor of philosophy there to look at the moon and planets through his glasses. The professor pertinaciously refused, as wrote Galileo to his friend Kepler. Mankind hate truth, said Lady Mary Montague: she should have said, mankind hate new truths. The most simple and rational advances in medical science have been received with scorn and derision, or with stupid censure. Harvey was nicknamed “the circulator”[1] after his discovery of the circulation of the blood,—which discovery was ridiculed by his colleagues and compeers. The same reception awaited Jenner’s introduction of vaccination.
The revelation of new truths is compared to the upheaval of rocks which reveal deeply-hidden strata. Stolid conservatism dislikes and avoids such facts, because they involve new thinking and disturb old theories. The leaden weight of scepticism drags down the minds of many, paralyzing their power of reasoning upon facts which reveal truth, from another standpoint than their own, with new simplicity and grandeur in the divine laws of the universe. Others there are, embracing the majority of mankind, according to Hazlitt, who stick to an opinion that they have long supported, and that supports them. But whenever a discovery or invention has made its way so well by itself as to achieve reputation, most people assert that they always believed in it from the first; and so will it be with Keely’s inventions, in time.
In our day so rapidly are anticipations realized and sanguine hopes converted into existing facts, one wonderful discovery followed by another, that it is strange to find men possessing any breadth of intellect rejecting truths from hearsay, instead of examining all things and holding fast to the truth. The laws of sympathetic association need only to be demonstrated and understood to carry conviction of their truth with them. They control our world and everything in it, from matter to spirit. They control all the systems of worlds in the universe; for they are the laws which Kepler predicted would in this century he revealed to man. The divine element is shown by these laws to be like the sun behind the clouds,—the source of all light, though itself unseen.
Already the existence of this unknown force is as well established as was the expansive power of steam in the days when the world looked on and laughed at Rumsey and Fitch and Fulton while they were constructing their steamboats. Even when they were used for inland navigation, men of science declared ocean navigation by steam impracticable, up to the very hour of its consummation. In like manner with electricity, scientists declared an ocean telegraph impossible, asserting that the current strong enough to bear messages would melt the wires. Nothing could be more unpopular than railways were at their start. In England, Stephenson’s were called “nuisances,” and false prophets arose then (as now with Keely’s inventions) to foretell their failure. It was predicted that they would soon be abandoned, and, if not given up, that they would starve the poor, destroy canal interests, crush thousands in fearful accidents, and cover the land with horror.
When I say that the existence of this force is established, I do not mean that it is established by a favourable verdict from public opinion,—which, as Douglas Jerrold said, is but the average stupidity of mankind, and which is always steadily and persistently opposed to great and revolutionary discoveries. Establishment consists in convincing men competent to judge that the effects produced by etheric force could not be caused by any known force. And it is now years since such a verdict was first given, substantiated repeatedly since, by the testimony of men as incapable of fraud or collusion as is the discoverer himself.
Newton, in discovering the existence of a force which we call gravity, did not pursue his investigations sufficiently far to proclaim a power which neutralizes or overcomes gravity, the existence of which Keely demonstrates in his vibratory-lift experiments.
But it is one thing to discover a force in nature, and quite another thing to control it. It is one thing to lasso a wild horse, and quite another thing to subdue the animal, harness it, bridle it, and get the curb-bit in the mouth.
Keely has lassoed his wild horse; he has harnessed it and bridled it; and when he has the bit in its place, this force will take its stand with steam and electricity, asking nothing, and giving more than science ever before conferred on the human race.
The Home Journal of October 20th, 1886, contained a paper which possesses some interest as having been written at the time Mr. Keely was using what he called a “Liberator,” which enabled him to dispense with the use of water; but he was obliged to return to his former method soon after.
Etheric Vibration.
The late editor of the New York Home Journal, noticing the preceding paper, which appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine, asks:—“But is not this new force too mighty to be managed by mere earthly instruments, such as iron, copper, or lead? It is the key force, the one that presided over the creation of these very metals, and can it reasonably be expected to be caged and fettered by them? Can the bubble withstand the onset of the wave, of which it is a mere drift?”
When lightning was first drawn from the clouds by Franklin, did it occur to any man living to predict that electricity (which Keely defines as a certain form of atomic vibration) could be stored, to use at will as a motive power? If atomic vibration can be made to serve the purposes of mechanics, why not etheric vibration?
