SYMPATHETIC VIBRATORY FORCE, 1887.
The teleological view was opposed to the mechanical, which
regarded the universe as a collocation of mere facts without
any further significance. The mechanical view looked backward
to the antecedents of a phenomenon, and explained things
by reducing them to their lowest terms; the teleological
or philosophical view looked forward to the end or purpose
which was being realized, which was the reason of the whole
development, and in the deepest sense its cause. Mechanical
explanation was an infinite progress, which could ultimately
explain nothing; in the last resort, causæ efficientes pendent
a finalibus. In defining the nature of the end which it thus
asserted, philosophy had to wage unsparing battle against
the naturalistic tendencies of our time.--(From a Review of
Professor Seth's address delivered in Glasgow in 1891.)
In 1887, a series of articles appeared in The British Mercantile
Gazette, then edited by Mr. Arthur Goddard. The June number devoted
more than eight columns to the progress and present position of the
discoverer of Etheric Force.
To the Editor of the British Mercantile Gazette.
Sir,--Dr. Ziermann, a German writer, has said that a great deal of
sound sense and moral courage are required to introduce ideas which
will only be recognised as truth after the lapse of time. He adds,
"Nay, even to recognize their truth will require more understanding
than falls to the share of most men." The day will come, I think,
when your action in giving the pages of your journal to quotations
from Mr. Keely's papers on Etheric Physics and Etheric Philosophy,
will make known your claim to this 'understanding.' In the meantime,
you have, by your appreciation of his labours and your sympathy
in his trials, extended that assistance to the discoverer of this
newly-known force in Nature which is more powerful than any other
agent in inspiring to renewed efforts; after ridicule and calumny,
long continued, have done their worst towards depressing the vital
centres of nerve-force. When Mr. Keely has made known the law of
sympathetic association to the world, the full meaning of the words
"sympathy," "help," "consolation," will be better understood than they
are now. The most important discoveries, the most difficult problems
of research, the most arduous scientific labours have been achieved
by men who have battled with persecution and contempt at every step
of their progress; enduring all, as he has done, with patience; in
the full assurance that the glorious truths entrusted to him to reveal
will, in the end, be proclaimed for the advancement of the race. "The
nobler the soul," writes Ouida, "the more sensitive it is to the blows
of injustice." Cicero tells us that praise stimulates great souls
into greater exertions; and Plutarch said that souls are sensitive
to sympathy, to praise, and to blame, in exact proportions to the
fineness of their fibre. Mr. Keely proves this truth by actual tests,
as will be seen in time, to the satisfaction of all investigators.
Every branch of science, every doctrine of extensive application,
has had its alphabet, its rudiments, its grammar; indeed, at each
fresh step in the path of discovery, the researcher has to work out
by experiments the unknown laws which govern his discovery. Ignorant
himself, he builds up his knowledge upon a foundation which, uncertain
as it must be at first, becomes as secure as that of Gibraltar rocks
when, one by one, he has removed the misshapen stones of error, and
replaced them with the hewn granite blocks of truth. To attempt to
introduce scientists, without any previous preparation, to any new
system, no matter how solid its foundation, would be like giving
a book published in Greek to a man to read who had never before
seen its characters. We do not expect a complicated problem in the
higher mathematical analysis to be solved by one who is ignorant
of the elementary rules of arithmetic. Just as futile would it be
to expect scientists to comprehend the laws of etheric physics and
etheric philosophy at one glance.
'There are some secrets which, who knows not now,
Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps
Of science, and devote long years to toil.'
Norman Lockyer, in his 'Chemistry of the Sun,' writes of molecules
that 'one feels as if dealing with something that is more like a
mental than a physical attribute--a sort of expression of free will
on the part of the molecules.' Herein lies one of the secrets of
Mr. Keely's so-called 'compound secret.' Again, Mr. Lockyer writes:
'The law which connects radiation with absorption, and at once enables
us to read the riddle set by the sun and stars, is, then, simply
the law of sympathetic vibration.' This is the very corner-stone of
Mr. Keely's philosophy--yes, even of his discovery.
It has been said that all great men who have lived, or who now live,
have been indebted for their knowledge to teachers or to books;
but all progress depends upon the use made of such knowledge when
acquired. In order to bear fruit, knowledge must be increased by
reflection, and by placing the mind in that attitude which brings into
play the powers of intuition; or, rather, placing it in the receptive
state which admits of the in-flowing of what is called inspiration.
Molecular vibration is Keely's legitimate field of research. In this
field his discovery was made, many years since; but it is only now,
within this year, that he has reached any approach to a solution of
the stupendous problems which have arisen barring and baffling all
progress, at times, towards the complete subjugation and control of
the force that he had discovered. Again and again has he invited the
attention of scientists to his discovery, from the commencement of
his researches; but the few scientists who condescended to accept his
invitations were so ignorant of the mysteries which they sought to
investigate--of 'the alphabet and rudiments' of etheric physics--that
they found it easier to accuse him of jugglery and of fraud than to
account for the phenomena that they witnessed. They addressed their
report to a public even more ignorant than themselves, if such a thing
could be possible, with the result of preventing other scientists,
who would have better understood the experiments, from examining into
Keely's claims, as the discoverer of an unknown force. A system of
doctrine can be legitimately refuted only upon its own principles,
viz., by disproving its facts, and invalidating the principles
deduced from them. It is, then, the facts, and not the opinions of
the ignorant or the prejudiced, which are of chief importance here,
as in all other questions of moment.
