If Keely is able to establish his theories, physical science will have to abandon the positions to which she clings, and forced to admit that there exists a purity of conditions in Vibratory Physics unknown in mechanical physics, undreamed of even in philosophy; for he will then be in a position to demonstrate the outflow of the Infinite mind as sympathetically associated with matter visible and invisible.
Of this philosophy Professor Daniel G. Brinton has said, “It is so simple, beautiful and comprehensive in its vibratory theory that I hope it will be found experimentally to be true. To me all commercial and practical results, motors, air-ships, engines, are of no importance by the side of the theoretical truth of the demonstrations of this cosmic force. As soon as Dr. Koenig is prepared to report on the purely technical and physical character of the experiments, I shall be, in fact I am, ready to go into full details as to their significance in reference to both matter and mind. It will be enough for me if Dr. Koenig is able to say that the force handled by Keely is not gravity, electricity, magnetism, compressed air, nor other of the well-known forces. Let him say that, and I will undertake to say what the force is.” Tests were made last year by Dr. Koenig and Dr. Tuttle, a Baltimore physicist, in the presence of other men of science with the most sensitive galvanometer belonging to the University of Pennsylvania, all of whom were satisfied that no known force had been detected.
The abstract of Keely’s philosophy, written by Dr. Brinton, has made Keely’s theories intelligible for the first time. Each new discovery necessitates a new vocabulary; and Keely’s writings are obscure because of his new nomenclature. When Faraday’s ideas differed from those held by the authorities of his time, they were pronounced to be “untranslatable into scientific language;” and as was then said of Faraday, so can it now be said of Keely, with equal truth, that, working at the very boundaries of our knowledge, his mind habitually dwells “in the boundless contiguity of shade” by which that knowledge is surrounded.
The brain of an Aristotle was needed to discern and grasp Keely’s meaning, to interpret and define it. Dr. Brinton never touches a subject without throwing light upon it, and his penetrating mind perceived the ideas to be defined in all their relations. His keen logical acumen separated and classified them in their order, in a true, sound, and scientific manner. In the words of Sir James Crichton Browne, who heard Professor Brinton read this abstract in London, “Professor Brinton’s synopsis is an able, lucid and logical paper.”
Now that such distinguished men are interesting themselves in Keely’s discoveries, there is no longer any danger of their being lost to science; nor to commerce, if his life is spared. The action of Dr. Pepper (Provost of the University of Pennsylvania) in January, 1891, gave Keely all the protection that he then needed in order to continue his researches up to the completion of his system.
Professor Dewar of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, whose Cambridge duties prevented him from keeping the engagement made for him to visit Mr. Keely’s workshop in December, 1891, is now compelled to wait, until notified that Keely is in a position to demonstrate his theories, as it is desirable that he should not be interrupted in the critical work that is at present engrossing him, at times eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. But although Keely has not instructed anyone in his method of disintegrating water, to obtain the ether, which he uses as the medium of the polar force, he does not withhold the principle by which he obtains it. Sir John Herschell said, “There is a principle in the science of music that has yet to be discovered.” Pythagoras taught that the principle which underlies the harmonies of music, underlies the motion of the heavenly bodies. It is this principle which Keely has discovered; but until he has utilized it in mechanics, he has nothing more to sell than Sir Isaac Newton had when he discovered gravity, as Professor Fitzgerald has said.
Discovery and invention are walking side by side in our age, the glorious scientific age of the world. Never before have they so linked themselves together, working for humanity; and it is but natural that those savants who have seen no demonstrations of the force Keely is handling should regard with apathy claims, which, if established, would sweep away like chaff before a whirlwind, some of the canons of their schools. In fact, this apathy is a great improvement upon the active persecution of the learned men who hurried Copernicus and Galileo to prison, and established the Inquisition to deal with heretics in science as well as heretics in religion. Commerce rushed Keely into a dungeon; science looking on in approval; notwithstanding that conjectures of the most celebrated modern member of its school supported Keely’s teachings. Galileo was brought before the Inquisition; the tribunal pronounced him a deluded teacher and a lying heretic. They intended to subject him to the severest torture and death. Galileo was old, and felt that he could not endure such a terrible death. He knelt on the crucifix, with one hand on the Bible, and renounced all. When he arose, however, it is reported that he whispered to one of the attendants, “The earth does move for all that.” Sir Isaac Newton has written of the possibility of discovering unknown forms of energy, in Nature, in these strong words: “For it is well known that bodies act upon one another by the attractions of gravity, magnetism and electricity, and these instances show the tenor and course of nature and make it not improbable that there may be more powers of attraction than these. For Nature is very consonant and conformable to herself.”
All progress of whatever kind would be put back, if it were in the power of bigots to arrest its triumphal march, as they have done in the past, but the evolution of the human race remains in the hands of the Infinite One, who never fails to open up new paths when the farther development of humanity requires it. All systems may be said to have descended from previous ones. “The ideas of one generation are the mysterious progenitors of those in the next. Each age is the dawn of its successor; and in the eternal advance of truth,
‘There always is a rising sun,
The day is ever but begun.’ ”