But let Keely answer for himself. Some years since he wrote as follows:—“In analyzing theoretically the mechanical standard necessary for a solution of the philosophy of ‘Etheric Vibration,’ and the systematic mechanism to produce a rotating circle of etheric force, I must admit that the phenomenon, as presented to myself, by seeming accident, after almost a lifetime of study, still partially holds itself to my understanding as paradoxical. After constructing many mechanical devices in my vain attempts to come more closely to what I term a radiaphonic vibratory position, with microphonic adjustments, I have only been able to reach a few true and standard positions, which I can satisfactorily analyze. There is but one principle underlying all, and this principle is the key to the problem.”
Keely continues with an explanation of the mechanism of his generator, which he invented and constructed for the multiplication of vibrations, under the disturbance of equilibrium by mediums of different specific gravities—air as one, water as the other. He has since abandoned the generator for a vibratory machine which he calls a “liberator,” in which no water is used to develop the force: the disturbance of the equilibrium being effected by a medium thoroughly vibratory in its character. The vapour which Keely produces from this liberator is perfectly free from all humidity, thus giving it a tenuity which he had never been able to reach before, and of a character most desirable for the perfect and high lines of action. In the various improvements which Keely has made in his mechanism, feeling his way in the dark as it were, he sometimes speaks of having “stupidly stumbled over them,” of “seeming accident,” or “seeming chance,” where another would call it “inspiration.” “Providence sends chance, and man moulds it to his own design.” The improvement upon the generator was conceived by Keely during his desperate struggles to effect a simultaneous action between the molecular and atomic leads—an action that was absolutely essential for the full line of continuation. This shorter and simpler way of reaching his desired end was suggested, in part, to him by a quotation from some one of our scientific writings, made in a letter that he received. I am not sure about this quotation, but I think it was: “Nature works with dual force, but at rest she is a unit.”
“In the image of God made He man,” and in the image of man Keely has constructed his liberator. Not literally, but, as his vibrophone (for collecting the waves of sound and making each wave distinct from the other in tone when the “wave-plate” is struck after the sound has died away) is constructed after the human ear, so his liberator corresponds in its parts to the human head.
But to return to the question asked in the Home Journal. “Can this subtle force reasonably be expected to be caged and fettered by mere earthly instruments? “This is the answer, as given by Keely himself: “You ask my opinion regarding my ultimate success in the practical use of etheric force. My faith is unbounded by doubts. The successful result is as positive as the revolutions of our globe, and comes under the great law which governs all nature’s highest and grandest and most sensitive operations.”
Since Keely wrote the above lines he has had time to get discouraged, if he could know discouragement; but he has conquered too many of the stupendous problems, which barricaded his way in the past, not to feel equally sanguine now of eventual success in his last problem, viz. the attaining of continuity of action, which at the present time seems all but within his grasp.
Some of his views may prove of interest at a time when his achievements are beginning to be a little better understood. Gravity he defines as transmittive inter-etheric force under immense etheric vibration. He continues:—The action of the mind itself is a vibratory etheric evolution, controlling the physical, its negative power being depreciatory in its effects, and its positive influence elevating.
The idea of getting a power as tenuous as this under such control as to make it useful in mechanics is scouted by all physicists. And no wonder that it is so. But when the character of the velocity of etheric force, even in a molecule, is understood, the mind that comprehends it must succumb to its philosophy. To move suddenly a square inch of air, at the velocity of this vibratory circuit, on full line of graduation, and at a vibration only of 2,750,000 per second, would require a force at least of twenty-five times that of gunpowder. Taking the expansive force of gunpowder at 21,000 lbs. per square inch, it would be 525,000 lbs. per square inch. This is incomprehensible. The explosion of nitroglycerine, which has two and a half times less vibrations per second, when placed on the surface of a solid rock, will tear up the rock before disturbing the equilibrium of the air above it. The disturbance takes place after the explosion. To induce an action on a weight of only twenty grains, the weight of a small bird-shot, with a range of motion of but one inch, giving it an action of one million per second, would require the actual force of two and a half tons per second; or, in other words, ten-horse power per minute. Etheric vibration would move tons at the same velocity when submitted to the vibratory circuit. Thus, the finer the substance the greater the power and the velocity under such vibration.