All those men who have witnessed the production of etheric force
and its application experimentally, during the exhibitions given at
various times, have, if capable of understanding such a marvellous
discovery as Keely has made, agreed to a man in bearing testimony,
at the time, that no known force could have produced such results
under the same conditions.
It is now three years since Keely invited certain English men of
science (experimenting in the same field where his explorations
commenced) to examine his Liberator; which was dismantled for the
purpose, and all its parts assembled for examination before being put
together for the production of etheric force, when these men refused
to visit his workshop, and it has been said that a Professor of the
University of Pennsylvania prevented the investigation by his assertion
that compressed air is the force used by Keely with which to dupe
his audiences. A schoolboy's knowledge of the change of temperature
always accompanying the compression of air would prevent such an
assertion from being made by anyone who had witnessed the operation
of the Liberator in the production and storage of etheric force,
during which there is not the slightest change of temperature. Had
these English scientists, with their knowledge of acoustics, been
present on the occasion referred to, no such groundless assertion
would have possessed any influence with either; and the world of
science would have sooner known and acknowledged the nature and the
worth of this great discovery.
Roget says that if we are to reason at all, we can reason only upon the
principle that for every effect there must exist a corresponding cause;
or, in other words, that there is an established and invariable order
of sequence among the changes which take place in the universe. The
bar to all further reasoning lies in the fact that there are men
who, admitting all the phenomena we behold are the effects of certain
causes, still say that these causes are utterly unknown to us, and that
their discovery is wholly beyond the reach of our faculties. Those who
urge this do not seem to be aware that its general application in every
sense would shake the foundation of every kind of knowledge--even that
which we regard as built upon the most solid basis. Of causation it
is agreed that we know nothing; all that we do know is that one event
succeeds another with undeviating constancy; and what do we know of
magnetism, electricity, galvanism, but such facts as have been elicited
by the labours of experimental enquirers, and the laws which have been
deduced from their generalization? Would it be considered a sufficient
reason for the absolute rejection of any of these facts--or a whole
class of facts--that we are still ignorant of the principle upon which
they depend, and that such knowledge is beyond our reach? Facts are
every day believed, upon observation, or upon testimony, which we
should be exceedingly puzzled to account for, if called upon to do
so. 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. Also that he must classify his facts and construct hypotheses
before he can impart his experimental position to others. Many things
which were, for a long time, treated as fabulous and incredible
have been proved, in our age, to be authentic facts, as soon as
the evidence in support of them was duly subjected to the crucible
of scientific investigation. Take, for example, Professor Dewar's
researches in the cause, or origin, of meteoric stones. Fortunately
for his branches of research and experiment, he is possessed of that
philosophical spirit and energy which enables him to divest himself
of all prejudice, and, in constructing his theories, to welcome the
evidence of truth from whatever quarter it approaches. More than two
thousand years elapsed between the first record of the phenomenon, by
Anaxagoras, and Mr. Howard's observations in 1802, during which time
the fact was disputed most strenuously by many, while, in our time,
Professor Dewar's explanations of the same, upon intelligible and
satisfactory principles, have confirmed the statements made centuries
ago. How few the years, in comparison, since Keely's grand discovery
first broke upon his own mind, which he has devoted to experiment,
to invention, to the classification of facts, and the building up of
hypotheses, before reaching the goal of his desires. Men will marvel
at the shortness of the period when all that he has accomplished is
made known. The delays which have occurred in bringing before the
world the actual discovery of this primal force, from which all the
forces of nature spring, have been in part occasioned by the want
of that sympathy and appreciation which Keely would have received
from his fellow-men, had scientists believed him to be honest in his
claims. He would not then have been left in the merciless hands of
"a ring," which gave or withheld financial aid according as he could
be "thumbscrewed," into giving exhibitions for speculative ends on
the part of "the ring." These costly days of delay are now a thing
of the past. Keely's programme of work for the remainder of the year
embraces such exhibitions of his progress as can be given without
interfering with this programme.
Coleridge says in "Table Talk,"--"I have seen what I am certain I
would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore,
I can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on mine." It is
of all tasks the most difficult to procure any favourable reception
for doctrines which are objectionable only because they are deemed
to be incompatible with preconceived notions. It does not answer to
disturb the calmness of views now held by our most eminent physicists,
who seem to expect that nature will always accommodate her operations
to their preconceived notions of possibility, and adapt her phenomena
to their arbitrary systems of philosophy. We are all familiar
with the anecdote of the wise Indian potentate who imagined that
his informant was imposing upon his credulity when giving him an
accurate description of the steam-engine. Now what would be thought
of that philosopher who, in attempting to communicate an adequate
idea of the operation of the steam-engine, should content himself
with a mere description of its mechanism--of its wheels and levers,
and cylinders and pistons--keeping entirely out of view the moving
power--the steam; and ridiculing all investigation into the nature,
application, and phenomena of this power. Yet this is exactly what
microscopic observers of the animal economy call "absurd and useless
inquiry." The true springs of our organization are not these muscles,
these arteries, these nerves, which are described and experimented upon
with so much care and exactness. They are hidden springs, the action
of which are as miracles to those who have vainly tried to account
for the motion of the muscles at the command of the will; for the
power of vision, which places the human eye in intimate and immediate
connection with the soul--dependent as they are upon unknown laws,
assigned them by the great, omniscient and omnipotent Being by whom
they were originally created, and Who is the one source of all power.
