CHAPTER XXI.

Faith by Science: The Dawn of a New Order of Things 332

CONCLUSION.

Keely's Physical Philosophy.--By Professor D. G.

Brinton, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania 358

Appendix I. 365

Appendix II. 368

Appendix III. 370

Verses 373

PREFACE.

By the Rev. John Andrew, of Belfast.

"Wait on the Lord."

When the Almighty is taking men into His deeper confidence as to His

Creation ways, and how His ways may be taken advantage of for man's

service and benefit, the gifted one through whom such revealing is

being made should not be hurried by the common bustle of the world,

but should be protected in the privacy where the Creator and he

are closeted together in the giving and receiving which is thus

transpiring.

Scientific patience is, in all such cases, imperative. When the gifted

one is bustled by the world, as Mr. Keely has been, his inspiration

is disturbed and his advance hindered. If the first inkling of some

great revealing thus in progress should promise some mighty find for

the material advantage of mankind, there is naturally a quickened

desire to gain possession; but if in such an event impatience should

impel the seer, ere his far-visioned sight has reached the end,

deplorable delay may be the result.

This is the thing which has happened in the case which this little

volume comes forth to relate and explain. It is not intended to unfold

the systematic methods of the gifted genius concerning whom it speaks;

that will come, in his own words, in due time. The aim of this volume

is to show the course of events in relation to his researches; and to

open the mystery of how it came about that he should have been so much

misunderstood and hindered. It tells how he, in the dim dawn of initial

inspiration, first glimpsed and touched The Power which is about to

be given to the possession of mankind for the supply of wants, and

the relief of toil. How he struggled and wrestled like the patriarch

of old who said, "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me." How

men of the world, seeing the struggle and estimating the power, said,

"Make haste and harness this power to our machinery, and we shall

pay you." How, in his need of means, he was tempted and fell; making

an attempt to harness to machinery a power whose very form and kind

he had not yet been given to discern. And then, when this too hasty

attempt had failed, how the disappointed world laughed and mocked,

and fumed, and called him an impostor.

This volume seeks to explain this Keely Mystery; and to show that

although a mistake was made, it was only a passing mistake. The

mistake has been rectified; and the seer, now in possession of peace

and privacy, has fully sighted the power, and is making progress in

bringing it into subjugation.

He has been interviewed by competent men, men of enlarged scientific

vision; and in the protection of their esteem, and by the liberal

pecuniary aid of one who has made scientific interests an object

of sacred solicitude, Mr. Keely is likely to succeed in opening

to the world another of the stores which the Almighty Creator and

Preserver, ever provident of His children's needs, has prepared in

reserve against the time of their necessity. We may theorize, but God

alone knows the means by which the regeneration of mankind, and the

establishment of the kingdom of righteousness and peace shall come

about. The All-merciful has a purpose and plan of His own. The power

which Mr. Keely is dealing with belongs to the ways and means of the

evolution of civilization and material providence; and it will depend

on how men make use of it how far it may clear or block the way of this

planet's highest weal. The power, however, which Mr. Keely is dealing

with lies so close to the spiritual realm of things, and brings us

so near to the point at which the Almighty is in immediate touch of

His Creation in His unceasing upholding of it, that all Christian men

might be expected to take a deep interest in researches which promise

so much. It may reasonably be hoped that this volume may promote this

interest, and turn the attention to coming events which are casting

more than shadows before. With this hope we commend it to the reading

of the wise. Those who delight in yellow-covered literature may pass

it by; it contains no plot for the excitement of such.

INTRODUCTION.

Ex Vivo Omnia.

We stand before the dawning of a new day in science and

humanity,--a new discovery, surpassing any that has been

hitherto made; which promises to afford us a key to some of

the most recondite secrets of nature, and to open up to our

view a new world.--Dr. Hufeland.

The error of our century in questions of research seems to have been in

the persistent investigation of the phenomena of matter (or material

organization) as the sole province of physics, regarding psychical

research as lying outside. The term physics is derived from a Greek

word signifying "nature." Nature does not limit herself to matter and

mechanism. The phenomena of spirit are as much a part of Nature as are

those of matter. The psychological theories of our physicists display

a decided leaning towards materialism, disregarding the manifestations

of the vital principle,--the vis motrix,--and refusing to investigate

beyond the limits which they have imposed upon themselves, and which,

if accepted by all, would take us back to the belief of the pagans,

as echoed by Voltaire:

Est-ce-là ce rayon de l'Essence Suprême

Que l'on nous peint si lumineux?

Est-ce-là cet Esprit survivant à nous-même?

Il nait avec nos sens, croît, s'affaiblit comme eux:

Hélas! il périra de même.

Sympathetic philosophy teaches that the various phenomena of the human

constitution cannot be properly comprehended and explained without

observing the distinction between the physical and material, and the

moral and spiritual nature of man. It demonstrates incontrovertibly

the separate existence and independent activity of the soul of man,

and that the spirit governs the body instead of being governed by

the body. As Spenser has said,--

For of the soul the body form doth take;

For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Huxley tells us that science prospers exactly in proportion as

it is religious, and that religion flourishes in exact proportion

to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis. "Civilization,

society, and morals," says Figuier, "are like a string of beads,

whose fastening is the belief in the immortality of the soul. Break

the fastening and the beads are scattered."

Now, as Nature nowhere exhibits to our visual perceptions a soul

acting without a body, and as we do not know in what manner the

spiritual faculties are united to the organization, psychology is

compelled to investigate the operations of the intellect as if they

were performed altogether independently of the body; whereas they

are only manifested, in the ordinary state of existence, through the

intermediate agency of the corporeal organs.

The accumulation of psychological facts and speculations

which characterize this age appears to have made little or no

permanent impression upon the minds of our scientists and our

philosophers. Bishop Berkeley asks, "Have not Fatalism and Sadducism

gained ground during the general passion for the corpuscularian and

mechanical philosophy which hath prevailed?" Buffon, in writing

of the sympathy, or relation, which exists throughout the whole

animal economy, said, "Let us, with the ancients, call this singular

correspondence of the different parts of the body a sympathy, or,

with the moderns consider it as an unknown relation in the action

of the nervous system, we cannot too carefully observe its effects,

if we wish to perfect the theory of medicine." Colquhoun, commenting

upon Buffon's statement, says that far too little attention has

been paid to the spiritual nature of man,--to the effects of those

immaterial and invisible influences which, analogous to the chemical

and electrical agents, are the true springs of our organization,

continually producing changes internally which are externally perceived

as the marked effects of unseen causes, and which cannot be explained

upon the principles of any law of mechanism.

These unseen causes are now made clear to us by the truths which

Vibratory Physics and Sympathetic Philosophy demonstrate and

sustain. The prophecy of Dr. Hufeland (made in connection with an

account of certain phenomena arising from the unchangeable laws of

sympathetic association) is soon to be fulfilled, and the door thrown

open to "a new world" of research. Professor Rücker in his papers on

"Molecular Forces," William Crookes in his lecture on "The Genesis

of Elements," Norman Lockyer in his book on "The Chemistry of the

Sun,"--all these scientists have approached so near to this hitherto

bolted, double-barred and locked portal that the wonder is not so

much that they have approached as that, drawing so near, they have

not passed within.

Professor Rücker, in his papers (read before the Royal Institution

of Great Britain) explaining the attractive and repulsive action

of molecules, found himself obliged to apologize to scientists

for suggesting the possibility of an intelligence by which alone

he could explain certain phenomena unaccounted for by science; but

do we not find proof in ourselves that the action of molecules is

an intelligent action? For we must admit the individuality of the

molecules in our organisms, in order to understand how it is that

nourishment maintains life. Try as we may to account for the action

of aliment upon the system, all is resolved into the fact that there

must be some intelligent force at work. Do we ourselves disunite

and intermingle, by myriad channels, in order to rejoin and replace

a molecule which awaits this aid? We must either affirm that it is

so, that we place them where we think they are needed, or that it

is the molecules that find a place of themselves. We know that we

are occupied in other ways which demand all our thoughts. It must,

therefore, be that these molecules find their own place. Admit this,

and we accord life and intelligence to them. If we reason that it

is our nerves which appropriate substances that they need for the

maintenance of their energy and their harmonious action, we then

concede to the nerves what we deny to the molecules. Or, if we think

it more natural to attribute this power to the viscera,--the stomach,

for example,--we only change the thesis.

It will be said that it is pantheism to assert that matter, under

all the forms which it presents, is only groups of aggregates

of sympathetic molecules, of a substance unalterable in its

individualities; a thinking, acting substance. Let us not deny what

we are unable to explain. God is all that is, without everything that

is being individually God. Etheric force has been compared to the

trunk of a tree, the roots of which rest in Infinity. The branches

of the tree correspond to the various modifications of this one

force,--heat, light, electricity, and its close companion force,

magnetism. It is held in suspension in our atmosphere. It exists

throughout the universe. Actual science not admitting a void, then all

things must touch one another. To touch is to be but one by contiguity,

or there would be between one thing and another something which might

be termed space, or nothing. Now, as nothing cannot exist, there must

be something between "the atomic triplets" which are, according to the

Keely theory, found in each molecule. This something in the molecule

he affirms to be "the universal fluid," or molecular ether. One thing

touching another, all must therefore be all in all, and through all,

by the sensitive combination of all the molecules in the universe,

as is demonstrated by electricity, galvanism, the loadstone, etc. If

we account for the intelligent action of molecules by attributing

it to what has been variously called "the universal fluid," "the

electric fluid," "the galvanic fluid," "the nervous fluid," "the

magnetic fluid," it will only be substituting one name for another;

it is still some part or other of the organization which discerns and

joins to itself a portion of one of the fluids referred to, or one of

these fluids which discerns and mingles with the material molecules;

it is still the life of the part, the life of the molecule, life

individualized in all and through all.

Admitting, then, that there is a universal fluid, it must exist in

and through all things. If void does not exist, everything is full;

if all is full, everything is in contact; if everything is in contact,

the whole influences and is influenced because all is life; and life is

movement, because movement is a continual disunion and union of all the

molecules which compose the whole. The ancient philosophers admitted

all this. Under the different names of "macrocosm," "microcosm,"

"corpuscles," "emanations," "attraction," "repulsion," "sympathy," and

"antipathy,"--all names which are only one,--their various propositions

were merely the product of inductions influenced by their modes of

observing, as the deductions of scientists are influenced in our day.

Balzac tells us that everything here below is the product of an

ethereal substance, the common basis of various phenomena, known under

the inappropriate names of electricity, heat, light, galvanic and

magnetic fluid, etc., and that the universality of its transmutations

constitutes what is vulgarly called matter. We cannot take up a book

on physics (written with true scientific knowledge) in which we do not

find evidence that its author acknowledges that there is, correctly

speaking, but one force in nature. Radcliffe tells us that what is

called electricity is only a one-sided aspect of a law which, when

fully revealed, will be found to rule over organic as well as inorganic

nature--a law to which the discoveries of science and the teachings of

philosophy alike bear testimony,--a law which does not entomb life in

matter, but which transfigures matter with a life which, when traced

to its source, will prove only to be the effluence of the Divine life.

Macvicar teaches that the nearer we ascend to the fountain-head of

being and of action, the more magical must everything inevitably

become; for that fountain-head is pure volition. And pure volition,

as a cause is precisely what is meant by magic; for by magic is meant a

mode of producing a phenomenon without mechanical appliances,--that is,

without that seeming continuity of resisting parts and that leverage

which satisfy our muscular sense and our imagination and bring the

phenomenon into the category of what we call "the natural;" that is,

the sphere of the elastic, the gravitating,--the sphere into which

the vis inertiæ is alone admitted.

