Now, all these branches of study, however various in detail, agree in this, that they exclude the conception of a true self-directive power from the field of thought. They offer for consideration nothing but figures, movements, and laws. And thus they tend to form the popular mind to the habit of looking for figures, movements, and laws everywhere, and for rejecting all other conceptions as intruders. But of all such other conceptions, there is nothing so difficult and so intractable, under physical modes of investigation, as self-directive power. It therefore runs a great risk of being rejected, and thus the mind, from its first training, having been in physics, carrying out here, as it usually does everywhere, its first love into all its after thoughts, shuts up the student surreptitiously with materialism as his philosophy. Thus it is easy to see how materialism should come to be a current opinion, when the popular education runs all in favour of physical pursuits. But if philosophy must yield to the demands of the logical faculty for an extreme simplicity, unity, identity, at the fountain-head of nature, it were more logical to regard those phenomena and laws named physical, such as the laws of motion, elasticity, gravitation, etc., as manifestations, when existing under certain limiting conditions, of substances or beings which have also in them, when not so limited, and when existing under certain conditions, ability to manifest self-directive power. That every body is compounded, constituted, or made up of molecules, is universally agreed. Every body is therefore a fit subject for analysis. But when any body is submitted to analysis in reference to its mere corporeity or bodily nature, that is, its extension and impenetrability, what do we ultimately arrive at? Do we not, in reference to the attribute of extension, arrive at particles, of which the physical limit is that they have at least ceased to be extended, and are but mere points in space? And as to the attribute of impenetrability, what do we in the last analysis arrive at, but the idea of a substance that can resist the intrusion into its place of other similar substances, and, therefore, ultimately, a centre of force. And thus, under a logical analysis, which must be admitted to be legitimate, it may be maintained that a body or chemical element resolves itself into a system of centres of force balancing each other at certain distances, and thus rendering the whole molecule or mass extended, as body is known to be. The elements of body, therefore, are things of which these attributes are to be affirmed in the first instance, that they possess unextended substance and extensive power. But, if so, do they not touch upon the confines of the spiritual world to say the least? asks Macvicar; and the Newton whom he anticipated would give a mécanique céleste to mankind, solves the problem, answers the question by his discovery of the cerebellic stream or will-flow.
Body and spirit, one at the fountain-head, when rising into existence, form, as it were, the first breath of creation; for, as Sir Wm. Thompson says: “Life proceeds from life and from nothing else.” They are the opposite poles of being and constitute the two principles by the harmonious interweaving of which the beautiful system of creation is constituted, and its economy worked out. Such a view, far from being contrary to the canons of science, is even the necessary complement of science. That unity, which is the last word of science, must always include two objects, existing in contrast after all. The law of couples, of opposites, of reciprocal action between two contrasted yet homogeneous and harmonizing elements, each of which opens a field for the other, and brings it into action, is of universal extent. In the organic world, also, no less than in the purely physical and chemical, all is framed according to the same law of couples. In the sphere of sensibility, in like manner, everything turns on the antagonism of pleasure and pain, and in the moral sphere of good and evil. Nor is the world of pure intellect exempt from this law, but on the contrary displays its influence everywhere. Hence faith and sight, identity and difference, finite and infinite, objective and subjective, space and time, cause and effect, the world of realities and the world of ideas. In a word, every system of thought and of things, when complete, present as its basis two co-ordinate elements, the reciprocals of each other; or one parted into two reciprocally, and by the harmonious antagonism of both the beautiful web of nature is woven. If we are to be consistent, mind and matter ought always to be viewed as distinct, and the opposite poles of being; inertia, or unvarying submissiveness to the laws of motion being the characteristic of the one; self-directive power the characteristic of the other.
The universal analogy of science sanctioned Macvicar in the characteristic he thus arrived at as that of animated nature, for if inertia, or the obedience to pressures and impulses from without, be the characteristic of matter, then that which is needed as the other term to complete the couple is just what has been insisted on, viz., self-directive power, the power to cause pressures and impulses. Here is shown the symmetrical relation in which this power, when viewed as the characteristic of the whole animal kingdom (which plainly points to man, and culminates in human nature), places the animal in relation with the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms. Of minerals or crystals, the characteristic is simply self-imposing or self-concreting power. They are, so to speak, merely insoluble seeds without an embryo. To this, self-developing power is added in plants, and forms their acknowledged characteristic. While of animals the characteristic, according to the view here advanced (the same seed-producing, self-developing, powers continuing) is self-directive power superadded. This relationship between these three kingdoms of nature is as homogeneous and symmetrical as is necessary to appear to be legitimate, and is a true expression of the order of nature.
Granting these two principles, the inert and the self-directive, the necessary and the free, we obtain the materials for a universe, without disputing the fact of human liberty and bringing into suspicion even the possibility either of morality or immorality. If man be really free as well as under law, in this union of body and spirit, then in human nature heaven and earth truly embrace each other; and no reason appears why, as the ages roll on, our own free thought may not have the run of the universe …. What study then can be more replete with interest, what researches can possess more of fascination, than those which Mr. Keely’s discoveries are preparing the way for?
The discoveries of Mr. Keely (demonstrated—as he is now prepared to demonstrate them) cannot be disputed, though his system may be called in question. With the humility of genius, he calls his theories hypotheses, and his hypotheses conjectures. The solidity of the principles, as laid down by himself, cannot be decided upon by others until he has brought to light the whole system that grows out of them. But it is time the public should know that the odium thrown upon him by the Keely Motor Company, he does not deserve. It is time that the Press should cease its sneers, its cry of “Crucify him, crucify him!” morally speaking, and extend to him that discriminating appreciation of his work and encouragement which the New York Home Journal, Truth, Detroit Tribune, Chicago Herald, Toledo Blade, Atlanta Constitution, The Statesman, and Vienna News have been the first to do. Let the Press contrast the past history of science with the present position of Keely, as Professor Dewar has done. Only such a man who knows from experience the labour, the difficulties, the uncertainties, attendant upon researching unknown laws of nature is able to appreciate all that is now being concentrated in the single life of one man. It is time that capitalists should step from their ranks to protect Keely from the selfish policy of the managers of a speculative company, which has long since forfeited all claims upon him, to continue mechanical work for it, even admitting that it ever possessed that right; and, more than all else, it is time that science should send her delegates to confer with the broad-minded men who have had the courage to give testimony, without which Keely could not have stood where, this year, he stands for the first time, fearless of threats, pursuing his researches on his own line, to acquire that knowledge of the laws governing his discoveries by which alone he can gain sufficient control of machinery to insure financial success. Meanwhile, are there no men who are able to feel an interest (without reference to commercial results) in a discovery which sweeps away the débris of materialism as chaff is swept before a whirlwind?—giving indisputable proof that, as St. Paul teaches, “we are the offspring of God; “or, as Aratus wrote, from whom he quoted:—
“From God we must originate,
Not any time we break the spell
That binds us to the ineffable.
Indeed, we all are evermore
Having to do with God: for we