Keely.
Hertz in his conjectures that a knowledge of the structure of ether should unveil the essence of matter itself, and of its inherent properties, weight and inertia, is treading the path that leads to this knowledge. Professor Fitzgerald says:—“Ether must be the means by which electric and magnetic forces exist, it should explain chemical actions, and if possible gravity.” The law of sympathetic vibration explains chemical affinities as a sympathetic attractive, but inherent, force; in short, as gravity. This opens up too wide a territory even but to peer into in the dawning light of Keely’s system of vibratory physics. The boundary line is crossed, and the crowds of researchers in electro-magnetism are full of ardour. Hertz constructed a circuit, whose period of vibration for electric currents was such that he was able to see sparks, due to the increased vibration, leaping across a small air-space in this resonant circuit; his experiments have proved and demonstrated the ethereal theory of electro-magnetism:—that electro-magnetic actions are due to a medium pervading all known space; while Keely’s experiments have proved that all things are due to conditions of ether.
Professor Fitzgerald closes one of his lectures on ether in these words:—“There are metaphysical grounds for reducing matter to motion, and potential to kinetic energy. Let us for a moment contemplate what is betokened by this theory that in electro-magnetic engines we are using as our mechanism the ether, the medium that fills all known space. It was a great step in human progress when man learnt to make material machines, when he used the elasticity of his bow, and the rigidity of his arrow to provide food and defeat his enemies. It was a great advance when he learnt to use the chemical action of fire; when he learnt to use water to float his boats, and air to drive them; when, by artificial selection, he provided himself with food and domestic animals. For two hundred years he has made heat his slave to drive his machinery. Fire, water, earth, and air have long been his slaves, but it is only within the last few years that man has won the battle lost by the giants of old, has snatched the thunderbolt from Jove himself, and enslaved the all-pervading ether.”
Of the experiments of Hertz, in inducing vibrations “in ether waves,” Professor Fitzgerald says: “If we consider the possible radiating power of an atom, we find that it may be millions of millions of times as great as Professor Wiedermann has found to be the radiating power of a sodium atom in a Bunsen burner; so if there is reason to think that any greater oscillation might disintegrate the atom, we are still a long way from it.”
Here we have an admission that the atom may be divisible; but the professor’s conjecture is made upon an incorrect hypothesis. The “possible theory of ether and matter” which Professor Fitzgerald puts forward, in his lecture on Electro-Magnetic Radiation, is in harmony with Keely’s theories. This hypothesis explains the differences in nature as differences in motion, ending: “Can we resist the conclusion that all motion is thought? Not that contradiction in terms, ‘unconscious thought,’ but living thought; that all nature is the language of One in whom we live, and move, and have our being?” This great truth the Buddhists have taught for ages. There is no such thing as blind or dead matter, as there is no blind nor unconscious thought.
CHAPTER XIII.
1891.
“MORE SCIENCE.”
The only hope for science is more science.—Drummond.