There is in Professor Crookes's "Genesis of the Elements" an hypothesis

of great interest,--a projectment of philosophical truth which brings

him nearer than any known living scientist to the ground held by

Keely. Davy defines hypothesis as the scaffolding of science, useful

to build up true knowledge, but capable of being put up or taken

down at pleasure, without injuring the edifice of philosophy. When

we find men in different parts of the world constructing the same

kind of scaffolding, we may feel fairly sure that they have an

edifice to build. The scaffolding may prove to be insecure, but it

can be flung away and another constructed. It is the edifice that

is all-important,--the philosophy not the hypotheses. The science

of learning, says Professor Lesley, and the science of knowledge

are not quite identical; and learning has too often, in the case

of individuals, overwhelmed and smothered to death knowledge. It

is a familiar fact that great discoveries come at long intervals,

brought by specially-commissioned and highly-endowed messengers;

while a perpetual procession of humble servants of nature arrive with

gifts of lesser moment, but equally genuine, curious, and interesting

novelties. From what unknown land does all this wealth of information

come? Who are these bearers of it? And who intrusted each with his

particular burden, which he carries aloft as if it deserved exclusive

admiration? Why do those who bring the best things walk so seriously

and modestly along as if they were in the performance of a sacred duty,

for which they scarcely esteem themselves worthy?

The Bishop of Carlisle, in his paper on "The Uniformity of Nature,"

suggests the answer to all who are prepared to approach the abyss

which has hitherto divided physical science from spiritual science,--an

abyss which is soon to be illumined by the sunlight of demonstration

and spanned by the bridge of knowledge. To quote from the paper of

the Bishop of Carlisle, "There are matters of the highest moment

which manifestly do lie outside the domain of physical science. The

possibility of the continuance of human existence in a spiritual form

after the termination of physical life is, beyond contradiction,

one of the grandest and most momentous of possibilities, but in

the nature of things it lies outside physics. Yet there is nothing

absolutely absurd, nothing which contradicts any human instinct,

in the supposition of such possibility; consequently, the student

of physical science, even if he cannot find time or inclination to

look into such matters himself, may well have patience with those who

can. And he may easily afford to be generous: the field of physical

science is grand enough for any ambition, and there is room enough

in the wide world both for physical and for psychical research."

But does psychical research lie outside the domain of physical

science? What is the supernatural but the higher workings of laws

which we call natural, as far as we have been able to investigate

them? Is not the supernatural, then, just as legitimate a subject of

consideration, for the truly scientific mind, as is the natural? If

it explains, satisfactorily, phenomena which cannot be otherwise

explained, there is no good reason why its aid should not be invoked

by men of science. The truth is, that the ordinary course of nature

is one continued miracle, one continued manifestation of the Divine

mind. "Everything which is, is thought," says Amiel, "but not conscious

and individual thought. Everything is a symbol of a symbol; and a

symbol of what?--of mind. We are hemmed round with mystery, and the

greatest mysteries are contained in what we see, and do, every day."

Keely affirms, with other philosophers, that there is only one unique

substance, and that this substance is the Divine spirit, the spirit

of life, and that this spirit of life is God, who fills everything

with His thoughts; disjoining and grouping together these multitudes

of thoughts in different bodies called atmospheres, fluids, matters,

animal, vegetable, and mineral forms.

Herbert Spencer says that amid the mysteries that become the more

mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one

absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence of an infinite

and an eternal energy, from which all things proceed. Macvicar

foreshadowed the teachings of this new philosophy when he wrote, "All

motion in the universe is rhythmical. This is seen in the forward and

backward movement of the pendulum, the ebb and the flow of the tides,

the succession of day and night, the systolic and diastolic action of

the heart, and in the inspiration and expiration of the lungs. Our

breathing is a double motion of universal æther, an active and a

reactive movement. This androgyne principle, with its dual motion,

is the breath of God in man." The writings of the ancients teem with

these ideas, which have been handed down to us from generation to

generation, and are now flashing their light, like torches in the

darkness, upon mysteries too long regarded as "lying outside the

domains of physical science."

Twenty years ago Macvicar wrote his "Sketch of a Philosophy," in

which he advanced the above views, with other views now maintained and

demonstrated by Keely, who during these twenty years, without knowing

Macvicar's views, or of his existence even, has been engaged in that

"dead-work which cannot be delegated," the result of which is not

learning, but knowledge; for learning, says Lessing, is only our

knowledge of the experience of others; knowledge is our own. This

burden of dead-work, writes Lesley, every great discoverer has had

to carry for years and years, unknown to the world at large, before

the world was electrified by his appearance as its genius. Without

it, there can be no discovery of what is rightly called a scientific

truth. Every advancement in science comes from this "dead-work," and

creates, of its own nature, an improvement in the condition of the

race; putting, as it does, the multitudes of human society on a fairer

and friendlier footing with one another. And during these twenty years

of "dead-work" the discoverer of etheric force has pursued the even

tenor of his way, under circumstances which show him to be a giant

in intellectual greatness, insensible to paltry, hostile criticism,

patient under opposition, dead to all temptations of self-interest,

calmly superior to the misjudgments of the short-sighted and ignoble;

noble means as indispensable to him as noble ends; fame and riches less

important than his honour; his joys arising from the accomplishment of

his work and the love and the sympathy of the few who have comprehended

him! "Only the noble-hearted can understand the noble-hearted." Keely's

chief ambition has been to utilize the force he discovered; not for

his own aggrandizement, but to bless the lives of his fellow-men. He

has scaled the rocks which barricade earth from heaven, and he knows

that the fire which he has brought down with him is divine.

This so-called secret is an open secret, which, after it is known,

may be read everywhere,--in the revolution of the planets as well as

in the crystallization of minerals and in the growth of a flower.

"But why does not Keely share his knowledge with others?" "Why does

he not proclaim his secret to the world?" are questions that are

often asked. Keely has no secret to proclaim to the world. Not until

the aerial ship is in operation will the world be able to comprehend

the nature of Keely's discoveries. When the distinguished physicist,

Professor Dewar, of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, goes

to America this summer, he will be instructed by Mr. Keely in his

dissociation processes. Every man who has passed the mere threshold of

science ought to be aware that it is quite possible to be in possession

of a series of facts long before he is capable of giving a rational

and satisfactory explanation of them--in short, before he is enabled

to discover their causes even. This "dead-work" has occupied many

years of Keely's life; and only within the last five years has he

reached that degree of perfection which warranted the erection of a

scaffolding for the construction of the true edifice of philosophy.

We have only to recall the wonderful discoveries which have been made

in modern times, relative to the properties of heat, of electricity, of

galvanism, etc., in order to acknowledge that had any man ventured to

anticipate the powers and uses of the steam-engine, the voltaic pile,

the electrical battery, or of any other of those mighty instruments

by means of which the mind of man has acquired so vast a dominion

over the world of matter, he would probably have been considered a

visionary; and had he been able to exhibit the effects of any of these

instruments, before the principles which regulate their action had

become generally known to philosophers, they would in all likelihood

have been attributed to fraud or to juggling. Herein lies the secret

of Keely's delay. His work is not yet completed to that point where

he can cease experimenting and publish the results of his "dead-work"

to the world.

"When will he be ready?" is a question often asked; but it is one that

God only can answer, as to the year and day. It now seems as if the

time were near at hand,--within this very year; but not even Keely

himself can fix the date, until he has finished his present course of

experiments, his "graduation" of his twenty-seventh and last group of

depolar disks, for effecting change and interchange with polar force.

"But what are his hypotheses? And what the tenets of his new

philosophy?" His hypotheses are as antithetic to existing hypotheses

in chemistry as the Newtonian system, at its first publication, was

antithetic to the vortices of Descartes. The philosophy is not of his

creation; nor is it a new philosophy. It is as old as the universe. Its

tenets are unpopular, heterodox tenets, but their grandeur, when

compared with prevailing theories, will cause the latter to appear

like the soap-bubbles that Sir William Drummond said the grown-up

children of science amuse themselves with; whilst the honest vulgar

stand gazing in stupid admiration, dignifying these learned vagaries

with the name of science. It is the sole edifice of true philosophy,

the corner-stone of which was laid at Creation, when God said,

"Let there be light; and there was light." The scaffolding which

our modern Prometheus has built is not the airy fabric of delusion,

nor the baser fabric of a fraud, as has been so often asserted. It

has been built plank by plank, upon firm ground, and every plank is

of pure gold, as will be seen in due time.

It has been justly said that we have no ground for assuming that we

have approached a limit in the field of discovery, or for claiming

finality in our interpretations of Nature. We have, as yet, only

lifted one corner of the curtain, enabling us to peep at some of

the machinery by which her operations are effected, while much more

remains concealed; and we know little of the marvels which in course

of time may be made clear to us.

Earnest minds in all ages and in all countries have arrived at the

same inferences which Keely has reached in his researches,--viz.,

that the one intelligent force in nature is not a mere mathematical

dynamism in space and time, but a true Power existing in its type

and fulness,--deity. You may say that such an inference belongs to

religion, not to science, but you cannot divorce the two. No systematic

distinction between philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas can

be maintained. All the three run into one another with the most perfect

legitimacy. Their dissociation can be effected only by art, their

divorce only by violence. Great as is the revolution in mechanics which

is to take place through this discovery, it has an equally important

bearing on all questions connected with psychical research. Once

demonstrated, we shall hear no more of the brain secreting thought,

as the liver secretes bile. The laws of "rhythmical harmony," of

"assimilation," of "sympathetic association," will be found governing

all things, in the glorious heavens above us, down to the least atom

upon our earth. Leibnitz's assertion, that "perceptivity and its

correlative perceptibility are coextensive with the whole sphere of

individualized being," will be accounted for without depriving us

of a Creator. "The music of the spheres" will be proved a reality,

instead of a figure of speech. St. Paul's words, "In Him we live,

and move, and have our being," will be better understood. The power

of mind over matter will be incontrovertibly demonstrated.

"The requirement of every demonstration is that it shall give

sufficient proof of the truth it asserts." This Keely is prepared to

give,--mechanical demonstration; and should he really have discovered

the fundamental creative law, which he long since divined must exist,

proving that the universal ether which permeates all molecules is

the tangible link between God and man, connecting the infinite with

the finite,--that it is the true protoplasm, or mother element of

everything,--we may look for a philosophy which will explain all

unexplained phenomena and reconcile the conflicting opinions of

scientists.

The great law of sympathetic association, once understood, will become

known as it is,--viz., as the governing medium of the universe. Herein

lies the secret, the revelation of which will usher in the spiritual

age foretold by the Prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles

of the New Testament. Inspiration is not confined to prophets and

apostles and poets: the man of science, the writer, all who reach out

after the Infinite, receive their measure of inspiration according

to their capacity. We need a new revelation to turn back "the tidal

wave of materialism" which has rolled in upon the scientific world,

as much as Moses needed one when he sought to penetrate the mysteries

of the Creation; and our revelation is near at hand,--a revelation

which will change the statical "I am" into the dynamical "I will,"--a

revelation which, while teaching us to look from Nature up to Nature's

God, will reveal to us our own powers as "children of God," as "heirs

of immortality."

"Knowledge," said Lord Beaconsfield, "is like the mystic ladder in the

Patriarch's dream. Its base rests on the primeval earth--its crest

is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean; while the great

authors who, for traditionary ages, have held the chain of science

and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and

descending the sacred scale, maintaining, as it were, the communication

between man and heaven."