The vapour from the liberator, registered at 20,000 pounds per square inch, has a range of atomic motion of 1333⅓ the diameter of the atmospheric molecule, with constant rotary vibratory action. At 10,000 pounds, 666⅔; at 5000, 333⅓; at 2500, 166⅔; at 1250, 83⅓; at 625, 41⅔. The higher the range of atomic motion the greater is its tenuity, and the range is according to the registered pressure. This rule cannot be applied to any other vapour or gas at present known to scientists. The very evolution on the negative shows a vacuum of a much higher order than was ever produced before, thus confounding, to perfect blindness, all theories that have been brought to bear upon the situation, in its analysis. The highest vacuum known is 17 999999–1000000 pounds, or not quite 30 inches; but by this process etheric vacuums have been repeatedly produced of 50 to 57 inches; ranging down to 30 inches, or 15 pounds. All operations of nature have for their sensitizing centres of introductory action, triple vacuum evolutions. These evolutions are centred in what I call atomic triple revolutions, highly radiaphonic in their character, and thoroughly independent of all outside forces in their spheres of action. In fact, no conceivable power, however great, can break up their independent centres. So infinitely minute are they in their position that, within a circle that would enclose the smallest grain of sand, hundreds of billions of them perform, with infinite mathematical precision, their continuous vibratory revolution of inconceivable velocity.
These triple centres are the very foundation of the universe, and the great Creator has, in His majestic designs, fixed them indissolubly in their position. Mathematically considered, the respective and relative motion of these atomic triplets, gravitating to and revolving around each other, is about one and one-third of their circumference. The problem of this action, when reduced to a mathematical analysis (presupposing taking it as the quadrature of the circle) would baffle the highest order of mathematical science known to bring it to a numerical equation.
The requirement of every demonstration is that it shall give sufficient proof of the truth it asserts. Any demonstration which does less than this cannot be relied upon, and no demonstration ever made has done more than this. We ought to know that the possibilities of success are in proportion as the means applied are adequate or inadequate for the purpose; and, as different principles exist in various forms of matter, it is quite impossible to demonstrate every truth by the same means or the same principles. I look upon it as the prejudice of ignorance which exacts that every demonstration shall be given by a prescribed rule of science, as if the science of the present were thoroughly conversant with every principle that exists in nature. The majority of physicists exact this, though some of them know that these means are entirely inadequate. Every revolving body is impressed by nature with certain laws making it susceptible of the operation of force which, being applied, impels motion. These laws may all be expressed under the general term, “Forces,” which, though various in their nature, possess an equalizing power; controlling each other (as in the case of the atomic triplets) in such a way that neither can predominate beyond a certain limit. Consequently, these bodies can never approach nearer each other than a fixed point: nor recede from each other beyond another certain point. Hence, these forces are, at some mean point, made perfectly equal, and therefore may be considered as but one force; therefore as but one element. It matters not that other and disturbing forces exist outside or inside the space these bodies revolve in, because if this force must be considered as acting uniformly—applying itself to each of these bodies in a way to produce a perfect equation on all, it is as if this outside force were non-existing.
The true study of the Deity by man being in the observation of His marvellous works, the discovery of a fundamental, creative law of as wide and comprehensive grasp as would make this etheric vapour a tangible link between God and man would enable us to realize, in a measure, the actual existing working qualities of God Himself (speaking most reverentially) as he would those of a fellow-man. Such a link would constitute a base or superstructure of recognition, praise, worship and imitation, such as seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure as a foundation.—Keely.
Dr. Macvicar, in his theories of the bearing of the cosmical law of assimilation on molecular action, says: “During this retreat of matter into ether in single material elements or units of weight, the molecules and masses from which such vaporization into the common vapour of matter is going on, may be expected to be phosphorescent.”
This surmise Keely has, over and over, demonstrated, as a fact; also showing how gravitation operates as a lever: etheric wave motion: concentration under vibratory concussion: and negative vacuous tenuity.
Mrs. F. J. Hughes, writing upon “Tones and Colours,” advances theories of her own, which correspond with those demonstrated by Keely. She writes, in a private letter: “I firmly believe that exactly the same laws as those which develop sound keep the heavenly bodies in their order. You can even trace the poles in sound. My great desire is for some philosophical mind to take up my views, as entirely gained from the Scriptures; and I am certain that they will be found to be the laws developing every natural science throughout the universe.”
Thus men and women in various parts of the world who still hold to their belief in and worship of God, are “standing on ground which is truly scientific, having nothing to fear from the progress of thought, in so far as it is entitled to the name of scientific—nay, are in a position to lead the way in all that can be justly so called.”