Although in our present ordinary state of existence we are permitted to
see only "as through a glass darkly," ignorant of many of the powers
and processes of nature, as well as of the causes to which they are
to be ascribed, we are not, therefore, entitled to set limits to
her operations, and to say to her, "Hitherto shalt thou go, and no
further! "We must not presume, says Glanvill, to assign bounds to the
exercise of the power of the Almighty, nor are these operations and
that power to be controlled by the arbitrary theories and capricious
fancies of man. We are surrounded by the incredible--the seemingly
miraculous. Who would not ask for demonstration when told that a
gnat's wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred times in a
second? But what is this, when compared to the astonishing truths
which modern optical inquiries reveal--such as teach us that the
sensation of violet light affects our eyes 707 millions of millions
of times per second in order to effect that sensation?
How strangely must they estimate nature, how highly must they
value their own conceits, who deny the possibility of any cause
of any effect, merely because it is incomprehensible. In fact,
what do men comprehend? What do they know of causes? When Newton
said that gravitation held the world together, he assigned no reason
why the heavenly bodies do not fly off from each other into infinite
space. The discoverer of etheric force is able to give the reasons for,
and the explanations of, the laws involved in all that he asserts; or,
rather, all that he propounds; for, with the true humility of wisdom,
he asserts nothing. Newton at first thought that he had discovered in
electricity the ether which he asserted pervades all nature, until,
by repeated experiments, he became convinced of the insufficiency
of that principle to explain the phenomena. Other philosophers have
speculated upon magnetism in the same way, and upon the similarity
between magnetism and electricity. Mr. Keely's experiments show that
the two are, in part, antagonistic, and that both are but modifications
of the one force in nature. There have been some physiologists who have
maintained that the nerves are merely the conductors of some fluid
from the brain and spinal cord to the different parts of the body,
and that this circulating fluid is capable of an external expansion,
which takes place with such energy as to form an atmosphere, or sphere
of activity, similar to that of electrical bodies. Dr. Roget observes
that the velocity with which the nerves subservient to sensation
transmit the impressions they receive at one extremity, along their
whole course, exceeds all measurement, and can be compared only to
that of electricity passing along a conducting wire. A comparison
with gravity would have been nearer the truth, though no computation
ever has been made, or ever can be made, between the flight of gravity
and of electricity, so infinitely swifter is the former.
Béclard almost completely demonstrated the truth of Roget's hypothesis
concerning the action of "the nervous fluid" by cutting a nerve
of considerable size, adjoining a muscle, which induced paralysis
in this part. Perceiving the contractile action reappear, when he
approached the two ends of the nerve to the distance of three lines,
he became convinced that an imponderable substance, a fluid of some
kind, traversed the interval of separation, in order to restore the
muscular action. By another experiment he demonstrated its striking
analogy to galvanic electricity. The late Professor Keil, of Jena,
also made some very interesting experiments of the same character, one
of which tends to demonstrate the susceptibility of the nervous system
to the magnetic influence, and the efficacy of the magnet in the cure
of certain infirmities. It was communicated by him to a meeting of
the Royal Society of London more than fifty years since. If we are
justified, then, in assuming the existence of this nervous fluid,
writes Colquhoun, in 1836, whether secreted by, or merely conducted
by the nerves, and of its analogy to the other known, active, and
imponderable fluids, and of its capability of external expansion, as
in the case of electricity, it does not appear to be a very violent
or unwarrantable proceeding to extend the hypothesis a little further,
and to infer that it is also capable of being transmitted or directed
outwards, either involuntarily or by the volition of one individual,
with such energy as to produce certain real and perceptible effects
upon the organism of another, in a manner analogous to what is known
to occur in the case of the torpedo the gymnotus-electricus, etc.
Should it be that Mr. Keely's compound secret includes any explanation
of this operation of will-force, showing that it may be cultivated,
in common with the other powers which God has given us, we shall then
recover some of the knowledge lost out of the world, or retained only
in gipsy tribes and among Indian adepts.
The effects of the law of sympathetic association, which Mr. Keely
demonstrates as the governing medium of the universe, find
illustrations in inanimate nature. What else is the influence which
one string of a lute has upon a string of another lute when a stroke
upon it causes a proportionable motion and sound in the sympathizing
consort, which is distant from it, and not perceptibly touched? It
has been found that, in a watchmaker's shop, the timepieces,
or clocks, connected with the same wall or shelf, have such a
sympathetic effect in keeping time, that they stop those which beat
in irregular time; and, if any are at rest, set those going which
beat accurately. Norman Lockyer deals with the law of sympathetic
association as follows:--"While in the giving out of light we are
dealing with molecular vibration taking place so energetically as
to give rise to luminous radiation, absorption phenomena afford no
evidence of this motion of the molecules when their vibrations are
far less violent."... "The molecules are so apt to vibrate each in
its own period that they will take up vibrations from light which
is passing among them, provided always that the light thus passing
among them contains the proper vibrations."... "Let us try to get a
mental image of what goes on. There is an experiment in the world of
sound which will help us."... "Take two large tuning-forks, mounted on
sounding-boxes, and tuned to exact unison. One of the forks is set in
active vibration by means of a fiddle-bow, and then brought near to
the other one, the open mouths presented to each other. After a few
moments, if the fork originally sounded is damped to stop its sound,
it will be found that the other fork has taken up the vibration,
and is sounding distinctly. If the two forks are not in unison,
no amount of bowing of the one will have the slightest effect in
producing sound from the other."