This beautiful imagery holds within it that seed of truth, which

is said to exist in the wildest fable; for, although all great

discoveries, pertaining to the material world, have been made

gradually, with much starting on the wrong track, much false deduction

and much worthless result, spiritual truths can be revealed to man

in no other way than by that spiritual influence which maintains

communication between the terrestrial and the celestial, or the

material and the spiritual. "Truth is attained through immediate

intuition," say the Aryan teachers; but only by those who have educated

their sixth sense; as will be seen in Mr. Sinclair's new work,

"Vera Vita; or, the Philosophy of Sympathy." While the imaginative

scientist is puzzling himself about new natural forces and the

apparent suspension of old and hitherto invariable laws, Sinclair,

in his writings, shows us that it is because we do not recognize the

elements of nature that their influences remain mysterious to us.

Mr. Sinclair is as firm in his belief as is Mr. Keely that this element

is the great connecting link between the Creator and the created,

and that it is capable of rendering more marvellous services to man

than all the discovered uses of electricity.

The coincidences in the theories of these two philosophers are the

more remarkable, inasmuch as Mr. Sinclair's have their origin, as set

forth in his book "A New Creed," in metaphysics; while "Keely's wide

and far-reaching philosophy" (to quote the words of a distinguished

physicist) "has a physical genesis, and has been developed by long

years of patient and persistent research." But it is an undisputed fact

that, in countries far distant from each other, different men have

fallen into the same lines of research; and have made correspondent

discoveries, at the same time, without having had any communication

with each other; and never has there been a time when so many were

testing all things that appear to give proof of the super-sensual

element in man. There is a very general impression all over the world,

says Marie Correlli, that the time is ripe for a clearer revelation

of God and "the hidden things of God" than we have ever had before.

All persons who are interested in Keely's discoveries and the

nature of the unknown element discovered by Keely and Sinclair,

will find in the writings of the latter a more lucid explanation

of sympathetic association than Keely himself has ever been able to

give in writing. The title of this remarkable book would have been

more wisely chosen had its author called it "A New Element and a New

Order of Things." The Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., says of creeds:--"The

Bible is the word of God to man: the Creed is the answer of man to

God. The Bible is the book to be explained and applied; the Creed is

the Church's understanding and summary of the Bible." It is in this

light that Mr. Sinclair's new creed, human and humane, should be read.

There is no conductivity in the ether lines, writes Sinclair, for

selfish desires and motives; for they are not of the soul, but are only

sounds of the lips (or wishes of the material part of us), so that the

established connecting-rod between the living soul and the source of

life is insulated from desires that are not begotten in sympathy, and

they at once run to earth. Where there is no connection there can be no

communion. Without the natural sympathetic etheric connection between

the source of life and the soul, there can be no communication. "A New

Creed," like the sympathetic etheric philosophy of Keely, reveals the

connecting link between the finite and the Infinite, and teaches us

that the primal law of evolution and of progress is slowly but surely

preparing our race for the time when Christianity will be something

more than a mere profession, and "the brotherhood of humanity" will

no longer be the meaningless phrase that it now is. We are led to see,

by this pure philosophy, that "our solar system is a type of a healthy

social system; that in it each one affects, binds, controls, sustains,

helps, makes free each other; that no star lives for itself alone;"

that man was not made to mourn, and that our sufferings arise from

our ignorance of the laws governing the innate motive power within us.

The times are not degenerate! Men's faith

Mounts higher than of old. No crumbling creed

Can take from the immortal soul its need

Of something greater than itself. The wraith

Of dead belief we cherished in our youth,

Fades but to let us welcome new born truth.

Man may not worship at the ancient shrine,

Prone on his face, in self-accusing scorn.

That night is passed; he hails a fairer morn,

And knows himself a something half divine!

No humble worm whose heritage is sin,

But part of God--he feels the Christ within!

No fierce Jehovah with a frowning mien

He worships. Nay, through love, and not through fear,

He seeks the truth, and finds its source is near!

He feels and owns the power of things unseen,

Where once he scoffed. God's great primeval plan

Is fast unfolding in the soul of man.--Ella W. Wilcox.

KEELY AND HIS DISCOVERIES.

CHAPTER I.

1872 TO 1882.

INTRODUCTORY.

Within the half-century the hypothetical ether has amply

vindicated its novel claim to take its place as a mysterious

entity side by side with matter and energy among the ultimate

components of the objective universe.... Modern science sets

before our eyes the comprehensive and glorious idea of a

cosmos which is one and the same throughout, in sun and star

and world and atom, in light and heat and life and mechanism,

in herb and tree and man and animal, in body, soul, and spirit,

mind and matter.--Grant Allen on Evolution.

The man who can demonstrate the existence of an unsuspected

and unknown force has a right, in the absence of demonstrative

proof to the contrary, to form his own theory of its origin,

and to make it the basis of his own system. Keely is looking

at physical phenomena and their explanations from a point of

view so different from that of the inductive school, that we

hardly know how to combine the two, or show their bearings

upon each other. For myself, I think now, as I thought and

said in my address, that the absolutely exclusive position,

taken up by Huxley, Tyndall, and the so-called Material

School, is ludicrously indefensible; and that we should be

as perfectly open to evidence in any direction, as we were

2000 years ago.--The Rev. H. W. Watson, D.Sc., F.R.S.

So many men of learning are now holding Dr. Watson's views that

the time seems to have arrived, in which the theories of Keely will

receive, from those who are competent to judge of their value, the

attention that they deserve. Before entering upon their merits,

or setting them down for others to judge of their worth, the way

must be prepared by showing the claims which they possess from their

correspondence with some of the most advanced ideas of the present day,

as well as with the teachings of the wisest men in past centuries.

The mode which is the least laborious to accomplish this end, is

by collecting what has been written and printed, which bears upon,

and elucidates this subject.

It is now very generally known that Mr. Keely, while pursuing a line

of experiment in vibrations, "accidentally" as Edison would say,

made his discovery of an energy, the origin of which was unknown

to himself; and six years passed, in experiment, before he was able

to repeat its production at will. In the meantime he had exhausted

his resources and willingly accepted the proposal of men, who, after

witnessing the operation of the energy that he was able to show with

this unknown force, offered to organize a company to furnish him with

the means to construct an engine to use this force as the motive power,

anticipating immediate success.

But discovery is one thing, invention quite another thing, and

the years rolled on without Mr. Keely's being able to fulfil his

promises. In 1882, which was about ten years after the company was

formed, an action at law was brought against him for non-fulfilment

of his contract. The Evening Bulletin of March 30th of that year thus

explains, truthfully, the position.

THE KEELY MOTOR.

A STATEMENT FROM ONE OF THE INVENTOR'S STOCKHOLDERS.

"To the Editor of the Evening Bulletin: In your issue of last Tuesday

appears an article which deserves attention, and also calls for some

explanation upon that very much misunderstood question of the Keely

motor. From some cause not easy to learn, there seems to be a tendency

to keep only one side of that subject before the public.

"Being one of the unfortunates of the Keely motor speculation, interest

has led me to investigate not only the invention and the man who has

everything to do with it, but also the management of the company,

which is equally important to those who put their money into the

enterprise as an investment. Permit me, therefore, to state a few of

the facts which, if known, would very much change some of the popular

views now held.

"There are perhaps a thousand stockholders in the Keely Motor

Company. The mass of these, like myself, are not the prosecutors in

this case against Mr. Keely. We do not believe that Mr. Keely can

be forced to divulge any valuable secrets if he possesses them. We

do not believe that a case in court is calculated to prolong the

inventor's life, or render it more safe from the accidents to which

he is exposed. We do not believe that these proceedings are likely

to increase his good will towards the company. Some of us know that

by purchasing Keely motor stock, we have not thereby put our money

into the invention, nor has Mr. Keely had the benefit of it. We also

know that some, if not all, of the parties to this prosecution,

especially those who are most vehement in its favour under the

pretence of protecting the common stockholders, are selfish to

the last degree, while for themselves they have the least cause

to complain. Their official records show an utter disregard of the

interests of stockholders or the rights of the inventor: while the

success of the invention is to them a secondary consideration. It

is they, and not the inventor, who have drummed up the customers,

and recommended and sold the stock. They, and not he, are answerable

to the purchasers. If Mr. Keely is guilty of deception, they are to

say the least equally so. Look at a few statements:

"When the Keely Motor Company was started, in 1874, its organizers

received their stock without paying for it. About three-fourths of

the whole amount were thus given away by Mr. Keely. He retained about

one-seventh, and was cheated out of a good portion of that before

he had gone far. Only 400 shares out of 20,000 were retained in the

treasury, and that but a short time; for these recipients of the

"dead-head stock" made hasty havoc of the market by a rapid unloading

of their shares and pocketing the proceeds. So the poor little 400

shares of treasury stock brought only the minimum price to afford

temporary relief to a distressed company.

"The bankrupt condition of this incipient corporation threatened it

with a cessation of existence, unless somebody came to the rescue,

for the 'originals,' who had received a harvest by the sale of their

'free stock,' would not now give a dollar to save the concern. They

were all fixed, but what of the innocent stockholders who had purchased

this stock? They should not be allowed to suffer, as they must if the

company went out. So Mr. Keely came to the rescue, and consented to

the following scheme, which was prepared by schemers, as the sequel

proved. He had two inventions besides the motor, and they could be

handled to advantage in this emergency. These Mr. Keely assigned

to the company, and the stock was increased from 20,000 to 100,000

shares. The 80,000 new shares were to be divided equally: 40,000 to

pay for the inventions, and 40,000 went to the company without one

dollar of pay. So, Mr. Keely received no money in this transaction;

and of the 40,000 shares which he should have received, not 5000

ever reached him; fraudulent claims having captured the rest while

in the hands of the 'trustee.' Of the 5000 shares also, much had

been obligated in advance by the inventor to carry forward the work

which otherwise must have been delayed, so that he had less than 1000

shares left when all claims were settled. This grand act is called the

'consolidation,' which took place in 1879, and since which all moneys

raised by the company have come from the sale of shares out of this

40,000, which Mr. Keely then gave to the company. By some mysterious

operations in the 'management' this 'Treasury Stock' has shrunk

away very rapidly, bringing at times only a fraction of the price

which other stocks of the same kind were selling for in the market,

while the little cash which it has brought has only in part been used

by Mr. Keely, and that has been served out to him in a sparing way,

which would be shameful even if he had not furnished it all to begin

with. The company now owe to Mr. Keely fifty thousand dollars loaned

outright in its early history. To this indebtedness considerable

has since been added. The public statements that Mr. Keely has been

supplied with large amounts of money from the company are untrue,

while it is true that of those who are regarded as his dupes a half

dozen or more have made on an average at least $50,000 each from the

'enterprise.' The money with which Mr. Keely capitalized the company,

in the first place, was obtained from the sale of territorial rights

to men who have formed other companies for the purpose.

"If Mr. Keely deserves prosecution by any parties, it is those who

bought these rights, and not the ring who now control the company

with stock which has cost them nothing.

"If anybody deserves to be sued by the stockholders it is these

very persons who recommended and sold them the stock, and have taken

the benefit of it, and who at the same time are responsible for the

miserable management which has caused detention of the work, distress

in the company, depreciation in the stock and dissatisfaction among

stockholders.

"One."

The further history of "The Keely Motor Bubble" will be given later on,

but it is the position in earlier years, that we must first deal with,

to get a clear comprehension of the causes of the delays which again

and again shattered the hopes of the sanguine investors just when

they were the most buoyant, from an apparent increased control of

the mysterious force Keely was handling. Further quotations from the

press will best show the light in which Keely's work was regarded by

those who considered themselves competent to pass judgment upon him

and his efforts. The Daily News in Philadelphia, on May 25th, 1886,

contained a most sensible editorial, with the heading

What has Keely Discovered?