[1] In Latin “circulator” means “quack.” [↑]
CHAPTER VI.
THE FOUNTAIN HEAD OF FORCE.
Those who occupy themselves with the mysteries of molecular vibration bear the victorious wreaths of successful discovery, and show that every atom teems with wonders not less incomprehensible than those of the vast and bright far-off suns.—Reynolds.
The famous Keely motor, which has been hovering on the horizon of success for a decade, is but an attempt to repeat in an engine of metal the play of forces which goes on at the inmost focus of life, the human will, or in the cosmic spaces occupied only by the ultimate atoms. The engineer with his mallet shooting the cannon-ball by means of a few light taps on a receiver of depolarized atoms of water is only re-enacting the rôle of the will when with subtle blows it sets the nerve aura in vibration, and this goes on multiplying in force and sweep of muscle until the ball is thrown from the hand with a power proportionate to the one-man machinery. The inventor Keely seeks a more effective machinery; a combination of thousands of will-forces in a single arm, as it were. But he keeps the same vibrating principle, and the power in both cases is psychical. That is, in its last analysis.—George Perry.
One eternal and immutable law embraces all things and all times.—Cicero.
When the truth is made known, it will unwarp the complications of man’s manufacture; and show everything in nature to be very simple.—David Sinclair, author of A New Creed.—Digby, Long & Co.
A gradual change seems to be taking place in the minds of the well-informed in reference to the discoverer of, and experimenter with, etheric force—John Worrell Keely—which will in time remove the burden of accusations from him to those who are responsible for the load which he has had to carry.
Those who know the most of Mr. Keely’s philosophy, and of his inventions to apply this new force to mechanics, are the most sanguine as to his ultimate success. They say he is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind, and sublime enough in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at last before the world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the world:—that the hour demanded his coming—that he was not born for his great work before his appointed time. They predict that he will, with the hammer of science, demolish the idols of science; that the demonstration of the truth of his system will humble the pride of those scientists who are materialists, by revealing some of the mysteries which lie behind the world of matter; proving that physical disintegration affects only the mode, and not the existence, of individual consciousness.
The discovery of vibratory etheric force, even though never utilized in mechanics, brings us upon the bridge which divides physical science from spiritual science, and opens up domains the grandeur and glory of which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the mind of man to conceive. The few who understand the nature and the extent of Keely’s vast researches say that he is about to give a new philosophy to the world, which will upset all other systems; they say that he knows what force is; and that he seeks to know what impels and fixes the neutral centre, which attracts to itself countless correlations of matter, until it becomes a world; that he is approaching the origin of life, of memory, and of death; and more, that he knows how ignorant he still is: possessing the humility of a little child who knows nothing of science. Such a philosopher deserves the appreciation and the encouragement of all who hold Truth as the one thing most worth living for—and dying for, if need be.
What is etheric force? the inquirer asks. It is the soul of nature. It is the primal force from which all the forces of nature spring.
Fichte writes: “The will is the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. I stand between two opposite worlds; the one visible, in which the act alone avails; the other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. I am an effective force in both these worlds.”
Newton said that this subtle ether penetrates through all, even the hardest bodies, and is concealed in their substance. Through the strength and activity of this spirit, bodies attract each other, and adhere together when brought into contact. In it, and by it, distance is annihilated, and all objects touch each other. Through this “life spirit” light also flows, and is refracted and reflected, and warms bodies. Through it we are connected in sympathy with all other souls, and all the objects of nature, even to all the heavenly bodies. The word ether is from “αἴθω,” to light up or kindle. According to Pythagoras and all the oldest philosophers, it was viewed as a divine luminous principle or substance, which permeates all things, and, at the same time, contains all things. They called it the astral light. The Germans call it the “Weltgeist,” the breath of the Father, the Holy Ghost, the life-principle.
