Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

Shape breeding shape beneath his restless hand;

The soul without still helps the soul within,

And its deft magic ends what we begin.

George Eliot.

I hope that I do not seem to be too presumptuous in my effort to awaken an interest, on your part, in the discoveries of Keely which have aroused a marked degree of attention among some of the most learned men in Europe.

I should hardly have ventured to ask the prestige of your support to be given to Mr. Keely, in his further scientific researches, were it not that one of your number fully realizes, I think, the important nature of these researches. You all know to whom I refer—Professor Joseph Leidy. In his book, “Fresh Water Rhizopods of North America,” he says, in his concluding remarks: “I may perhaps continue in the same field of research and give to the reader further results, but I cannot promise to do so, for though the subject has proved to me an unceasing source of pleasure I see before me so many wonderful things in other fields, that a strong impulse disposes me to leap the hedges to examine them.” I have reason to know that, had Dr. Leidy not followed this impulse, our age might have been robbed of its birthright.

It was not until I appealed to Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox, to convince themselves whether I was right or wrong in extending aid to Mr. Keely, that their decision enabled me to continue to assist him until he has once more made such advances, in experimental research, as to cause the managers of the Keely Motor Company to believe that his engine is near completion, and that they can dispense with outside assistance hereafter.

But I know as it has been in the past so will it be again, and that, as the months glide away, if no engine is completed, the company will once more desert the discoverer; while, if he is allowed to pursue his researches, up to the completion of his system under your protection, his discoveries will be guarded for science, and the interests of the stockholders will not be sacrificed to the greed of speculators, as has so often been done in the past.

As I have had occasion to say, elsewhere, after the warning given in the history of Huxley’s Bathybius, Professor Leidy would not have risked his world-wide reputation by the endorsement of Keely’s claims, as the discoverer of hidden energy in inter-molecular and atomic spaces, had he not tested the demonstrations until fully convinced of the discovery of a force previously unknown to science, and of the honesty of Mr. Keely in his explanations. Therefore, following the advice of Professor G. Fr. Fitzgerald, of Dublin, I do not ask for further investigations. Until Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox came to the front, in May, 1891, Mr. Keely had no influential supporters, and was under such a cloud, from his connection with speculators, that to advocate his integrity of purpose and to uphold the importance of his work, was enough to awaken doubts as to the sanity of his upholders.

We are told by Herodotus that science is to know things truly; yet past experience shows us that what has been called knowledge at one period of time is proved to be but folly in another age. Science is to know things truly, and the laws of nature are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Throughout the universe the same laws are at work and regulate all things. Men interpret these laws to suit their own ideas. The system which Keely is unfolding shows us that there is not one grain of sand, nor one invisible corpuscule of floating matter, that does not come under the same law that governs the most mighty planet, and that all forms of matter are aggregated under one law. “The designs of the Creator as expounded by our latest teachers,” writes Gilman, “have required millions of ages to carry out. They are so vast and complex that they can only be realized in the sweep of ages. One design is subordinated by another without ever being lost sight of, until the time has arrived for its complete fulfilment. These designs involve an infinitude of effort, ending often in what, to our view, looks like failure, to be crowned after a series of ages with complete success at last.”