Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

Professor Hertz of Bonn, said to me: “Keely must work out his system himself to that point where he can instruct physicists to repeat his experiments.” Picking up a photograph of Keely’s instruments of research, grouped together, he added: “No man is likely to be a fraud who is working on these lines.”

Science is alert, on tiptoe as it were, waiting for the one mighty explanation of the force, “behind the framework of nature,” which has hitherto “eluded its skill;” and which the system of Keely makes clear to the understanding, demonstrating that one power, one law, reigns throughout creation; the immaterial controlling the material, after the divine order and law of creation that the immaterial should govern the material—that the whole realm of matter is under the dominion of the immaterial. But “the known always excludes the unknown” when in opposition to it. As in past generations, so now in ours, physicists have said: “We will not waste our time in looking at facts and phenomena which cannot be accepted in opposition to established principles of science and to known laws of nature; and which, even if we beheld we should not believe.”

The recognition and practical application of new truths are, as has been said, notoriously slow processes. Harvey’s beneficent discovery excited vehement opposition from his contemporaries. Professor Riolan combated this discovery with as much obstinacy as violence; even denying the existence and the functions of lymphatic vessels. Harvey himself united with Riolan in opposing the discoveries of Aselli and Pacquet respecting the lymphatic system. Jenner’s discovery met with the same opposition, and more than forty years elapsed before the suggestion of Sir Humphrey Davy became of practical use. Mr. Wills was so affected by the ridicule which he encountered in his experiments with nitrous oxide in destroying physical pain, that he abandoned them. Nearly half a century later Dr. Morton was assailed by several of our journals in America for the use of ether in producing anæsthesia; as also was Sir James Simpson for his use of ether and chloroform.

The scientists excommunicated Dr. Wigan, who had proved by anatomical examination that each brain-hemisphere is a perfect brain; that we have, in fact, two brains, as we have two eyes and two ears. His experiences as a physician were declared to be impostures or delusions; his deductions fallacious. They could not be true, because they were inconsistent with the established principles of physiology and mental science. And with such experiences in the past, we should keep in mind that the powers of nature are so mysterious and inscrutable that men must be cautious in limiting them to the ordinary laws of experience. Proclus wrote of the power of mind or will to set up certain vibrations—not in the grosser atmospheric particles whose undulations beget light, sound, heat, electricity—but in the latent immaterial principle of force, of which modern science knows scarcely anything.

What is beyond their own power, men cannot comprehend to be in the power of others. Said Sextus: “If by magic you mean a perpetual research among all that is most latent and obscure in nature, I profess that magic, and he who does so comes nearer to the fountain of all knowledge.”

Sir Isaac Newton said: “It is well known that bodies act upon one another by the attractions of gravity, magnetism and electricity; and these instances show the tenour and course of nature, and make it not improbable that there may be more powers of attraction than these. For nature is very consonant and conformable to herself.”

With such intimations of the hidden force that is ever in operation, “behind the framework of nature,” shall we, because it is hidden from science, refuse to listen to the explanations which Mr. Keely is now prepared to give? All nature is a compound of conflicting, and therefore of counter-balancing and equilibrating, forces. Without this there could be no such thing as stability. In nature nothing is great and nothing is little, writes Figuier. Sir Henry Roscoe says: “The structure of the smallest particle, invisible even to our most searching vision, may be as complicated as that of any of the heavenly bodies which circle around our sun.” If you admit this, as stated by one of your own orthodox scientists, why refuse to admit the possibility of the subdivision of all corpuscles of matter, which Keely declares can be done by certain orders of vibration, thus showing up new elements? I do not ask endorsement of Keely’s theories; but if physicists did not think it possible to rupture the atom, would they be calculating the chances of doing so, as Professor Fitzgerald has done?

Why not admit that certain tenets of science may prove to be nothing more than hypotheses, too hastily adopted as theories, and that Keely has succeeded, as he claims, to have discovered the order of vibration, which by increasing the oscillation of the atom, causes it to rupture itself? This introductory impulse is given at forty-two thousand eight hundred vibrations, instead of one hundred millions; which, having been reached by Professor Hertz, failed to tear apart the atom, and convinced Professor Fitzgerald of the “long way off” that they still are from rupturing it. But even this conclusion was arrived at under an erroneous hypothesis; for the atomic charge does not oscillate across the diameter of the atom, and its possible radiating power was calculated on this hypothesis.

Again, as to the canons of science, which are proved by Mr. Keely’s researches to be erroneous: take the one which teaches that molecular aggregation is ever attended with dissipation of energy. From whence, then, comes the immense force which is liberated from the constituents of gunpowder by its exciter, fire?—which is a certain order of vibration. Concussion, another order of vibration, releases the hidden energy stored in the molecules of dynamite, which tears the rocks asunder as if they were egg-shells. Still another order of vibration, which Keely has discovered, dissociates the supposed elements of water, releasing from its corpuscular embrace almost immeasurable volumes of force.

The discoverer of this law of nature has long been harassed and made to feel like a galley-slave chained to a rock, while with Prometheus aspirations he is seeking to bring down fire and light from heaven for his fellow-men.