The earlier processes of civilization belonged to an age of spontaneity, of unreflective productivity; an age that expressed itself in myths, created religious and organized social forms and habits of life in harmony with these spontaneous creations.
“O, ye delicious fables! where the wave
And woods were peopled and the air with things
So lovely! Why, ah why, has Science grave
Scattered afar your sweet imaginings?”
asks Barry Cornwall. But now that we have entered upon a more advanced age in thought, as in all things pertaining to discovery and practical application, or invention, a critical defining intellectual age, we must henceforth depend upon true science for our progress toward a higher enlightenment. Science, as will be seen, embraces religion, and must become, as Keely asserts, the religion of the world, when it is made known in all its glory and grandeur, sweeping away all foot-holds for scepticism, and spreading the knowledge of God, as a God of love, until this knowledge covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. As has been said, the word science, in its largest signification, includes intellectual achievement in every direction open to the mind, and the co-ordination of the results in a progressive philosophy of life. Philosophy has been defined as the science of causes or of first principles, and should be limited, almost exclusively, to the mental sciences. This is the field which Keely is exploring; the knowledge of the “hidden things” which he is bringing to the light is pure philosophical knowledge, in the widest acceptation of the term: the knowledge of effects as dependent on their causes.
“Behold an infinite of floating worlds
Dividing crystal waves of ether pure
In endless voyage without port.”
Is it not a marvel of inspiration to have been able to cast line and plummet in such a sea of knowledge, to be able to demonstrate the power of that “sympathetic outreach” which, acting from our satellite upon the waters of our oceans and seas, through the vast space that separates it from our earth, lifts these waters, once in every twenty-four hours, from their beds; and, as gently as a mother would lay her infant on its couch, places them again where they rest?