The sheet-anchor of Keely’s philosophy is, in the words of Hooker, one power, ever present, ever ruling, neglecting not the least, not quailing before the greatest: the lowest not excluded from its care, nor the highest exempted from its dominion. A power that presents itself to us as a force: the one force in nature, thrilling to its deepest heart, and flowing forth responsive to every call. A power which does all things, and assumes all forms; which has been called electricity in the storm, heat in the fire, magnetism in the iron bar, light in the taper, but ever one grand reality, one all-embracing law. Cosmical law at the fountain-head, suggesting that, as the Creator Himself is only one in substance, so also, primarily, will the creation be, to which He awards existence. The extreme simplicity of this deduction, made as it is in the face of all the variety and multiplicity of individualized objects that there are in the universe, seems to involve many difficulties. But, as Macvicar writes, different beings, whether classes or individuals, are known to us, not by any difference in their substance, but only by differences in their attributes. And since being or substance, and power or potentiality, differ from each other only in conception, only as the statical differs from the dynamical, it is reasonable, nay, in the circumstances it is alone legitimate, to suppose that it is not in virtue of some absolute difference in substance (for none appears), but only from differences in the quantity or intensity of substance or power in the individual, and from the variety of their build, that different individuals display such different potentialities or endowments as they do display; and come to be justly classified as they are into various orders of beings. Inasmuch as the Author of all is Himself a Spiritual Being, cosmical law leads us to expect that the type of created being shall be spirit also. Nor can Being in any object be so attenuated or so far removed from Him who filleth all in all, but it must surely retain an aura of the spiritual nature. This, then, is the corner-stone of Keely’s philosophy—one power; one law; order and method reigning throughout creation; spirit controlling matter; as the divine order and law of creation, that the spiritual should govern the material,—that the whole realm of matter should be under the dominion of the world of spirit.
When Keely’s discovery has been made known to scientists, a new field of research will be opened up in the realm of Philosophy, where all eternal, physical, and metaphysical truths are correlated; for Philosophy has been well defined by Willcox as the science of that human thought which contains all human knowledges. He who possesses the structure of philosophic wisdom built up of all knowledges—grand and sublime—has a mental abode wherein to dwell which other men have not. Dr. Macvicar says:—“The nearer we ascend to the fountain-head of being and of action, the more magical must everything inevitably become, for that fountain-head is pure volition. And pure volition, as a cause, is precisely what is meant by magic; for by magic is merely meant a mode of producing a phenomenon without mechanical appliances—that is, without that seeming continuity of resisting parts and that leverage which satisfy our muscular sense and our imagination, and bring the phenomenon into the category of what we call ‘the natural’—that is, the sphere of the elastic, the gravitating, the sphere into which the vis inertiæ is alone admitted.” In Keely’s philosophy, as in Dr. Macvicar’s “Sketch of a Philosophy,” the economy of creation is not regarded as a theory of development all in one direction, which is the popular supposition, but as a cycle in which, after development and as its fruit, the last term gives again the first. Herein is found the link by which the law of continuity is maintained throughout, and the cycle of things is made to be complete:—the link which is missing in the popular science of the day, with this very serious consequence, that, to keep the break out of sight, the entire doctrine of spirit and the spiritual world is ignored or denied altogether.
Joseph Cook affirms that, “as science progresses, it draws nearer in all its forms to the proof of the spiritual origin of force—that is, of the divine immanence in natural law. God was not transiently present in nature—that is, in a mere creative moment; nor has He now left the world in a state of orphanage, bereft of a deific influence and care, but He is immanent in nature, as the Apostle Paul affirmed: In Him we live, and are moved, and have our being; as certainly as the unborn infant’s life is that of the mother, so it is divinely true that somehow God’s life includes ours.”
The philosophy of Keely sets forth the universal ether (denied by scientists in the last century to suit their views of the celestial spaces, which they declared to be a vacuum) as the medium by which our lives are included in God’s life; demonstrating how it is that we live because He lives, and shall live as long as He exists: how our being is comprised in His, so that if we could suppose the divine life to come to an end, ours would terminate with it as surely—to compare great things with small—as a stream would cease to flow when its fountain is dried up; teaching that our existence may be distinct, but never separate from His, and that in the hidden depth of the soul there is somewhere a point where our individual being comes in contact with God, and is identified with the infinite life.
