Were it not for this will-force eternally flowing into all created forms, the entire universe would disappear. As the workman employs his instrument to accomplish his designs, so Omnipotence may be said, in all reverence, to regulate His systems of worlds through and by the vibratory ether which He has created to serve His purpose. Well did Hertz reason when he wrote, “Soon the question set by modern physics will be, ‘Are not all things due to conditions of ether?’ ” He had never heard of the toiler on this side of the Atlantic, when, after his own discovery, in 1888, that ether was imprisoned and used in every electro-magnetic engine, without this fact having been even so much as suspected by a single scientist, he wrote, in the Revue Scientifique, “We have gained a greater height than ever, and we possess a solid basis which will facilitate the ascent, in the research of new truths. The road which is open to us is not too steep, and the next resting-point does not appear inaccessible. Moreover, the crowds of researchers are full of ardour. We must therefore welcome with confidence all the efforts that are being made in this direction.”
Keely has found no “resting-point” in his researches of a lifetime; and, instead of being “welcomed with confidence” by his fellow-researchers in science, he has suffered at their hands more than will ever be known by his detractors. Keely’s discoveries would have died with him, through the calumnies of these same scientists, as far as demonstration was concerned, had not a company been formed, in the early days of his inventions, which for many years furnished him with the necessary funds, expecting almost immediate financial success. The sneers of men of science crying “Charlatan,” the ridicule of the public press, and the denunciations of the ignorant have been mighty factors in debasing the value of the shares of the company. The courage, faith, and contributing capacity of nearly all the stockholders have given out; and it is fortunate that now Mr. Keely’s work of evolution has at last reached the point where he is able to convince those scientists of his integrity whose minds are broad enough to conform to what Herbert Spencer has said is the first condition of success in scientific research,—viz. “an honest receptivity, and willingness to abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth.”
Keely may be said to have spent years of his valuable time in giving exhibitions whereby to raise the funds needed for his scientific researches. Again and again has he taken apart his various machines, to show their interior construction to the sceptical; and what this means, in the attendant delay, will be better understood when he has made known how slight a thing, by the laws of sympathetic association, may retard his progress for days, even for weeks.
Take, for example, his last experience with his preliminary commercial engine, to which, before he had completed his graduation, he was induced, in November 1889, to apply a brake, to show what resistance the vibratory current could bear under powerful friction. A force sufficient to stop a train of cars, it was estimated, did not interfere with its running; but under additional strain a “thud” was heard, and the shaft of the engine was twisted.
The engine should not have been submitted to such a test until after the differentiation had been equated, and perfect control in reversions established. And yet, so often has Keely made what seemed to be disasters an advantage in the end, it is possible that the interruption and delay may enable him to produce a perfect engine sooner than he would have done on this model. The world will never know how many mechanical difficulties Keely has conquered before attaining his present degree of success, in which he thinks he has mastered all that pertains to the principle of the force that he is dealing with, so far as necessary for commercial purposes, the difficulties that he still has to contend with being merely the minor ones of mechanical detail. The fact that so much of Mr. Keely’s success, in conducting his experiments when giving exhibitions, depends upon the complete perfection of his instruments, is one of the strongest arguments that could be advanced in proof of the genuineness of his claims. Has any one ever heard of a performer in legerdemain who, after assembling an audience to witness his tricks, announced that something was wrong with his conjuring apparatus and that he was unable to exhibit his dexterity? Feats of legerdemain can be performed, night after night, year in and year out, without any hitch on the part of the operator; but all who are conversant with the failures attendant upon a certain order of experiments, as for instance in the liquefying of oxygen gas, will be able to appreciate the uncertainty which characterizes the action of Mr. Keely’s instruments at times.
It is only by progressive experimental research that knowledge of the laws governing Nature’s operations can be gained, and a system evolved to perpetuate such knowledge. The hypothesis of to-day must be discarded to-morrow, if further research proves its fallacy. Is it not, then, another strong argument in favour of Keely’s integrity that, confessing ignorance of the laws that govern the force he has discovered, he has plodded on through all these years, experimenting upon its nature, with instruments of his own invention, which from their delicate and imperfect construction are uncertain in their operations, until he has so improved the defective machine as to make it a stepping-stone, by which he ascends to perfection? Take the imperfect comparison of a ladder: no workman can attain the summit in one effort; he must mount step by step.
To quote from Keely’s 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 long enough to cover more than the introductory branch. The theory of elliptic functions, the calculus of probabilities, are but pygmies 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.”[2]
On the 28th of May, 1889, Mr. Keely’s workshop was visited by several men interested to see and judge for themselves of the nature of his researches. Among them were Professor Leidy, of the University of Pennsylvania, and James M. Willcox, author of “Elemental Philosophy.” After seeing the experiments in acoustics, and the production, storage, and discharge of the ether, Mr. Willcox remarked that no one who had witnessed all that they had seen in the line of associative vibration, under the same advantages, could assert any fraud on the part of Keely without convicting himself of the rankest folly. These gentlemen met Mr. Keely with their minds open to conviction, though with strong prejudices against the discovery of any unknown force. They treated him as if he were all that he is, keeping out of sight whatever doubts they may have had of the genuineness of his claims as a discoverer; and, in the end, all who were present expressed their appreciation of his courtesy in answering the questions asked, and their admiration of what he has accomplished on his unknown path. In doing this, they were simply doing justice to him and to themselves,—to that self-respect which leads men to respect the rights of others, and to do unto others as they would be done by. Had they questioned Keely’s integrity, or betrayed doubts of his honesty of purpose, he would at once have assumed the defensive, and would have informed them that he has no wish to conduct experiments for scientists who are ready to give their opinions of his theories before having heard them propounded, or of his experiments before witnessing them. When Keely’s system of “sympathetic vibration” is made known (“sympathetic seeking” Mr. Willcox would call it), it will be seen how sensitive Mr. Keely’s instruments are to the vibrations caused by street-noises, to vibrations of air from talking in the operating room, to touch even, as well as why it is that, although he is willing to take apart and explain the construction of his instruments in the presence of investigators, he objects to having them handled by others than himself, after they have been “harmonized,” or “sensitized,” or “graduated.”
Mr. Keely is his own worst enemy. When suspected of fraud he acts as if he were a fraud; and in breaking up his vibratory microscope and other instruments which he had been years in perfecting, at the time he was committed to prison in 1888, he laid himself open to the suspicion that his instruments are but devices with which he cunningly deceives his patrons. Yet these same instruments he has, since their reconstruction, dissected and explained to those who approached him in the proper spirit. It is only when he has been subjected to insulting suspicions by arrogant scientists that he refuses to explain his theories, and to demonstrate their truth, as far as it is in his power to do so. “Keely may be on the right track, after all,” remarked an English scientist, after Prof. Hertz had made known his researches on the structure of ether; “for if we have imprisoned the ether without knowing it, why may not Keely know what he has got a hold of?”
Norman Lockyer, in his “Chemistry of the Sun,” confirms Keely’s theories when he writes, “The law which connects radiation with absorption and at once enables us to read the riddle set by the sun and stars is, then, simply the law of ‘sympathetic vibration.’ ”