Although physicists know that this extraordinary influence exists
between inanimate objects as a class, they look upon the human organism
as little more than a machine, taking small interest in researches
which evince the dominion of mind over matter. Keely's experimental
research in this province has shown him that it is neither the electric
nor the magnetic flow, but the etheric, which sends its current along
our nerves; that the electric or the magnetic bears an infinitely small
ratio to that of an etheric flow, both as to velocity and tenuity; that
true coincidents can exist between any mediums--cartilage to steel,
steel to wood, wood to stone, and stone to cartilage; that the same
influence (sympathetic association) which governs all the solids holds
the same governing influence over all liquids; and again, from liquid
to solid, embracing the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral;
that the action of mind over matter thoroughly substantiates these
incontrovertible laws of sympathetic etheric influence; that the only
true medium which exists in nature is the sympathetic flow emanating
from the normal human brain, governing correctly the graduating and
setting-up of the true sympathetic vibratory positions in machinery
necessary to success; that these flows come in on the order of the
fifth and seventh positions of atomic subdivision, compound ether a
resultant of this subdivision; that, if metallic mediums are brought
under the influence of this sympathetic flow they become organisms
which carry the same influence with them that the human brain does
over living physical positions--that the composition of the metallic
and of the physical are one and the same thing, although the molecular
arrangement of the physical may be entirely opposite to the metallic on
their aggregations; that the harmonious chords induced by sympathetic
positive vibration permeate the molecules in each, notwithstanding,
and bring about the perfect equation of any differentiation that
may exist--in one, the same as in the other--and thus they become
one and the same medium [2] for sympathetic transmission; that the
etheric flow is of a tenuity coincident to the condition governing the
seventh subdivision of matter--a condition of subtlety that readily
and instantaneously permeates all forms of aggregated matter, from
air to solid hammered steel--the velocity of the permeation being the
same with the one as with the other; that the tenuity of the etheric
flow is so infinitely fine that any magnifying glass, the power of
which would enlarge the smallest grain of sand to the size of the
sun, brought to bear upon it, would not make it visible to us; that
light, traversing at the speed of 200,000 miles per second a distance
requiring a thousand centuries to reach, would be traversed by the
etheric flow in an indefinite fragment of a second.
These are some of the problems which Mr. Keely has had to solve before
he could adapt his vibratory machinery to the etheric flow. The true
conditions for transmitting it sympathetically through a differential
wire of platinum and silver have now been attained, after eight
years of intense study and elaborate experiment. The introductory
indications began to show themselves about two years ago, but the
intermissions on transmission were so frequent and so great as to
discourage Mr. Keely from further research on this line. Then came
one of those "inspirations" which men call "accident," revealing
to him "the true conditions" necessary to produce a sympathetic
flow, free of differentiation, proving conclusively the truth
of his theory of the law governing the atomic triplets in their
association. Differentiation, by compound negative vibration of their
neutral centres, causes antagonism, and thus the great attractive
power that aggregates them becomes one of dispersion or expansion,
accompanied by immense velocity of rotation, which carries its
influence through the whole volume of air, 230 cubic inches contained
in sphere, within its 33 1/3 chord of its circle of coincidence. By
this wire of platinum and silver the current of force is now passed
to run the vibratory disk, thus altogether upsetting the "compressed
air" theory of Professor Barker, Dr. Hall, and others of less note.
"In setting the conditions of molecular sympathetic transmission
by wire," writes Keely, "the same law calls for the harmonious
adjustment of the thirds, to produce a non-intermittent flow of
sympathy. Intermission means failure here. That differential molecular
volume is required, in two different mediums of molecular density,
to destroy differentiation of sympathetic flow, seems at first sight
to controvert the very law established by the great Creator, which
constitutes harmony--a paradoxical position which has heretofore
misled physicists who have propounded and set forth most erroneous
doctrines, because they have accepted the introductory conditions,
discarding their sympathetic surroundings. The volume of the neutral
centre of the earth is of no more magnitude than the one of a molecule:
the sympathetic condition of one can be reached in the same time as
the other by its coincident chord."
Thus it will be seen what difficulties Keely has encountered in his
persevering efforts to use the etheric flow in vibratory machinery. One
by one he has conquered each, attaining the transmission of the
etheric current in the same manner as the electric current, with
this one notable difference--that, in order to show insulation to the
sceptical, he passes the etheric current through blocks of glass in
running his vibratory devices.
When Keely's system is finished, then, and not until then, all that
is involved in his discovery will be made known to the world.
NOTE.