"For a number of years Mr. John W. Keely, of this city, and various

associates have occupied the attention of the public to a greater

or less extent, from time to time. The claim on behalf of Mr. Keely

is that he has discovered a new motive power, so far transcending

all previous achievements in this direction, as to overturn most of

the universally recognized conclusions regarding dynamics. Of course

such a claim was sure to be met with derision, and the derision was

sure of continuance until silenced by the most thorough practical

demonstration.

"Discussion of the matter has not seemed profitable in the absence of

such a demonstration; but now it seems proper to note an apparently

new status of Mr. Keely's affairs, as shown by some experiments

conducted last Saturday in the presence of a number of visitors. Some,

at least, of these visitors were qualified for critical observation,

and the noteworthy fact is that Mr. Keely was able to produce, under

their close inspection, a dynamic result which none of them pretended

to account for by any known law of physics, outside of that which

Mr. Keely claims as the base of his operation. He evolved, almost

instantaneously, according to the united report of those who were

present, a substance having an elastic energy varying from 10,000 to

20,000 pounds per square inch, and instantly discharged or liberated it

into the atmosphere, without the evolution of heat in its production,

or of cold on its sudden liberation. These phenomena alone would

seem to establish that the substance he is dealing with is one not

hitherto known to science.

"It seems rather frivolous to dismiss this matter with the supposition

that trained specialists are to be hoodwinked by concealed springs,

buried pipes for the introduction of compressed air and the

like. Surely such gentlemen ought very easily to determine at once

whether the surroundings and conditions of the experiments were such

as to favour any kind of legerdemain; and if they found them so, it

is strange that they should spend some hours in investigating that

which has been asserted to be 'a transparent humbug.'

"The appearances are that Mr. Keely has at least removed his enterprise

from the domain of ridicule to that of respectful investigation,

and this, after all, is great progress."

On Wednesday, July 28th, 1886, the Public Ledger had a leader headed,

Let us have some actual useful Work.

"With regard to the occasional revivals of the Keely motor, whether

annual, semi-annual, or biennial, as they have come along in the

last ten or a dozen years, the Ledger has paid but little attention

to them for a long time; and possibly this last display last week

might have been allowed to take the same unnoticed course, but that

the "whizz" of the big sphere seems to have been so rapid, and the

racket so stunning, as to more greatly puzzle those present at the

exhibition than on any former occasion. The matter for a long time

has presented itself to us in but two aspects mainly. First, there

was large public interest in the asserted development of physical

force by new and very strange means--very interesting if there really

was a probability of a new device or new means of developing power

that could be harnessed and made to do useful work; and second, so

far as the matter took the form of exploiting a private enterprise

or stimulating a boom for a private speculation, there was but very

limited interest for the public. In this latter aspect it was almost

exclusively an affair between Mr. Keely and the stockholders of his

company, who felt willing to back their faith in the substantiality of

his invention or discovery, by investing their money in the company's

stock. This was no affair for a public journal to meddle in, unless

some imposture was designed that might affect the general public.

"That is the way the Ledger has regarded the matter for several

years; and, as during that period it seemed to be almost exclusively

a private matter of little public interest, we have had little or

no concern with it. Of course the Ledger stood ready all the time,

as it stands now ready, to welcome anything that promises to be

useful or of advantage in any way as an addition to the mechanical

or other working facilities of our day. That Mr. Keely might have a

clue to such an addition we did not dispute on the mere ground that

it was new or strange, or because experts pronounced it impossible;

for many stranger things have happened. Mankind, even those who

are illumined by the highest human knowledge and intelligence,

do not yet know all that is to be known, as we are reminded almost

every day by the strides of scientific and mechanical progress. We

would rather have found Mr. Keely less inclined to be mysterious;

we could have wished him to have been less disposed to talk in terms

that sound very like meaningless jargon to most well-informed persons;

but still we did not think it proper, or fair, or wise, to reject his

claims on these grounds, but have simply let them rest in abeyance,

so far as the Ledger is concerned, because behind all this, and behind

many more such essays, is the possibility that the success of some one

of them may solve the problem of what is to be done when the world's

supply of fuel, whether in form of wood, or coal, or peat, or gas,

is either practically exhausted or to be got at only at a cost that

would largely preclude its use. Mr. Keely, we say, may have a clue

to that, as also may some one of those who are experimenting with

the several manifestations of electric or magnetic force.

"What we would have had Mr. Keely do, and, until he does it, his

operations have but little practical value in the sight of the Ledger,

would have been to harness his motor to do some useful work, to gear

it by cogwheel or by belt and pulley, or by some other mechanical

device, to a main shaft that has driving lathes, or planers, or other

machines--something that was doing actual useful work, day in and

day out, as other machines do. Of machines that will manifest great

pressure on a gauge, of contrivances that have enormous lifting power,

of explosives that demonstrate stupendous force, the appliances of

science and the mechanic arts have large numbers, and they are handier

and more manageable than any Mr. Keely has shown. These are not to

the point--except, perhaps, to persons endowed with large faith. The

machine that will do actual, useful, large work, by a manipulation of

new energy, or by a display of energy by new and manageable means,

this or these are the things the public and the Ledger will be glad

to hail."

At this time Mr. Keely had not reached that stage in his researches

when he could carry out the suggestions made by the able writer of the

Ledger leader; and if our discoverer of an unknown force had not been

known to some persons "endowed with large faith" in his discovery,

it would have been lost to the world. An anonymous writer has said

the idea that living nature is not a collection of dead-heads, never

seems to have struck the non-progressivists. The thing that is has

been, and the thing that is will continue to be; this is the sum and

substance of the doctrine they profess. They commit the mistake of

supposing they live in a finished planet when in reality they exist

on an orb that has relatively just begun to live. The time allowed

us for observation and study of nature and of ourselves, is limited

in a marked degree. Just when we are beginning to know how to read

the book, we are forced to close its pages because the intellectual

eyesight finds itself within the trammels of age. All we can do is to

make a hit here, and a hit there, and to hand on our little bit of

intelligence to those who come after us, in the hope that they also

will keep their eyes and ears open, and, in like manner, hand on a

cumulative store of knowledge to their heirs and successors. During

the brief span of a man's existence, then, it is difficult for him

to prove much progress either in himself or in his surroundings. The

eternal hills seem the same to him when the light of life dies out,

as when first his eyes beheld their outlines. Stern, uncompromising,

apparently immutable, the hills remain to him the type of all that

is fixed, all that is unchangeable around. Yet this is not the story

of science. Tennyson, who is always true to nature, says:--

"The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands;

They melt like mists, the solid lands;

Like clouds they shape themselves and go."

In Memoriam, cxxiii., 2nd Stanza.

This is good poetry; better still, it is good science.

The Himalayas, big and grand as they are, must represent mountains

whose rise was a thing of a very "recent" date, geologically

speaking. This is proved, because we see rocks belonging to a

relatively recent age, appearing as part and parcel of their lofty

peaks. Very different is the case with the hills and mountains of,

say, north-western Scotland. There you come upon peaks of an age

well-nigh coëval with the world's earliest settling down to a steady,

solid, and respectable existence. The Scottish hills are the old,

the very old, aristocrats of the cosmical circle; the Himalayas,

Alps, and the rest, are the new race whose origin goes not further

back than a generation, as it were.

Yet, about the oldest of the mountains there is nothing which is

absolutely enduring. Equally with the newer hills, geological progress

and action are written on the face of their history. The hills are

only phases of cosmical arrangement; they are here in the to-day

of the world; they may be gone in the world's to-morrow. Before

Science had learned to lisp this, the prophetic word of men moved

by the Holy Ghost had said: "Of old Thou hast laid the foundations

of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall

perish, but Thou remainest; yea, all of them shall wax old like a

garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou change them and they shall be

changed." The world is neither perfect nor finished in a geological

sense, any more than it is perfect in an ethical sense. It is full

of progressive action everywhere, and, to quote from another author,

"our planet and our solar system are but as the small dust of the

balance in the colossal scale of the worlds that are."

Had there been no one to read the future in the light of the past,

among those who witnessed the production of the force discovered

by Keely in 1872, he could not have continued his researches, as

he has done during these intervening years, from lack of the funds

necessary to carry them on. But there were men who knew the worth

of the discovery, and who, sanguine as to almost immediate results,

did something more than stand idly "ready to welcome" them when

produced. They furnished the money with which Keely laboured year after

year, and encouraged him to persevere, when without such aid he might

have been forced to abandon his researches for want of the necessaries

of life. During this period, Keely's discovery was only thought of

in reference to its commercial value, and for a decade he made no

progress: but, after his researches led up to the conviction that he

was on the road to another and infinitely more important discovery,

namely, the source of life and the connecting link between intelligent

will and matter, his progress has been almost uninterrupted. His

ambition is not only to give a costless motive power to the world,

but to make clear to men of science the path he is exploring.

CHAPTER II.

1882 TO 1886.

ETHER THE TRUE PROTOPLASM, AN EPITOME OF MACVICAR'S SKETCH OF A

PHILOSOPHY.

All that has been predicted of atoms, their attractions and

repulsions, according to the primary laws of their being,

only becomes intelligible when we assume the presence of

mind.--Sir John F. W. Herschell (1865).

It is in no small degree reassuring to find that we are

not chained to inert matter, but to the living energies

of its forms.... This leads us to the inference, long

suspected, that all matter, as well as the ethereal medium

itself consists ultimately of one and the same primordial

element.--Col. A. T. Fraser, Darkness and Light in the Land

of Egypt.

For ten years Keely's demonstrations were confined to the liberation,

at will, of the energy he had "stumbled over" while experimenting on

vibrations in 1872; and his efforts were put forth for the construction

of "the perfect engine," which he had promised to The Keely Motor

Company. He made the mistake of pursuing his researches on the line of

invention instead of discovery. All his thoughts were concentrated in

this direction up to the year 1882. Engine after engine was abandoned

and sold as old metal, in his repeated failures to construct one that

would keep up the rotary motion of the ether that was necessary to

hold it in any structure. Explosion after explosion occurred, sometimes

harmless to him, at other times laying him up for weeks at a time.

Two more years were lost in efforts to devise an automatic arrangement,

which should enable the machine, invented by Keely for liberating

the energy, to be handled by any operator, and it was not until 1884

that steady progress was seen, from year to year, as the result of his

enlarged researches. When Keely was asked, at this time, how long he

thought it would be before he would have the engine he was then at work

upon ready to patent, he illustrated his situation by an anecdote:

"A man fell down, one dark night, into a mine; catching a rope in

his descent, he clung to it until morning. With the first glimpse of

daylight, he saw that had he let go his hold of the rope he would have

had but a few inches to fall. I am precisely in the situation of that

man. I do not know how near success may be, nor yet how far off it is."

August 5th, 1885, the New York Home Journal announced that Keely had

imprisoned the ether; and, as was then wrongly supposed, that the

unknown force was the ether itself; not the medium of the force, as it

is now known to be. The late George Perry, who was then editor of that

journal, heralded the announcement with these comments:--"No object

seems to be too high or remote for human endeavour. It is not strange

that some of these attempts should stagger the faith of all but the

boldest imaginations. A notable example of this class is the famous

etheric motor invented by Keely, of Philadelphia, and the subject

of a communication which we print below from a well-known American

lady in Italy. The inventor claims to have found a new force, one

that entirely transcends those that have been hitherto appropriated

for human use. Heat, steam, electricity, magnetism are but crude

antetypes of this new discovery. It is essentially the creator of

these forces. It is scarcely less than the 'primum mobile.'