“If extreme vicissitudes of belief on the part of men of science are evidence of uncertainty, it may be affirmed that, of all kinds of knowledge, none is more uncertain than science.” The existence of the universal ether is now affirmed again, and must be affirmed, as one of the most elementary facts in physical science. Sir J. F. Herschel asserts that, supposing the ether to be analogous to other elastic media, an amount of it equal in quantity of matter to that which is contained in a cubic inch of air (which weighs about one-third of a grain), if enclosed in a cube of one inch in the side, would exert a bursting power of upwards of seventeen billions of pounds on each side of the cube, while common air exerts only fifteen pounds. It should not, therefore, be surprising to those who have witnessed the manifestations of etheric force, as exhibited by Keely in producing a pressure ranging from 8000 to 30,000 pounds to the square inch, when modern scientists support Herschel’s views, as they do, unhesitatingly; rather should they be surprised at the marvellous perseverance which has kept Keely, in the face of every discouragement, true to his inspired mission; conquering every difficulty, surmounting every obstacle, and turning his mistakes into stepping-stones which have helped him to attain the goal he has, from the start, aimed at reaching—viz. the utilizing in mechanics of the power he discovered many years ago. Before the grandeur and glory of such an attainment, all things had to give way. Like a General who sees the fortress looming up in the distance which he must take to complete his victory, his horse’s hoofs trampling the dead and dying in his path, so has this discoverer and inventor been unmindful of all that lay between him and his goal. Taking for the key-note of his experiments, in applying inter-molecular vapour to the running of an engine, that all the movements of elastic elements are rhythmical, he has had problems to solve which needed the full measure of inspiration he has received before he could attain that degree of success which he has now reached.
Mr. Keely realizes the full extent of the difficulties which he yet has to contend with in obtaining continuity of action, though, with his sanguine temperament, anticipating near and complete success. To quote from his writings:—“The mathematics of vibratory etheric science, both pure and applied, require long and arduous research. It seems to me that no man’s life is sufficient, with the most intense application, to cover more than the introductory branch. The theory of elliptic functions, the calculus of probabilities, are but as pigmies in comparison to a science which requires the utmost tension of the human mind to grasp. But let us wait patiently for the light that will come—that is even now dawning.”
All we can dream of loveliness within,
All ever hoped for by a will intense,
This shall one day be palpable to sense,
And earth at last become to heaven akin.
These four lines, from Robert Browning’s sonnet on Keely’s discoveries, read like an inspired insight into that “Age of Harmony,” which interpreters of scripture prophecies anticipate the twentieth century will usher into our world; recalling Shakespeare’s seeming knowledge, before Harvey’s discovery even, of the circulation of the blood. “All truth is inspired.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE KEY TO THE PROBLEMS. KEELY’S SECRETS.
Causa latet, vis est notissima.—Proverb.
(The cause is hidden, the power is most apparent.)
Electricity is in principle as material as water; so it appears, and Mr. Carl Hering has expressed the fact with much of clearness and force. He says, “It is a well-known fact that the quantity of electricity measured in coulombs never is generated, never is consumed, and never does grow less, excepting leakage. The current flowing out of a lamp is exactly the same in quantity as that going into it; the same is true of motors and of generators, showing that electricity of itself is neither consumed while doing work nor is it generated. After doing work in a lamp or motor, it comes out in precisely the same quantity as it entered. A battery is not able to generate quantity or coulombs of electricity; all it is able to do is to take the quantity which pours in at one pole, and sends out at the other pole with an increased pressure. Electricity, therefore, is not merely force (or a form of energy), but matter. It is precisely analogous to water in a water circuit ….—The Court Journal.
The theory of Aristotle concerning heat, viz. that it is a condition of matter, together with the dicta of Locke, Davy, Rumford, and Tyndall, have been consigned of late by many to the tomb of exploded theories, and are replaced by those of Lavoisier and Black, which make caloric an actual substance. The Rev. J. J. Smith, M.A., D.D., tells us that the only way the great problem of the universe can ever be scientifically solved is by studying, and arriving at just conclusions with regard to, the true nature and character of force. He maintains, in his paper upon “The Unity and Origin of Force,” that, as it is the great organizer of matter, it must not only be superior to it, but also must have been prior, as it existed before organization commenced, and immanent always. Newton, who scoffed at Epicurus’s idea that “gravitation is essential and inherent in matter,” asserted that gravity must be caused by an agent acting, constantly, according to certain laws. Heat, gravity, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinities, are all different phases of the primal force discovered by Keely, and all these forces, it is said, can be obtained from a single ray of sunlight. “The evidence of unity or oneness even between the physical, vital, mental, and spiritual is seen in the light of this law of correlation,” says Smith. “A great portion of our muscles contract and relax in obedience to our wills, thereby proving that the mental force can be, and is, in every such instance actually converted into the muscular or the physical.” Keely demonstrates the truth of this assertion, claiming that “all forces are indestructible, immaterial, and homogeneous entities, having their origin and unity in one great intelligent personal will force.”