Five years after this paper on Etheric force was written, Dr. Henry
Wood, of Boston, wrote an article, which appeared in The Arena of
October, 1891, having the title Healing through Mind. Dr. Wood says:
"Truth may be considered as a rounded unit. Truths have various and
unequal values, but each has its peculiar place, and if it be missing
or distorted, the loss is not only local but general. Unity is made up
of variety, and therein is completeness. Any honest search after truth
is profitable, for thereby is made manifest the kingdom of the real....
"We forget that immaterial forces rule not only the invisible but
the visible universe. Matter, whether in the vegetable, animal, or
human organism, is moulded, shaped, and its quality determined by
unseen forces back of and higher than itself. We rely upon the drug,
because we can feel, taste, see, and smell it. We are colour-blind
to invisible potency of a higher order, and practically conclude that
it is non-existent."--Healing through Mind.
CHAPTER V.
ETHERIC VIBRATION. THE KEY FORCE.
Discovery is not invention.--Edison.
Science has been compared to a stately and wide-spreading tree,
stretching outward and upward its ever-growing boughs. As yet mankind
has reached only to its lowermost branches, too often satisfied with
the dead calyxes which have fallen from it to the ground, after serving
their uses for the protection of the vital germs of truth. The seed of
the next advance in science can only germinate as the dry husk decays,
within which its potentiality was secretly developed.
For upwards of ten centuries false portions of the philosophy of
Aristotle enslaved the minds of civilized Europe, only, at last,
to perish and pass away like withered leaves.
The most perfect system of philosophy must always be that which can
reconcile and bring together the greatest number of facts that can
come within the sphere of the subject. In this consists the sole glory
of Newton, whose discovery rests upon no higher order of proof. In
the words of Dr. Chalmers, "Authority scowled upon this discovery,
taste was disgusted by it, and fashion was ashamed of it. All the
beauteous speculation of former days was cruelly broken up by this
new announcement of the better philosophy, and scattered like the
fragments of an aerial vision, over which the past generations of
the world had been slumbering in profound and pleasing reverie."
Thus we see that time is no sure test of a doctrine, nor ages of
ignorance any standard by which to measure a system. Facts can have a
value only when properly represented and demonstrated by proof. Velpeau
said nothing can lie like a fact. Sir Humphry Davy asserted that
no one thing had so much checked the progress of philosophy as the
confidence of teachers in delivering dogmas as facts, which it would
be presumptuous to question. This reveals the spirit which made the
crude physics of Aristotle the natural philosophy of Europe.
The philosophy of vibratory rotation, which is yet to be propounded
to the world, reveals the identity of facts which seem dissimilar,
binding together into a system the most unconnected and unlike results
of experience, apparently. John Worrell Keely, the discoverer of an
unknown force and the propounder of a pure philosophy, learned at an
early stage of his researches not to accept dogmas as truths, finding
it safer to trust to that "inner light" which has guided him than
to wander after the ignis fatuus of a false system. He has been like
a traveller exploring an unknown zone in the shade of night, losing
his way at times, but ever keeping before him the gleam of breaking
day which dawned upon him at the start. Scientists have kept aloof
from him, or, after superficial examinations, have branded him as "a
modern Cagliostro," "a wizard," "a magician," and "a fraud." Calumnies
he never stoops to answer, for he knows that when his last problem
is solved to his own satisfaction his discovery and his inventions
will defend him in trumpet tones around our globe. Buchanan says,
"Who would expect a society of learned men, the special cultivators
and guardians of science, as they claim to be, to know as much of the
wonderful philosophy now developing as those who have no artificial
reputation to risk in expressing an opinion, no false and inflated
conceptions of dignity and stability to hold them back, and who stand
ready to march on from truth to truth as fast and far as experimental
demonstration can lead them?"
Johnson tells us that the first care of the builder of a new system
is to demolish the fabrics that are standing. But the cobwebs of
age cannot be disturbed without rousing the bats, to whom daylight
is death.
When has Nature ever whispered her secrets but for the advancement
of our race on that royal road which leads to the subjugation of the
power she reveals? But not until the inspiration of thought has done
its work in applying the power to mechanics, can the tyrant thus
encountered be transformed into the slave.
So was it with steam, so has it been with electricity, and so will it
be with vibratory force. All experience shows that the steady progress
of the patient study of what are termed Nature's laws does not attract
public attention until there are some practical results. Professor
Tyndall has said that the men who go close to the mouth of Nature and
listen to her communications leave the discoveries they make for the
benefit of posterity to be developed by practical men. The invention of
vibratory machinery for the liberation and the operation in mechanics
of sympathetic force is an instance where practical application of the
discovery may be made by the discoverer. After years of experiments
with this force, what does the public know of its nature? Nothing;
for as yet no practical results have been obtained. Here is a power
sustaining the same relations to electricity that the trunk of a
tree does to its branches,--the discovery of which heralds to the
scientific world possibilities affecting motive industries, such as
should command the attention of all men; and yet it is known only as
a theme for jest and ridicule and reproach! And why is this? Partly
from the mismanagement of a prematurely-organized Keely Motor Company,
and partly because men competent to judge for themselves have preferred
to take the opinion of others not competent, instead of investigating
each for himself.