Indeed in reading the exposition of its potentialities one can hardly

help doubting whether the concrete matter of our earth is not too

weak and volatile to contain, restrain, and direct this vast cosmic

energy except in infinitesimal proportions. How shall iron and steel

stand before the power which builds up and clasps the very atoms of

their mass? Where shall the inventor look for 'safety discs' to stay

his new-found force, when every substance within his reach is but

a residuum of the activity of this identical principle? How shall

strength of materials avail against the power that gives, and indeed

is, strength of materials? This, however, is but a metaphysical doubt,

and as the invention has already demonstrated its practical efficiency

on a small scale, there is a presumption that it may be extended to

the higher degrees. At all events, whether the force can or cannot

be harnessed to do the daily work of the world, the discovery is

one that will mark an epoch in the progress of science and give the

inventor and his patrons a meed of immortality. Granted they are but

poets building a lofty cosmical rhyme, their work shall have not the

less an enduring honour."

The New Force--Etheric Vapour.

The discoverer of a hitherto unknown force in nature which, when

certain inventions are perfected, will create a revolution in science,

as well as in mechanics, has for many years concentrated his mind upon

gaining supreme control over one of nature's greatest and grandest

forces. Or, more correctly speaking, in efforts to control and apply to

mechanics one of the various manifestations of the one force in nature.

"The force which binds the atoms, which controls secreting glands,

Is the same that guides the planets, acting by divine commands."

The hypothetical ether conceived of by scientists, to account for the

transmission of light, is not hypothetical to this discoverer. He

knows its nature and its power. By the operation of an instrument

of his own invention, he can release it at will from the suspension

in which it is always held in our atmosphere. It is so liberated,

by an almost instantaneous process of intense vibratory action, and

passed through a tube the opening of which is no larger than a pin's

head, furnishing sufficient power to run a one hundred horse-power

engine. The importance of this discovery cannot be conceived; its limit

seems boundless; its value cannot be put in figures. Step by step,

with a patient perseverance which one day the world will honour, this

man of genius has made his researches, fighting with and overcoming

difficulties which seemed insurmountable, during years in which no

disinterested hands were extended to aid him, no encouraging words

of appreciation bestowed upon him by the scientists whom he vainly

tried to interest in his experiments; assailed by calumnies, which,

emanating from those who should have been the first to extend aid,

have over and over pierced his noble heart like poisoned arrows.

History will not forget that, in the nineteenth century, the story of

Prometheus found a counterpart, and that the greatest man of the age,

seeking to scale the heavens to bring down blessings for mankind,

met with Prometheus's reward from the vultures of calumny who, up to

the present moment, have not spared their talons upon him.

The dangerous conditions attending the introductory features of the

development of etheric vapour are not yet entirely overcome; but this

throws no shadow of a doubt as to the inventor's eventual success in

the minds of those who know the magnitude of the difficulties he has

already mastered.

O. W. Babcock, in an American journal says of this discovery, "Human

comprehension is inadequate to grasp its possibilities or power, for

prosperity and for peace. It includes all that relates mechanically to

travel, manufacture, mining, engineering and warfare. The discoverer

has entered a new world, and although an unexplored wilderness

of untold wealth lies beyond, he is treading firmly its border,

which daily widens as with ever-increasing interest he pursues his

explorations. He has passed the dreary realm where scientists are

groping. His researches are made in the open field of elemental

force, where gravity, inertia, cohesion, momentum are disturbed in

their haunts and diverted to use; where, from the unity of origin,

emanates infinite energy in its diversified forms," and to this I

would add--where he, the discoverer, is able to look from nature

up to nature's God, understanding and explaining, as no mortal ever

before understood and explained, how simple is the way in which God

"works His wonders to perform."

A compilation of Macvicar's "Sketch of a Philosophy," entitled "Ether

the true Protoplasm," was sent to Mr. Keely; and shortly after,

Mrs. Hughes' book on the evolution of tones and colours. Mr. Keely

will himself, in his theoretical exposé make known the manner in

which he was led, by the writings of Dr. Macvicar and Mrs. Hughes,

into the knowledge which raised the veil that had before hidden from

him the operations of Nature with this "the most powerful and most

general of all her forces;" operations which will explain all that

is now mysterious to us in the workings of gravity.

The question has been asked whether science, having destroyed faith,

has supplied us with anything better. But has science destroyed

faith? Certainly not. There would be no such thing as counterfeit

coin were it not for the existence of sterling gold. True science

has its counterfeit, and it is due to spurious science that the

bulwarks of religious faith have been besieged; but they are not

destroyed. Drummond says that it will be the splendid task of the

future theology to disclose to scepticism the naturalness of the

supernatural.

The pure Philosophy which true science seems about to reveal discloses

not a universe of dead matter, but a universe alive from its core

to its outermost extremity, and animated by mind and means, to which

matter, perfectly organized, is absolutely subservient. It illuminates

mysteries of nature which have only been partially revealed to us,

and lifts the veil which has hitherto shrouded in darkness still

greater mysteries involved in this universal power, which keeps and

sustains all systems of worlds in their relation towards each and

all. More and more clearly shall we be led by true science to see

that the universe "is founded upon a distinct idea," and that the

harmony of this distinct idea is manifested in all of God's works. Sir

Isaac Newton, in his "Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy,"

calls the great magnetic agent "the soul of the world," and says,

"all senses are excited by this spirit, and through it the animals

move their limbs; but these things cannot be explained in few words,

and we have not yet sufficient experience to determine fully the laws

by which this universal spirit operates." Centuries may pass before

these laws will be "fully understood"; but Etheric Philosophy casts

a plummet into depths that have never been sounded, and reveals this

"unparticled substance," "the cosmic matter," "the primal stuff,"

"the celestial ocean of universal ether," as the true protoplasm,

and the medium by which mind shapes matter and gives it all its

properties. It teaches us that, through it, we are connected in

sympathy with all other souls and with all the objects of nature, even,

to the stars and all the heavenly bodies. But even though we do not

understand the laws which control its operations, we find therein

a legitimate field of research. It is surely more legitimate for

science to ascribe failures in such researches to our still existing

ignorance of that which we may possibly know in time than to set such

laws down as unknowable. "Thought in its spontaneity has the run of

the universe, and there should be no bar to discovery." Our only hope,

says Macvicar, lies in the universality of the cosmical laws and the

ultimate homogeneity of created substances, or reality.

In stating some of the various hypotheses which have been put forward

by Macvicar, more as a sketch than as a new system of philosophy,

it is not necessary to make any comments. If the scaffolding be good

the edifice will appear in time. If worthless, no edifice can be

constructed. Therefore, it must be remembered that it is only with the

scaffolding that we have to do at present. If it has been left for our

age to demonstrate the truth or the falsity of certain deductions made

in past ages--if we arrive at a partial knowledge, even, of truths

which ancient wisdom saw with dim vision, we must never forget that

our century has had the benefit of the light reflected down the stream

of time. Macvicar's "Sketch of a Philosophy" was published in 1868. He

said that his ideas would not be acceptable, or even intelligible, to

an age when the popular demand is for very light reading; when science

is marvellously content with the attainments which it has already

made; and when, "as to the method of science we are told, with more

and more confidence every day, that all we can do for the discovery of

realities is to go out of doors, leaving 'the inner man' all alone,

and to compare the odour of the present with the smell of the past,

and then, turning our noses towards the future, to follow them wherever

they may lead us." He continues, Sensation, we are taught, is the alone

architect of all trustworthy knowledge; the author both as to form and

substance of all that is belief-worthy. No such thing as intuition,

we are told; reason merely a habit, rising from the long-continued use

of the organism. This looking only to mechanism is as much the plague

and sorrow of our times as it was when Macvicar complained of it as

divorcing science from philosophy. Philosophic wisdom, says Willcox, is

a structure built up of all knowledges--grand and sublime: permanent,

not of the present nor the past. Science holds, in its relation to

philosophy, the same position that theology sustains to religion. "En

dehors de toutes les sciences spéciales et au-dessus d'elles, il y

a lieu à une science plus haute et plus générale, et, c'est ce qu'

on appelle philosophie."--(Paul Janet, Revue des Deux Mondes.)

Of what nature are the ideas which Macvicar was so sure would be

unpopular? In compiling from his writings, such are selected as

seem to be the best, toward elucidating the mysteries which lie

in the operation of the laws governing the universal ether, so far

as his hypotheses carried him. If matter without form preceded the

creation of vitality, "it is only when the principle of life had been

given," says Charpignon, "that the intrinsic properties of atoms

were compelled, by the law of affinities, to form individualities;

which, from that moment, becoming a centre of action, were enabled

to act as modifying causes of the principle of life, and assimilate

themselves to it, according to the ends of their creation." Here is

a conjecture, to start with, that it will be well to remember; for,

as in the hypotheses of Macvicar and the demonstrations of Keely,

the law of assimilation is made the pivot upon which all turns,

"providing at once for the free and the forced, at once for mind

and for matter, and placing them in a scientific relationship to one

another." This law Macvicar calls the "cosmical law," because to it

alone, ever operating under the eye and fulfilling the design of

the great Creator who is always and in all places immanent to His

creation, an appeal is ever made. By this law a far greater number

of the phenomena of nature and the laboratory can be explained than

have been otherwise explained by scores of laws which are frankly

admitted to be empirical. Surely this is no slight claim for this law

to be studied, with a view to its acceptance or rejection. To repeat,

this law is to the effect that every individualized object tends to

assimilate itself to itself, in successive moments of its existence,

and all objects to assimilate one another. The ground of it is, that

the simple and pure substance of creation, has for its special function

to manifest the Creator; and consequently to assimilate itself to His

will and attributes, in so far as the finite can assimilate itself to

the Infinite. Hence it is, in its own nature, wholly plastic or devoid

of fixed innate properties, and wholly assimilative, both with respect

to its own portions or parts and to surrounding objects, as well as

to its position in space, and, in so far as it is capable, to the

mind of the Creator. Thus, there immediately awake, in the material

elements, individuality and the properties of sphericity, elasticity,

and inertia, along with a tendency to be assimilated as to place, or,

as it is commonly called, reciprocal attraction. Hence, in the first

place, the construction in the ether, or realm of light, of groups

of ethereal elements, generating material elements. Hence, secondly,

a tendency in the material elements, when previously distributed

in space, to form into groups, in which their ethereal atmospheres

may become completely confluent; while their material nuclei, being

possessed of a more powerful individuality than ethereal elements,

come into juxtaposition merely, thus constituting molecules. By

legitimate deductions from cosmical law, the forms and structures

of these molecules must always be as symmetrical as the reaction of

their own constituent particles, and that of their surroundings, will

allow. The law of assimilation gives the same results as mathematics

in determining the forms of systems of equal, and similar, elastic

and reciprocally attractive spherical forces, or centres of force,

when they have settled in a state of equilibrium; proving these forms

to be symmetrical in the highest degree. Here, however, Macvicar

and Keely differ, in hypothesis, as to the structure of the ultimate

material element; but this difference does not affect "the scaffolding"

of pure philosophy, in which everything that is cognizable has its

own place, is on a solid basis, is harmonious with its surroundings,

and is explained and justified by them:--raising chemistry to the

level and bringing it within the sphere of mechanics; investing its

objects, at the same time, with all the distinctness of the objects

of other branches of natural science.

Because the chemist in his laboratory cannot succeed in decomposing

certain substances, it has been inferred that they are essentially

undecomposable, simple and untransformable; and on this hypothesis

the whole science of mineralogy proceeds. But when it is considered

that all of these chemical atoms, before they have come into the

chemist's hands, have been securely consolidated and mineralized, so

as to be able to withstand the ordeal of the volcano and the central

heat, compared with which the most powerful analytic agencies of

the laboratory are but a mimicry, is it for a moment to be supposed,

although their internal structure were still molecular, that they would

break down in the chemist's hands? Surely, all his containing vessels,

which are but things of human art, must go to pieces before them.

