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?”