Attempts to interest scientists in the marvellous mechanism by
which etheric force is evolved from the atmosphere have failed,
even as Galileo failed at Padua to persuade the principal professor
of philosophy there to look at the moon and planets through his
glasses. The professor pertinaciously refused, as wrote Galileo to
his friend Kepler. Mankind hate truth, said Lady Mary Montague: she
should have said, mankind hate new truths. The most simple and rational
advances in medical science have been received with scorn and derision,
or with stupid censure. Harvey was nicknamed "the circulator" [3]
after his discovery of the circulation of the blood,--which discovery
was ridiculed by his colleagues and compeers. The same reception
awaited Jenner's introduction of vaccination.
The revelation of new truths is compared to the upheaval of rocks
which reveal deeply-hidden strata. Stolid conservatism dislikes and
avoids such facts, because they involve new thinking and disturb old
theories. The leaden weight of scepticism drags down the minds of many,
paralyzing their power of reasoning upon facts which reveal truth, from
another standpoint than their own, with new simplicity and grandeur
in the divine laws of the universe. Others there are, embracing the
majority of mankind, according to Hazlitt, who stick to an opinion
that they have long supported, and that supports them. But whenever
a discovery or invention has made its way so well by itself as to
achieve reputation, most people assert that they always believed in
it from the first; and so will it be with Keely's inventions, in time.
In our day so rapidly are anticipations realized and sanguine hopes
converted into existing facts, one wonderful discovery followed
by another, that it is strange to find men possessing any breadth
of intellect rejecting truths from hearsay, instead of examining
all things and holding fast to the truth. The laws of sympathetic
association need only to be demonstrated and understood to carry
conviction of their truth with them. They control our world and
everything in it, from matter to spirit. They control all the systems
of worlds in the universe; for they are the laws which Kepler predicted
would in this century he revealed to man. The divine element is shown
by these laws to be like the sun behind the clouds,--the source of
all light, though itself unseen.
Already the existence of this unknown force is as well established as
was the expansive power of steam in the days when the world looked on
and laughed at Rumsey and Fitch and Fulton while they were constructing
their steamboats. Even when they were used for inland navigation,
men of science declared ocean navigation by steam impracticable, up
to the very hour of its consummation. In like manner with electricity,
scientists declared an ocean telegraph impossible, asserting that the
current strong enough to bear messages would melt the wires. Nothing
could be more unpopular than railways were at their start. In England,
Stephenson's were called "nuisances," and false prophets arose then
(as now with Keely's inventions) to foretell their failure. It was
predicted that they would soon be abandoned, and, if not given up,
that they would starve the poor, destroy canal interests, crush
thousands in fearful accidents, and cover the land with horror.
When I say that the existence of this force is established, I do
not mean that it is established by a favourable verdict from public
opinion,--which, as Douglas Jerrold said, is but the average stupidity
of mankind, and which is always steadily and persistently opposed
to great and revolutionary discoveries. Establishment consists
in convincing men competent to judge that the effects produced by
etheric force could not be caused by any known force. And it is now
years since such a verdict was first given, substantiated repeatedly
since, by the testimony of men as incapable of fraud or collusion as
is the discoverer himself.
Newton, in discovering the existence of a force which we call gravity,
did not pursue his investigations sufficiently far to proclaim a power
which neutralizes or overcomes gravity, the existence of which Keely
demonstrates in his vibratory-lift experiments.
But it is one thing to discover a force in nature, and quite another
thing to control it. It is one thing to lasso a wild horse, and
quite another thing to subdue the animal, harness it, bridle it,
and get the curb-bit in the mouth.
Keely has lassoed his wild horse; he has harnessed it and bridled it;
and when he has the bit in its place, this force will take its stand
with steam and electricity, asking nothing, and giving more than
science ever before conferred on the human race.
The Home Journal of October 20th, 1886, contained a paper which
possesses some interest as having been written at the time Mr. Keely
was using what he called a "Liberator," which enabled him to dispense
with the use of water; but he was obliged to return to his former
method soon after.
Etheric Vibration.
The late editor of the New York Home Journal, noticing the preceding
paper, which appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, asks:--"But is not
this new force too mighty to be managed by mere earthly instruments,
such as iron, copper, or lead? It is the key force, the one that
presided over the creation of these very metals, and can it reasonably
be expected to be caged and fettered by them? Can the bubble withstand
the onset of the wave, of which it is a mere drift?"
When lightning was first drawn from the clouds by Franklin, did it
occur to any man living to predict that electricity (which Keely
defines as a certain form of atomic vibration) could be stored, to
use at will as a motive power? If atomic vibration can be made to
serve the purposes of mechanics, why not etheric vibration?
But let Keely answer for himself. Some years since he wrote as
follows:--"In analyzing theoretically the mechanical standard necessary
for a solution of the philosophy of 'Etheric Vibration,' and the
systematic mechanism to produce a rotating circle of etheric force,
I must admit that the phenomenon, as presented to myself, by seeming
accident, after almost a lifetime of study, still partially holds
itself to my understanding as paradoxical. After constructing many
mechanical devices in my vain attempts to come more closely to what I
term a radiaphonic vibratory position, with microphonic adjustments,
I have only been able to reach a few true and standard positions,
which I can satisfactorily analyze. There is but one principle
underlying all, and this principle is the key to the problem."