The present prevailing theory of development contradicts one half

by the other half. It extends the doctrine of development and

transmutation to species which happen to be visible to such eyes as

we have; it denies it to such as happen to be invisible to us. If

all animals and plants have been obtained by the secular synthesis of

transformed monera, and the differentiation of the organs composing

them--thus giving in the last analysis one form and kind of protoplasm

as the root of all; the pursuit of the same line of thought--the

same theory, applied to the atoms of the chemist, with their various

properties and atomic weights, gives, as the common ground of all, a

single material element; each chemical atom being a structure composed

of this material element, but so stable as to be indecomposable in the

laboratory. Let this be granted, as asserted by Macvicar in 1868, and

by Keely now, and the theory of evolution, whatever may be the case as

to its cogency, at least possesses a scientific form. It is no longer

a conception which breaks down midway between its first and its last

terms. But letting science, in this respect, stand for the present as

it is, and supposing the seventy recognized elements of the laboratory

(which do not include the twenty or more new elements recently said to

have been discovered by Krüss and Nilson in certain rare Scandinavian

minerals) or rather, perhaps, some very high multiple of their number

to constitute that cosmic gas from which the solar system has been

evolved, the theory of development shows itself to be as imperfect

on the great scale, and in point of extent, as it is in point of

homogeneity in its intimate material. Macvicar continues--Beyond

that cosmic gas there certainly is the ether, a medium which no

longer can be ignored in any physical theory of nature. What, then,

is the relation of the cosmic gas to the ether? Evolutionists do not

answer this question, but Macvicar seeks to render the whole system

of thought homogeneous, and to show that, just as all organisms are

the synthetic developments of one kind of moneron, and all chemical

atoms and molecules the synthetic development of one kind of material

element, so is the material element a synthetic development of ethereal

elements. These also are Mr. Keely's views; but neither Macvicar nor

Keely rest in the conception of a congeries of particles which are

wholly blind and devoid of feeling and thought, diffused throughout all

space, believing such particles to be the first of things. "Reason,

if it is to enjoy intellectual repose, can have it only in finding,

beyond and above all things else, a unity, a power, intelligence,

personality--in one word, God. This is the only legitimate haven

of a theory of development: sending back the tide of materialism and

pantheism which has swept its mire over our age into the ebb again; as,

after having reached the full, it has so often done already, before

the constitutional instincts or inspirations of humanity, with which

speculative minds may, indeed, dally for a generation but which are

ultimately inexorable." Macvicar maintains with Keely that from God,

as the Author of all, nature may be reached with those very features

which it is seen to possess; that it is essential to every philosophy,

which is or shall be in harmony with intelligence, that it shall be

based upon a unity; that no philosophy possesses all the claims to

intellectual regard which it may possibly have, unless that unity be

an intelligent Being; that to suppose thought and feeling to wake

up for the first time in that which was previously blind and dead

from all eternity, is nothing short of absurd to those who are led

by the evidence of design, to look from nature up to nature's God,

in whom all nature lives and moves and has its being.

While the protoplasm of the biologist is a substance which is more

or less opaque or visible, the protoplasm now conceived of as the

material of the whole creation in its first state, when development

is to begin, must, on the contrary, be altogether homogeneous and

invisible. But none the less is it entitled to the name of protoplasm;

nay, it alone must be justly entitled to that name, for it is the

first of created things, and, being the product of an Almighty Being,

it must be altogether plastic in His hands. It can have no constitution

of its own derived from itself; but must, so far as the finite can,

with respect to the infinite, reflect, represent, embody, show forth

His attributes and being. Still, there is limitation to this. Certain

properties and demands with regard to that which exists, with limited

extension, in space, are inexorable. Macvicar reasons that with such

limitations the primal substance of creation must be fully obedient or

assimilated to the Creator--not in a transient manner, but permanently;

and that in its nature the primal substance, the true protoplasm,

must be an assimilative substance. Granting that this protoplasm be

partitioned into individualities, he makes the deduction that each and

all of these individualized beings and things would, up to the full

measure of their capacity, not only tend to assimilate themselves to

the ever-present Being to whom they owe their own being, but they would

tend also to assimilate themselves each to itself, with respect both

to space and time; as also that they would all tend to assimilate one

another. Taking this as the cosmical mode of action, or law, and on

the strength of this law alone, without invoking the aid of any other

law, he attempts to explain all those phenomena to which the physicist,

the chemist, and the biologist usually address themselves. Illustrating

the manner in which this law applies itself to phenomena, he gives as

the first products of this law the perpetuation of an original mode

of existence, and the establishment of permanence of properties under

certain restrictions; the ground of the remarkable persistency and

permanence of well-constituted species; a general harmony and homology

throughout all creation: proceeding to illustrate its action on the

mental or spiritual world; accounting for perception, remembrance,

reasoning, imagining, judging, and upon all our other modes of mental

activity, as operations of the cosmical law of assimilation.

In the world of physics he gives, as illustrations of this same law

of assimilation, attraction, inertia, elasticity, heredity, reversion,

symmetry culminating in sphericity or symmetrical cellularity, chemical

and electrical action; especially in voltaic action the influence

and the persistence of this law is most remarkably displayed. By the

way of familiar illustration, he takes the original voltaic cell,

and without attempting to explain how one solid, copper or platinum,

comes to be less assimilable to a liquid than another, such as

zinc, he shows that just what we are to expect, from this law of

assimilation, takes place--viz., that at the zinc there tends to form

a stratum of oxygen, and that, at the platinum, there tends to form

a stratum of hydrogen. Pursuing the old view as to the cause of the

state of tension induced in the dilute sulphuric acid, the continuous

decomposition of the water, the solidifying action of the zinc surface,

he confines his attention to the current of force instituted by the

oxygen; advancing the idea that this is not merely force in general,

of which all that is to be considered is its quantity and direction;

but force, of which the form of its elements or their formative power

is also to be considered;--that formative power being representative or

productive of oxygen. To the objection that such a conception is occult

and mysterious, he asks if it is more occult and mysterious than what

is implied and confessed to be hid under the term electricity, or in

the phenomena of heredity, or than anything else which is adduced as

a cause of a particular phenomenon. The cosmical law of assimilation

explains all these phenomena, and, without any special hypothesis,

is precisely what is wanted, in order to render natural knowledge

as a whole accessible to the student: something which puts him in

possession, from the first, of a master-thought, which, if he carry

it along with him, will present all nature as a harmony; explaining

all that stands in need of explanation. Macvicar continues:--

If it be asked how possibly out of one law, and such a one, there could

arise anything like that endless variety which nature displays, the

answer is, that the law operates between two limits, poles, or points

of assimilation, which are entirely dissimilar, and by two processes

simultaneously, analysis and synthesis, which are the opposites of

each other. Hence it comes to pass that actual nature is a web, in

which unity and multiplicity, identity and difference, are everywhere

interwoven, and in such harmony that nature is everywhere beautiful.

It is not necessary here to repeat the illustrations by which Macvicar

seeks to demonstrate that existence is force--self-manifesting,

or spontaneously radiant, so to speak, into that which is idea,

if there be a recipient of ideas, or a percipient of ideas; or,

more generally, a percipient within the sphere of its action. He

does not prescribe any limits, in space, as to the extent of this

self-manifesting power. Thus, it is one of the most certain facts

in physics that every atom of this planet, nay, every atom of

the planet Neptune, whose distance from the sun is thirty times

as great as our distance, manifests itself to every atom of this

planet--not, indeed, as a percept, but as the subject and the object

of attraction or motion. Nay, by the aid of the ether, which is the

grand medium whereby the self-manifesting power of being is enabled

to take effect at a distance when no other being is interposed,

the fixed stars manifest themselves at our planet, though their

distances be inconceivably great. Distant objects acting like all

objects assimilatively, assimilate the intervening ether and the optic

apparatus to themselves, and thus render themselves perceptible. This

they do, indeed, only under great limitation, imposed by the laws of

inertia or motion in space, to which the ether is subject--limitation

which, in man, it requires self-teaching and experience to remove, so

that he may perceive the object in its true forms and dimensions. But

this is only man's peculiarity, in consequence of his organic defects

at birth. The chick, the day it leaves the egg, can run up with equal

precision to a crumb of bread, or to an ant's egg at a distance. And so

with all species whose myo-neuro-cerebral system functions perfectly

from their birth. At his best, the embodied mind in man sees objects

only in perspective. But the nature of this self-manifesting power

need not be dwelt upon, since it is only the existence of this power

that is insisted upon. How far beyond the visible and tangible parts

of the body, the spirit, as a power exerting some kind of action

or other, extends, Macvicar thinks cannot be determined. No doubt,

every force has a centre of action; but as to the full extent in

space of a unit of natural force, as an agent of one kind or another,

no limits can be assigned. Who shall tell us the boundary in the

outward of that power which says "I will," "I feel," "I see"? Its

modes of acting mechanically are, no doubt, limited to the extent of

the investing organism. Nay, in order to their extending even so far,

it is necessary that the unity of the organism be maintained by the

healthy integrity of the nervous system. In that case consciousness

claims all the organism as its domain; and not only when the organism

is entire does it refer any pain that arises to the region that is

hurt, but after a limb has been amputated, and when it exists only as

a phantom, consciousness still feels towards it as if it were still

the old reality. Such is the effect of habit, or present assimilation

to previous practice.

Our cosmical law, the law of assimilation, must determine, if

not the nature, at least the mode of action of this force--this

self-manifesting power--for plainly this action must be

assimilative. And that it is so, when giving rise to perception, is

clearly and distinctly seen; for what is the perceiving of an object,

but the mind, as a percipient, assimilating itself to that object? and

what is the percept or remembrance of the object, which remains in

the mind but the idea--that is, the assimilated symbol of the object,

which, however, in consequence of the intrusion in the perception of

the mind's own activity, and of other previously acquired ideas, as

also the perceptive image is often very defective as a representation

of the reality perceived? We may say that this self-manifesting power,

which is thus the characteristic of all that exists, is the agency

provided whereby the cosmical law of assimilation shall be realized,

though the intimate nature of that agency remains, as now, wholly

inscrutable. Nor can it be said to be physical until it is embodied in

the ether. In that case, it is rhythmical, or undulatory, and formally

representative of the object whence it emanates. But it is enough to

know that the most intimate and ultimate property--the characteristic,

in short, of that which exists--is self-manifesting power. Now, the

existence of a self-manifesting power in an object implies that the

object is itself a power or force, or an aggregate of such. This is

enough for the purposes of philosophy and science, and we only deceive

ourselves when we suppose that we can think of anything that exists

and which is not at the same time a force or power....

Of most things that exist, if not of all, let us say that they are

capable of existing in either of two states--the dynamical or the

statical--and that, when viewed as dynamical, they are forces or

powers; when viewed as statical, they are substances. When we exhaust

or think away the properties of existence, the last which vanishes

is self-manifesting power in the object which exists, this property

being such that when it vanishes so does the object to which existence

was awarded. In the science of the day it is maintained by our most

popular authors and lecturers that the "physical forces"--taken in

the singular number, physical force--is the last word, the ultimate

principle. The physical forces are represented as all that there is

for God, whereas they are but as the fingers of God.

The idea of antecedent design, either in reference to nature as a

whole, or in reference to any object in particular, is dropped as

unscientific, or repudiated as unsound; in short, a reference to the

physical forces, is the last word permitted in any treatise, if that

treatise is to be admitted as possessing a scientific character. Or,

if there be one word more, it is only the "correlation" of those

same physical forces, and their "conservation," or persistence

eternally in the same amount of energy in the universe. In their

own place and within their own sphere, these are physical truths,

which are of the greatest value. The former is a wholesome relapse

into the old philosophy of nature. The latter is also a return to

a view which is more sound than that which was popular before the

doctrine of conservation was resuscitated.