The Duke of Argyll says:—“We know nothing of the ultimate seat of force. Science, in the modern doctrine of conservation of energy, and the convertibility of forces, is already getting something like a firm hold of the idea that all kinds of forces are but forms or manifestations of some one central force, issuing from some one fountain-head of power.” It is Keely’s province to prove to materialists—to the world—that this one fountain-head is none other than the Omnipotent and all-pervading Will-Force of the Almighty, “which upholds, guides, and governs, not only our world, but the entire universe. This important truth is destined to shiver the tottering fabric of materialism into fragments at no distant day.”
Professor George Bush writes:—“The progress of scientific research, at the present day, has distinguished itself not less by the wideness of the field over which its triumphs have spread, than by the soundness and certainty of the inductions by which it is sustained. It is equally indisputable that we are approximating the true philosophy which underlies the enlarged and enlarging spiritual experiences and phenomena of the current age. That this philosophy, when reached, will conduct us into the realm of the spiritual as the true region of causes, and disclose new and unthought-of relations between the world of matter and of mind, is doubtless a very reasonable anticipation, and one that even now is widely, though vaguely, entertained.”
The Egyptians worshipped Ra, their name for the sun, and Ammon, the emblem of a mysterious power concealed from human perception. The Supreme Being is the grand central spiritual sun, the source and centre of all life, “whose revelation is traced in imperishable figures of universal harmony on the face of Cosmos.” “The outward visible world is but the clothing of the invisible,” wrote Coleridge. “The whole world process, in its content,” says von Hartmann, “is only a logical process; but in its existence a continued act of will.” Lilly continues, “That is what physical law means. Reason and Will are inseparably united in the universe, as they are in idea. If we will anything, it is for some reason. In contemplating the structure of the universe, we cannot resist the conclusion that the whole is founded upon a distinct idea.”
Keely demonstrates the harmony of this “distinct idea” throughout creation, and shows us that “the sun is the visible effluence and agent, earthward, of the Being without whose prior design and decree there would be no order and no systematic rule on earth,” as well as that in “the universal ether” we find the link between mind and matter. “There is more of heaven than of earth, in all terrestrial things; more of spirit than of matter in what are termed material laws.” Lange, with prophetic tongue, says that this age of materialism may prove to be but the stillness before the storm which bursts from unknown gulfs to give a new shape to the world. Inch by inch, step by step, physical science has marched towards its desired goal—the verge of physical nature, says Alcott. When it was thought that the verge was reached, that the mysteries which lay beyond were for ever barred to mortals by the iron gate of death, then the discoveries of Faraday, Edison, and Crookes pushed further away the chasm which separates the confessedly knowable from the fancied unknowable, and whole domains previously undreamt of were suddenly exposed to view. Not long since, Canon Wilberforce asked Keely what would become of his discovery and his inventions in case of his death before they became of commercial value to the public. Keely replied that he had written thousands of pages, which he hoped would, in such an event, be mastered by some mind capable of pursuing his researches to practical ends; but in the opinion of the writer, there is no man living who is fitted for this work.
Diogenes of Apollonia identified the reason that regulated the world with the original substance, air. Keely teaches that “the original substance” is ether, not air; and that the world is regulated through this ether by its Creator. There are many molecules which contain no air—not one molecule that does not contain the one true “original substance,” ether.
Up to 1888 Keely was still pursuing the wrong line of research, still trying to construct an engine which could hold the ether in “a rotating circle of etheric force;” still ignorant of the impossibility of ever reaching commercial success on that line. It was the end of the year before he could be brought to entirely abandon his “perfect engine;” and to confine himself to researches, which he had been pursuing in connection with his repeated failures on the commercial line, to gain more knowledge of the laws which govern the operation of the force that, like a “Will-o’-the-wisp,” seemed to delight in leading him astray.
Up to this time his researching devices had been principally of his own construction; but from the time that he devoted himself to the line of research, marked out for him to follow, he was supplied with the best instruments that opticians could make for him after the models or designs which he furnished. If, from 1882 to 1888, he walked with giant strides along the borders of the domain that he had entered, from 1888 to the present time he has made the same progress beyond its borders. From the hour in which he grasped “the key to the problem,” the “principle underlying all,” the dawn of “a new order of things,” broke upon his vision, and he was no longer left at the mercy of the genii whom he had aroused.
In July, 1888, the T.P.S. published the succeeding paper, which had a wide circulation.