Keely continues with an explanation of the mechanism of his generator,
which he invented and constructed for the multiplication of vibrations,
under the disturbance of equilibrium by mediums of different specific
gravities--air as one, water as the other. He has since abandoned
the generator for a vibratory machine which he calls a "liberator,"
in which no water is used to develop the force: the disturbance of
the equilibrium being effected by a medium thoroughly vibratory in
its character. The vapour which Keely produces from this liberator is
perfectly free from all humidity, thus giving it a tenuity which he
had never been able to reach before, and of a character most desirable
for the perfect and high lines of action. In the various improvements
which Keely has made in his mechanism, feeling his way in the dark as
it were, he sometimes speaks of having "stupidly stumbled over them,"
of "seeming accident," or "seeming chance," where another would call
it "inspiration." "Providence sends chance, and man moulds it to
his own design." The improvement upon the generator was conceived by
Keely during his desperate struggles to effect a simultaneous action
between the molecular and atomic leads--an action that was absolutely
essential for the full line of continuation. This shorter and simpler
way of reaching his desired end was suggested, in part, to him by a
quotation from some one of our scientific writings, made in a letter
that he received. I am not sure about this quotation, but I think it
was: "Nature works with dual force, but at rest she is a unit."
"In the image of God made He man," and in the image of man Keely
has constructed his liberator. Not literally, but, as his vibrophone
(for collecting the waves of sound and making each wave distinct from
the other in tone when the "wave-plate" is struck after the sound
has died away) is constructed after the human ear, so his liberator
corresponds in its parts to the human head.
But to return to the question asked in the Home Journal. "Can this
subtle force reasonably be expected to be caged and fettered by mere
earthly instruments? "This is the answer, as given by Keely himself:
"You ask my opinion regarding my ultimate success in the practical
use of etheric force. My faith is unbounded by doubts. The successful
result is as positive as the revolutions of our globe, and comes
under the great law which governs all nature's highest and grandest
and most sensitive operations."
Since Keely wrote the above lines he has had time to get discouraged,
if he could know discouragement; but he has conquered too many of
the stupendous problems, which barricaded his way in the past, not
to feel equally sanguine now of eventual success in his last problem,
viz. the attaining of continuity of action, which at the present time
seems all but within his grasp.
Some of his views may prove of interest at a time when his achievements
are beginning to be a little better understood. Gravity he defines as
transmittive inter-etheric force under immense etheric vibration. He
continues:--The action of the mind itself is a vibratory etheric
evolution, controlling the physical, its negative power being
depreciatory in its effects, and its positive influence elevating.
The idea of getting a power as tenuous as this under such control as to
make it useful in mechanics is scouted by all physicists. And no wonder
that it is so. But when the character of the velocity of etheric force,
even in a molecule, is understood, the mind that comprehends it must
succumb to its philosophy. To move suddenly a square inch of air, at
the velocity of this vibratory circuit, on full line of graduation,
and at a vibration only of 2,750,000 per second, would require a
force at least of twenty-five times that of gunpowder. Taking the
expansive force of gunpowder at 21,000 lbs. per square inch, it
would be 525,000 lbs. per square inch. This is incomprehensible. The
explosion of nitroglycerine, which has two and a half times less
vibrations per second, when placed on the surface of a solid rock,
will tear up the rock before disturbing the equilibrium of the air
above it. The disturbance takes place after the explosion. To induce
an action on a weight of only twenty grains, the weight of a small
bird-shot, with a range of motion of but one inch, giving it an
action of one million per second, would require the actual force of
two and a half tons per second; or, in other words, ten-horse power
per minute. Etheric vibration would move tons at the same velocity
when submitted to the vibratory circuit. Thus, the finer the substance
the greater the power and the velocity under such vibration.
The vapour from the liberator, registered at 20,000 pounds per square
inch, has a range of atomic motion of 1333 1/3 the diameter of the
atmospheric molecule, with constant rotary vibratory action. At
10,000 pounds, 666 2/3; at 5000, 333 1/3; at 2500, 166 2/3; at 1250,
83 1/3; at 625, 41 2/3. The higher the range of atomic motion the
greater is its tenuity, and the range is according to the registered
pressure. This rule cannot be applied to any other vapour or gas
at present known to scientists. The very evolution on the negative
shows a vacuum of a much higher order than was ever produced before,
thus confounding, to perfect blindness, all theories that have been
brought to bear upon the situation, in its analysis. The highest
vacuum known is 17 999999-1000000 pounds, or not quite 30 inches; but
by this process etheric vacuums have been repeatedly produced of 50
to 57 inches; ranging down to 30 inches, or 15 pounds. All operations
of nature have for their sensitizing centres of introductory action,
triple vacuum evolutions. These evolutions are centred in what I call
atomic triple revolutions, highly radiaphonic in their character,
and thoroughly independent of all outside forces in their spheres of
action. In fact, no conceivable power, however great, can break up
their independent centres. So infinitely minute are they in their
position that, within a circle that would enclose the smallest
grain of sand, hundreds of billions of them perform, with infinite
mathematical precision, their continuous vibratory revolution of
inconceivable velocity.