Descartes' opinion, that there was a conservation of motion in the

universe, was demonstrated by Newton to be a mistake. Leibnitz adjusted

the truth between these great men, showing that it was not motion,

but the possibility or means of motion--in one word, energy--that

was conserved in the universe.

The doctrine of the conservation of energy amounts to nothing more

than this, that inasmuch as every ultimate atom of matter is perfectly

elastic, so is the whole universe of atoms perfectly elastic. Hence

it is a doctrine which cannot be legitimately extended beyond the

merely material sphere; except on the assumption that matter is the

only reality, and that there is no such thing as a spiritual world

at all--an assumption which, however often it has been made, serves

only to awaken a prevailing voice to the contrary, and the firm vote

of a large majority to the effect that mind exists as well as matter.

Taking the law of assimilation as the cosmical law, together with

self-manifesting power as the characteristic of being, we reach a

primary classification of created objects, which corresponds with

that which is known as mind and matter--or rather let us say mind

and that which is not mind; for there is ground for the apprehension

that mind and matter do not include all that exists; and that, along

with matter, ether ought to be considered as something intimately

related to matter indeed, but yet not just matter. When the elements

of the ethereal medium are regarded as truly and simply material,

however small and light they may be, the elasticity and pressure

which must be assigned to that medium in order to admit of the

velocity of light, are altogether out of the harmony of things,

and wholly incredible, especially when confronted with the phenomena

and the theory of astronomy. Thus, to justify the velocity of light

on the same principles as those of sound, in various material media,

the ethereal pressure must be 122,400,000,000 times greater than that

of the atmosphere--which is incredible, says Macvicar.

But what as to mind? To find what shall be called mind, let us

suppose an individualized object which is not an isolated object, or

a universe to itself, but a member in a system; then, in obedience to

what has been stated, that object must be at once self-manifesting and

impressed by the other objects around it, and, in being so impressed,

assimilated to them more or less.... Admitting the self-manifesting

power to be sensitive, percipient, or conscious, then quantity or

intensity of substance or power in a monad is the condition requisite

for feeling and thought. And thus, by an immediate co-ordination of our

fundamental ideas of self-manifesting power and assimilative action,

more or less, we reach a distinct conception of mind viewed in relation

with that which is not mind. By this deduction, the primeval created

substance, the true protoplasm is still supposed to be homogeneous,

animated by its assimilation to the everlasting, the Infinite.

This protoplasm is partitioned in varying degrees so that there

are in creation some individualized or separate objects or forces

consisting of so small an amount or such weakness of substance that

they are wholly fixed and merely perceptible, while there are others

consisting of so much more that they are free in their inner life, and

have power to perceive themselves also--not, indeed, in the centres of

their being, and as unimpressed and without ideas, but as members in a

system, impressed or assimilated by other objects, and so having ideas,

with power to look in this direction or that, and to act accordingly.

Such, then, according to Macvicar, is the nature of mind or spirit. It

is a being so constituted as to be at once in possession of ideas, and

so far fixed; and also in possession of undetermined life or activity,

and so far free. These are, as it were, the opposite poles of its

being, and the conditions of its activity. If either is wanting,

the other vanishes. Without something fixed in the mind, some object

of thought or feeling, there can be no thinking or feeling. Without

something unfixed there can be nothing to think or to feel with,

much less can there be any thinking or feeling of self--that is,

self-consciousness. But, grant this condition in the individual,

and add the law of assimilation, operating first from God above, thus

giving reason and conscience, on the higher aspect of our being; and,

secondly, from nature around, thus giving observation and instincts

harmonious with our situation in the system of the universe, and then

human nature emerges.

But human nature plainly belongs to the last day of the work of

creation rather than the first, where we are now. In man, to all

appearance, the organism is the mother and nurse of the spirit. And

though the assimilative action of the mind upon the body becomes

normally, at least, stronger and stronger as life advances, so long as

the organ retains all its perfection, yet at first the assimilative

action of the body upon the mind is almost everything. The infant,

the child, is little else but the victim of sensation--that is, of

assimilations in its mind, effected by the force of external nature,

including the organism itself. But as the mind, through the sustained

action towards the focus of the myo-neuro-cerebral system, which is

in the brain, gains quantity or intensity--in one word, energy--it

becomes more independent and free, and more able to react out of

itself upon the organism in any direction of which it makes choice....

Hitherto, Macvicar has proceeded analytically, or from the one

to the many; now, synthetically, from multiplicity to unity:--he

continues:--As to the matter in hand, we may say, shortly, that

a world of substances becoming multiple and diffuse, and at last

merging into ethereal elements, being now given as the product of

the law of assimilation in reference to the immensity of the Creator,

the same law, when viewed in reference to the unity of the Creator,

leads us to infer a process of quite a contrary character. It leads us

to expect to find the ethereal elements tending to construct unities

of greater energy than themselves. Then, if all cosmical action is

cyclical, matter, when existing free in the ether, must ultimately

tend to dissolve into pure ether again; for, if the law of creation

is as a cycle, in which, after development and as its fruit, the

last term gives the first, then has he grounds for his conjecture

that complication in structure is necessary to the segregation of

nervous matter, and the construction of a "myo-neuro-cerebral system";

and that ether and matter, after developing a molecular economy,

as the mother and nurse of a soul or monad of a higher order than

the merely material element, through or by this organism, complete

the cycle of the economy of the material nature, and eventually

touch upon the spiritual world again and contribute to it. Whether

this inference is correct or not, it presents a noble hypothesis for

consideration, and one which should command attention at a time when

the writings of John Worrell Keely, the discoverer of polar energy,

and the inventor of vibratory machinery for the utilization of this

force in mechanics, are about to be given to the world, supporting as

they do, some of "the unwelcome views" advanced by Macvicar a quarter

of a century ago. Although Macvicar and Keely differ in their theories

of molecular morphology, they agree entirely in calling the cosmical

law of sympathetic association or assimilation the watchword and

the law of creation. This true protoplasm, the ether, which Macvicar

postulated, Keely claims to have proved "a reality": making use of

the ether, which he liberates by vibratory machinery, as the medium

of a motive power, which he calls "sympathetic negative attraction."

CHAPTER III.

THE NATURE OF KEELY'S PROBLEMS.

1885 TO 1887.

Too few the helpers on the road,

Too heavy burdens in the load.

When a movement is willed a current is sent forth from

the brain.

Sir James Crichton Browne.

In November 1884, Mr. Keely obtained a standard for progressive

research in the success of an experiment, which he had tried many times

before, without arriving at the result that his theories had led him

to expect. One of those present, at the time that this test was made,

afterwards wrote to Mr. Keely, to obtain an explanation of the dynamic

force which had been witnessed, causing a small globe to rotate when

two persons had taken hold of the rod together, with a firm grasp;

one of whom was standing on a circular sheet of metal, from which

piano wires stretched toward the globe, near enough to touch one of the

plates of glass which insulated the ball. Mr. Keely replied, "I cannot

describe it other than the receptive concussion of the two forces,

positive and negative, coming together, seeking their coincidents and

thus producing rotation by harmonious waves, not streams. You ask if

sound waves had anything to do with the motion of the globe? Nothing;

the introductory settings are entirely different. The ball ceased

to rotate when I took your left hand in my right hand, while with

our other hands holding the iron rod resting on the metal plate,

because the receptive flows became independent of the circular chord

of resonation as set up mechanically. The power of rotation comes on

the positive; and the power of negation breaks it up."...

Encouraged by this confirmation of his theories, Keely pursued his

researches with renewed vigour. At this time he wrote, "I am straining

every nerve to accomplish certain matters in a given time, working

from twelve to fourteen hours daily. Although in my illness I have had

some peaceful hours in thinking over the fascinating points associated

with the researches to which I am devoting my life, I have also had

some very stormy ones in reviewing the many unjust insinuations and

denouncements that have been heaped upon me by the ignorant and the

base-hearted. My one desire has been the acquisition of knowledge;

and, no matter how great the impediment thrown in my path, I will work

without ceasing to attain my end. After struggling for over seventeen

years, allowing scientists to examine my machinery in the most thorough

manner, and to make the most sensitive tests, denunciations have

multiplied against me. One charge is that I use sodium in my mercury,

in the vacuum test. I have thought that I would never again make any

effort to prove that I am honest; but I am working in a new lead,

and for the satisfaction of the few friends that I have I propose

to show my introductory evolutions, in proof of the negatization

of an etheric substance to produce vacuum. The mercury may be

delivered to me by an expert: I will operate from an open mercury

bath: using the most perfect mercury gauge obtainable, attached to

the same sphere that the column is operated from. Professor Rogers,

the highest authority we have, saw the operation of inducing these

etheric vacuums and pronounced the result wonderful. He said that

the scientific world would go down on its knees, if I produced only

one pound of vacuum under the conditions named. I showed from one to

fourteen lbs. during the evolutions.... As soon as I have been able

to combine all the positive and negative forces of etheric vibration

in the triple vibratory sphere-engine that I am now at work upon,

in short, as soon as I have completed a perfect, patentable machine,

then my labours will cease on the Motor line; and after my patents are

taken out, I will devote the remainder of my life to Aerial Navigation,

for I have the only true system to make it an entire success in the

vibratory lift and the vibratory push-process."

It will be seen that, at this stage, Keely had no idea of giving up

the engine; and was still as confident of ultimate success as in the

beginning. There is no doubt that, had not the time arrived when the

directing power of Providence led him away in quite another direction

from the line that he was then working upon, his system for Aerial

Navigation would have been lost to this century. "The heart of man

deviseth his way, but the Lord directs his steps."

About this time Keely met with an accident. Under date March 22nd,

he wrote, "It has been impossible for me to write, my right hand

and arm were so severely strained, but I have not been idle. I have

had time for reflection, and I have been setting up a key to explain

vibratory rotation. I have also a plan for a device to be attached to

the Liberator as an indicator to show when the neutral centre is free

from its intensification while operating. In this way the dangerous

influences will be avoided which present themselves on the extension

of the vibratory waves that operate the gun. All the introductory

details of the present engine are as perfect as is possible for the

first lead. It is in the form of a sphere, about thirty inches in

diameter and weighs 800 lbs. Yesterday saw the pure, positive action

of my new Liberator. Mr. Collier and his brother George were present,

and witnessed thirty expulsions, made by myself; after which I had

them produce the vapour, by imitating my manipulations; which they were

unable to do with the old generator. They were very much delighted. To

say that the last three weeks have been trying ones, is using

very mild language to express what I have suffered from accidents,

disappointments, etc., etc. I have been frozen in at my workshop;

and all things seemed to go wrong; but my present successes are as

an anchor, which I thank God for, who, in His bountiful goodness,

has carried me into a port of safety over tempestuous seas." Again,

under various dates, Keely wrote:--"Unbounded success has crowned my

new departure. I am now preparing new features that are necessary

as adjuncts to denote the true condition, as regards safety in my

different vibratory operations." "Without the aid sent me from on high

there would have been nothing left of the discovery mechanically; nor

would there now be a single foot-hold on which hope could rest for a

completion of the Keely Motor enterprise."... "I had an accident to

one of my registers this morning. It burst with a tremendous report,

shaking things up in a lively way, but no other damage was done beyond

that to the register."

"The draughts are nearly completed for the compound vibratory engine,

and next week the work will be commenced and pushed forward with all

possible speed. This is the machine for continuous operation. The

Liberator is as perfect as is possible; and, if the outside adjuncts

are in proper sympathy, my struggles will soon be at an end."... "All

things are verging into a condition of perfection through the aid

that I have received, but for which the science of vibratory etheric

force would, as far as my researches are concerned, have been lost

to the world. I feel that the world is waiting for this force; that

this advance in science is necessary to keep the proper equilibrium

in our age of progress."...

