In this long chain of physical causes, says Dr. Willcox, seemingly endless, but really commencing with that one link that touches the hand of Him who made all matter, and all potencies that dwell within matter, this cosmical activity has been ceaseless, these cosmical effects numerous past conception, by which universal nature has slowly unfolded and become the universe of to-day.
In this way both Christianity and science unfold their truths progressively. Truth, like the laws of nature, never changes; yet truth as an absolute thing, existing in and by itself, is relatively capable of change; for as the atoms hold in their tenacious grasp undreamed-of potencies, so truths hold germs potential of all growth. Each new truth disclosed to the world, when its hour of need comes, unfolds and reveals undreamed-of means of growth. As the Rev. George Boardman has said of Christianity, so may it be said of science: Being a perennial vine, it is ever yielding new wine.
A philosopher has said that if ever a human being needed divine pity it is the pseudo-scientist who believes in nothing but what he can prove by his own methods. In the light of Keely’s discoveries, science will have to admit that when she concentrates her attention upon matter, to the exclusion of mind, she is as the hunter who has no string in reserve for his bow. When she recognizes that a full and adequate science of matter is impossible to man, and that the science of mind is destined ultimately to attain to a much higher degree of perfection than the science of matter—that it will give the typical ideas and laws to which all the laws of physics must be referred—then science will be better supplied with strings than she now is, to bring her quarry down.
It is Professor Leidy’s and Dr. Willcox’s second strings, to their bows, which will enable you to secure to science the richest quarry that has ever been within its reach. I know that the experience of Professor Rowland, as related by him, must have had the effect to prejudice you against Mr. Keely. Professor Fitzgerald writes to me on this subject: “I am sorry that Mr. Keely did not cut the wire, wherever Professor Rowland asked to have it cut, because it will undoubtedly be said that he had some sinister reason for not doing so, whatever his real reasons were; but, of course, when one cuts a bit off a valuable string one prefers naturally to cut the bit off the end, as Keely did, rather than out of the middle.” This very wire which Mr. Keely did cut at one end, twice, for Professor Rowland, one of the pieces falling into my hand, is now in Professor Fitzgerald’s possession. It was the offensive manner of Professor Rowland when he seized the shears, telling Keely it was his guilty conscience which made him refuse to cut the wire, and that it must be cut in the middle, which put Keely on the defensive, causing him to refuse to allow Professor Rowland to cut it.
It would seem that the professor in the Johns Hopkins University, from his remarks on that occasion, thought, instead of an experiment in negative attraction, that Keely was imposing upon the ignorant by giving a simple experiment in pneumatics, familiar to all schoolboys. Professor Rowland did not realize how low he was rating the powers of discernment of a professor in the University of Pennsylvania who had witnessed Keely’s experiments again and again, when his instruments or devices were in perfect working order. Mr. Keely, who was ambitious to show Professor Rowland that his disintegrator had no connection with any concealed apparatus, had suspended it from the ceiling by a staple. The hook had given way, and the jar to the instrument in falling to the floor disarranged its interior construction on that day. To those who have not witnessed any of Keely’s experiments, under favourable conditions, his theories naturally seem vague speculations; but not one theory has Keely put forward, as a theory, which he has not demonstrated as having a solid foundation in fact. Some of our men of science once settled the problem of the origin of life to their own satisfaction, only to learn in the end that speculation is not science; but this very problem is one the solution of which Keely now seems to be approaching.
It would become a matter of easy analysis, writes Keely, if the properties governing the different orders of matter could be understood in their different evolutions. The force of the mind on matter is an illustration of the power of the finer over the crude, but the law making the crude forms of matter subservient to the finer or higher forms, is an unknown law to finite minds.
Buckle has asserted that the highest of our so called laws of nature are as yet purely empirical; and that, until some law is discovered which is connected with the laws of the mind that made it, our knowledge has no sure basis. So saturated has Mr. Keely’s mind been with his discovery of this law that he has contented himself to remain ignorant in physics, as taught by the schools; and also with simpler matters it would seem; while testing and building up his hypotheses into a system which no one but himself can complete, and which without completion must be lost to the world. I should form a very poor opinion of the mind that would accept an hypothesis as anything more than the signpost at cross roads, which points to the direction that may be taken. In physics the very first fact to which the learner is introduced is already sophisticated by hypotheses. Every experiment in chemistry is but a member of a series, all based upon some one or other of many hypotheses; which are as necessary to the construction of a system as is the scaffolding which is used in building an edifice. If the scaffolding proves unsound it does not affect the edifice, as it can be at once replaced with material more solid. So an hypothesis, which is merely a conjecture or a suggestion, cannot affect the solidity of a philosophy or a system. It must be tested and found to support all the facts which bear upon it, and capable of accounting for them, before it can be accepted as a theory.
It is my wish to have the professors of the University of Pennsylvania meet at my house the founder of a system which, in my opinion, embraces a pure philosophy: to listen to his theories, and to elicit from him such information as to the nature of his researches, in what is called electro-magnetic radiation, as I trust will convince them that I have not been pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp during the years that my mind has been concentrated on the work in which Mr. Keely is engaged. The bearings of this work are so various that I shall not have time to touch upon more than the one which interests me beyond any or all of the others; namely, its connection with the medical art. Appreciating as I do the life of self-denial which physicians who are devoted to their profession must lead, and having in their ranks relatives and many warm friends on both sides of the ocean (one of them, my nephew, Dr. Jessup, is here to-night) I trust that what I say of the medical art will not be misconstrued.
The great sorrows of my life have come upon me through the ignorance of medical men, who, I know, followed their best judgment in the course of treatment that they pursued in the illnesses of those dear to me. When my children were in their infancy I had reason to embrace the opinions of Professor Magendie, as set forth in one of his lectures before the students of his class in the Allopathic College of Paris. These are his words: “I know medicine is called a science. It is nothing like a science. It is a great humbug. Doctors are mere empirics when they are not charlatans. We are as ignorant as men can be. Who knows anything about medicine? I do not, nor do I know anyone who does know anything about it. Nature does a great deal; imagination does a great deal, doctors do d——h little when they do no harm.”
Later in life, in 1871, I was sent, while suffering with neurasthenia, from Paris to Schwalbach Baths by Dr. Beylard, who recommended me to the care of Dr. Adolph Genth; to whom, in my first interview, I said: “I wish for your opinion, and for your advice, if you can give it to me without prescribing any medicine.” He replied: “With all my heart, Madam, and I wish to God there were more women like you; but we should soon lose our patients, if we did not dose them.” A terrible excuse for the use of those agencies which Dr. John Good has said have sent more human beings to their graves than war, pestilence and famine combined.