"There are moments in which I feel that I can measure the very stars,

which shine like Edens in planetary space; fit abodes for beings who

have made it the study of their lives on earth to create peace and

happiness for all around them. Is nature a mystery? No, God is in

nature. I do not believe in the line, 'God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform.' In my estimation, He moves in a very plain

and simple way, if we will open our hearts to the understanding of

His way. To the man who cannot appreciate the workings of nature,

chemically and otherwise, God's ways may appear mysterious; but when

he comes to know nature's works he will find simplicity itself in

its highest order of expression.

"Could I have one wish, as to science, gratified, I would ask to live

long enough to be able to appreciate even but one etheric variation

in planetary evolution. It might take fifty thousand years to attain

this knowledge, but what is that period of time when compared with

the cycles that have passed away since this earth existed? Yes, in one

sense, 'God does move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.'"...

"The whirlpool of science has indeed engulphed me in its fascinating

vortex."...

"May 20th.--Yesterday was a day of trials and disappointments. It

seemed as if nothing would work right. After labouring six hours to

set my safety process, the first operation of the Liberator tore

the caps all to pieces. I replaced them by a set of duplicates,

and set the Liberator down to the low octaves, when everything

worked to a charm. Night was approaching, and I left the workshop

to get something to eat, returning about eight o'clock to re-conduct

experiments, in order to discover if possible the cause of the sudden

and most unexpected intensification. I followed up with great care

the progressive lines until I reached the tenth octave, and then

liberated a score of times, yet no variation on liberator. Next, I

made an attachment to my safety arrangement, and also to my strongest

resonator, to experiment on vibratory rotation with my shell; when,

within two minutes, it attained a frightful velocity: then I suddenly

retracted to the negative, bringing the velocity down from about 1500

per minute to 150. The operation was magnificent, lasting sixty-four

minutes, when a second intensification took place, demolishing two

safety-shells and one vibratory indicator. I was perfectly dumbfounded,

and unable to account for such a phenomenon. It was then near midnight,

but I had made up my mind not to discontinue until I had solved the

mystery. After an hour's reflection, I set up a new position on the

resonating wave plates in the forty resonating circuit on the base of

liberator; and got a result which for purity of uniformity surpassed

all experiments that I have ever made. I believe I have now struck

the root of this difficulty, and that I shall be able to master it;

and obtain continuity of action with perfect rotation."

"June 1st, 1885.--I am in a perfect sea of mental and physical strain,

intensified in anticipation of the near approach of final and complete

success, and bombarded from all points of the compass by demands and

inquiries; yet, in my researches, months pass as minutes. The immense

mental and physical strain of the past few weeks, the struggles and

disappointments have almost broken me up. Until the reaction took

place, which followed my success, I could never have conceived the

possibility of my becoming so reduced in strength as I am now. My

labours in the future will be of a much milder character; but, before

I again commence them, I must have a few days more of recuperation. I

was so absorbed in my researches that I forgot my duty to myself,

as regards the requirements of health, and I am now paying the

penalty. It has been misery to me to have absorbed so much more time

and capital than I anticipated; and without the heaven-sent aid which

I have received the world would have lost sight of me for ever."...

"In view of the unjust comments in certain journals, I intend to

withdraw entirely from all contact with newspaper men, to give no

more exhibitions after the one which closes the series, and to devote

all my time and energies to bringing my models into a patentable

condition. It is said that the New York reporters intended to denounce

me before witnessing my last experiments. Certainly utter ignorance

of my philosophy was displayed in their articles, but they were

like the viper biting on the file, and only hurt themselves: for

men who possess but a moderate degree of scientific knowledge have

denounced them, in turn, as the most ignorant men they had ever come

in contact with. They stated that I started with a power estimated

at over one million pounds pressure to the square inch on the head

of my liberator, a sheer absurdity. The rock I am standing on can

no more be moved by a whirlwind of such attacks than the atmospheric

disturbance of equilibrium emanating from a butterfly's wing in motion

could blow down the rock of Gibraltar. I enclose a newspaper cutting:

it was written by an engineer who has interested himself sufficiently

in my work to be able to thoroughly understand my position."...

"July 15th.--My researches teach me that electricity is but a

certain condensed form of atomic vibration, a form showing only the

introductory features which precede the etheric vibratory condition. It

is a modulated force so conditioned, in its more modest flows, as to

be susceptible of benefit to all organisms. Though destructive to a

great degree in its explosive positions, it is the medium by which the

whole system of organic nature is permeated beneficially; transfusing

certain forms of inert matter with life-giving principles. It is to

a certain degree an effluence of divinity; but only as the branch is

to the tree. We have to go far beyond this condition to reach the

pure etheric one, or the body of the tree. The Vibratory Etheric

tree has many branches, and electricity is but one of them. Though

it is a medium by which the operations of vital forces are performed,

it cannot in my opinion be considered the soul of matter."...

"My safety arrangements (governors and indicators) for liberating are

not working well; but I am labouring to attain perfection on these

devices, and I hope soon to have them all right."...

"I have extraordinary powers, it is true, and I must use them to

the best advantage; for I know they are the gift of the Almighty,

who will, I feel sure, carry me to the end of the work which He has

given me to accomplish."...

"I am positive that this year will terminate my struggles. My work is

all progressing satisfactorily, and I am pushing everything forward

as rapidly as possible."...

August 5th.--Mr. Keely wrote to one of his friends,--"I have met

with an accident to the Liberator. I was experimenting on the third

order of intensification, when the rotation on the circuit was thrown

down in the compound resonating chamber, which, by the instantaneous

multiplication of the volume induced thereby, caused an explosion

bursting the metal casing which enclosed the forty resonators,

completely dismantling the Liberator. The shock took my senses from

me for a few moments, but I was not even scratched this time. A part

of the wall was torn away, and resonators and vibrators were thrown

all over the room. The neighbourhood was quite lively for a time,

but I quieted all fears by telling the frightened ones that I was

only experimenting. I allowed everything to remain until Dr. Woods

and Mr. Collier had seen the effect of the explosion."

The orders of intensification for accelerating dissociation

would not be understood by any explanations that could be made, if

unaccompanied by the demonstrations witnessed by the late Professor

Leidy, Dr. Brinton, and others.

When the ether flows from a tube, its negative centre represents

molecular sub-division, carrying interstitially (or between its

molecules) the lowest order of liberated ozone. This is the first

order of ozone and is wonderfully refreshing and vitalizing to those

who breathe it. The second order, or atomic separation, releases a much

higher grade of ozone; in fact, too pure for inhalation, as it produces

insensibility. The third order, or etheric, is the one that has been

(though attended with much danger to the operator) utilized by Keely

in his carbon register to produce the circuit of high vibration that

breaks up the molecular magnetism which is recognized as cohesion.

The acceleration of these orders is governed by the introductory

impulse on a certain combination of vibratory chords, arranged for

this purpose in the instrument, with which Keely dissociates the

elements of water; and which he calls a liberator.

In molecular dissociation one fork of 620 is used, setting the chords

on the first octave.

In atomic separation, two forks: one of 620 and one of 630 per second;

setting the chords on the second octave.

In the etheric three forks: one of 620, one of 630, and one of 12,000,

setting the chords on the third octave.

Keely's Three Systems.

My first system is the one which requires introductory mediums

of differential gravities, air and water, to induce disturbance

of equilibrium on the liberation of vapour, which only reached

the inter-atomic position and was held there by the submersion of

the molecular and atomic leads in the 'generator' I then used. It

was impossible with these mediums to go beyond the atomic with this

instrument; and I could not dispense with the water until my liberator

was invented, nor reach the maximum of the full line of vibration. My

first system embraces liberator engine and gun.

"My second system of dissociation I consider complete, as far as the

liberation of the ether is concerned, but not sufficiently complete,

as yet, in its devices for indicating and governing the vibratory

etheric circuit, to make it a safe medium.

"My third system embraces aerial and sub-marine navigation. The

experimental sphere intended to test the combination of the positive

and negative rotation is nearly completed.

... "I have done everything that I could do to demonstrate the

integrity of my inventions, and I will never again allow my devices

to be submitted to examinations; not that I am afraid they will be

stolen, but I do not wish to have the construction of my improved

mechanical devices known until my patents are taken out. Nor will I

ever again make a statement, specifying the time when certain work

will be finished. If I thought to-morrow would end all my struggles

on this system, I would not say so. I have been a great sufferer from

my inability to keep my promises, fully believing in my power to keep

them, and now I must and will prove that all is right before I promise.

... "The work on the vibratory engine is progressing rapidly. I spend

an hour or two every day at the shop where my work is being done,

examining every part of it critically as it is being put together. The

safety arrangements which I am having attached to my liberator

will greatly improve it. Its operation will now be conducted with

a gum bulb instead of a violin bow, the pressure of which gives the

introductory chord of impulse that vitalizes the whole machine. The

chords will all be set in progressive sympathy from the first octave

to the fortieth....

"I have been writing out some of my theories as to sound and

odour. These two subjects have intensified me considerably of late,

on account of the peculiar position they occupy in their lines of

sub-division; as also the peculiar laws that govern them in their

dissemination. I see the time approaching when I will be able to write

up my system of the true philosophy of nature's grandest force, and

have at my control the proper apparatus to analyze and demonstrate

all the progressive links of transmittive sympathy from the crude

molecular to the high etheric."...

"December 17th, 1885.--The setting up of the circles for computing

the different lines of etheric chords, in setting the vibratory

conditions for continuity, requires close study. I feel convinced that

a perfect solution of my difficulties will follow when this part of

the work has been completed; and that, before many weeks have passed, a

revelation will be unfolded that will startle the world; a revelation,

so simple in its character, that the physicists will stand aghast,

and perhaps feel humiliated by the nature of their efforts in the past

to solve certain problems.... I find my chief trouble in chording up

the masses of the different parts composing the negative centres. The

negative centre is included in the one-third volume of shell or sphere,

starting from the neutral axis or point of suspension. This point of

suspension only becomes perfect when the rotation is established on the

sphere. One hundred revolutions per minute is all the velocity required

to neutralize the gravity of the central third with the velocity

of the vibratory circuit at one hundred thousand per second. Taking

all matters into consideration associated with the mechanical part

of the enterprise, the month of January ought to find all completed,

ready for sympathetic graduation. But I fear to be too sanguine when

I remember the loss of time and the interferences from exhibitions

to which I have been subjected in the past. I feel more and more the

great importance of devoting all my energies to the great task that

Divine Power has ordained me to perform."...

At the close of the year 1885, everything seemed to promise full

and complete success during the coming year. Mr. Charles Collier,

the patent lawyer, shared Keely's confidence in the near completion

of his "struggles." The stock-holders were enthusiastic, and the

stockbrokers were on the qui vive, anticipating a great rise in the

shares of The Keely Motor Company. Mr. Collier had written in August

to Major Ricarde-Seaver [1]: "The Bank of England is not more solid

than is our enterprise. My belief is that the present year will see

us through, patents and all."

The journals had ceased to ridicule, and some of them were giving

serious attention to the possibilities lying hidden in the discovery of

an unknown force. In 1886, Mr. William Walsh, editor of "Lippincott's

Magazine," accepted a paper on the subject, publishing it in the

September number. It was entitled Keely's Etheric Force.

This was the first article accepted by any Philadelphia editor, setting

forth Keely's claims on the public for the patience and protection

which the discoverer of a force in nature needs, while researching the

unknown laws that govern its operation. Up to this time Keely had been

held responsible for the errors made in the premature organization

of a Keely Motor Company, and the selling of stock before there was

anything to give in return for the money paid in by investors.