These triple centres are the very foundation of the universe, and the
great Creator has, in His majestic designs, fixed them indissolubly in
their position. Mathematically considered, the respective and relative
motion of these atomic triplets, gravitating to and revolving around
each other, is about one and one-third of their circumference. The
problem of this action, when reduced to a mathematical analysis
(presupposing taking it as the quadrature of the circle) would baffle
the highest order of mathematical science known to bring it to a
numerical equation.
The requirement of every demonstration is that it shall give sufficient
proof of the truth it asserts. Any demonstration which does less than
this cannot be relied upon, and no demonstration ever made has done
more than this. We ought to know that the possibilities of success are
in proportion as the means applied are adequate or inadequate for the
purpose; and, as different principles exist in various forms of matter,
it is quite impossible to demonstrate every truth by the same means
or the same principles. I look upon it as the prejudice of ignorance
which exacts that every demonstration shall be given by a prescribed
rule of science, as if the science of the present were thoroughly
conversant with every principle that exists in nature. The majority of
physicists exact this, though some of them know that these means are
entirely inadequate. Every revolving body is impressed by nature with
certain laws making it susceptible of the operation of force which,
being applied, impels motion. These laws may all be expressed under
the general term, "Forces," which, though various in their nature,
possess an equalizing power; controlling each other (as in the case
of the atomic triplets) in such a way that neither can predominate
beyond a certain limit. Consequently, these bodies can never approach
nearer each other than a fixed point: nor recede from each other beyond
another certain point. Hence, these forces are, at some mean point,
made perfectly equal, and therefore may be considered as but one force;
therefore as but one element. It matters not that other and disturbing
forces exist outside or inside the space these bodies revolve in,
because if this force must be considered as acting uniformly--applying
itself to each of these bodies in a way to produce a perfect equation
on all, it is as if this outside force were non-existing.
The true study of the Deity by man being in the observation of His
marvellous works, the discovery of a fundamental, creative law of
as wide and comprehensive grasp as would make this etheric vapour
a tangible link between God and man would enable us to realize,
in a measure, the actual existing working qualities of God Himself
(speaking most reverentially) as he would those of a fellow-man. Such
a link would constitute a base or superstructure of recognition,
praise, worship and imitation, such as seems to underlie the whole
Biblical structure as a foundation.--Keely.
Dr. Macvicar, in his theories of the bearing of the cosmical law
of assimilation on molecular action, says: "During this retreat of
matter into ether in single material elements or units of weight,
the molecules and masses from which such vaporization into the common
vapour of matter is going on, may be expected to be phosphorescent."
This surmise Keely has, over and over, demonstrated, as a fact; also
showing how gravitation operates as a lever: etheric wave motion:
concentration under vibratory concussion: and negative vacuous tenuity.
Mrs. F. J. Hughes, writing upon "Tones and Colours," advances theories
of her own, which correspond with those demonstrated by Keely. She
writes, in a private letter: "I firmly believe that exactly the same
laws as those which develop sound keep the heavenly bodies in their
order. You can even trace the poles in sound. My great desire is for
some philosophical mind to take up my views, as entirely gained from
the Scriptures; and I am certain that they will be found to be the
laws developing every natural science throughout the universe."
Thus men and women in various parts of the world who still hold to
their belief in and worship of God, are "standing on ground which is
truly scientific, having nothing to fear from the progress of thought,
in so far as it is entitled to the name of scientific--nay, are in
a position to lead the way in all that can be justly so called."
CHAPTER VI.
THE FOUNTAIN HEAD OF FORCE.
Those who occupy themselves with the mysteries of molecular
vibration bear the victorious wreaths of successful
discovery, and show that every atom teems with wonders not
less incomprehensible than those of the vast and bright
far-off suns.--Reynolds.
The famous Keely motor, which has been hovering on the
horizon of success for a decade, is but an attempt to repeat
in an engine of metal the play of forces which goes on at the
inmost focus of life, the human will, or in the cosmic spaces
occupied only by the ultimate atoms. The engineer with his
mallet shooting the cannon-ball by means of a few light taps on
a receiver of depolarized atoms of water is only re-enacting
the rôle of the will when with subtle blows it sets the nerve
aura in vibration, and this goes on multiplying in force and
sweep of muscle until the ball is thrown from the hand with
a power proportionate to the one-man machinery. The inventor
Keely seeks a more effective machinery; a combination of
thousands of will-forces in a single arm, as it were. But he
keeps the same vibrating principle, and the power in both cases
is psychical. That is, in its last analysis.--George Perry.
One eternal and immutable law embraces all things and all
times.--Cicero.
When the truth is made known, it will unwarp the complications
of man's manufacture; and show everything in nature to be
very simple.--David Sinclair, author of A New Creed.--Digby,
Long & Co.
A gradual change seems to be taking place in the minds of the
well-informed in reference to the discoverer of, and experimenter
with, etheric force--John Worrell Keely--which will in time remove
the burden of accusations from him to those who are responsible for
the load which he has had to carry.
Those who know the most of Mr. Keely's philosophy, and of his
inventions to apply this new force to mechanics, are the most sanguine
as to his ultimate success. They say he is great enough in soul,
wise enough in mind, and sublime enough in courage to overcome all
difficulties, and to stand at last before the world as the greatest
discoverer and inventor in the world:--that the hour demanded his
coming--that he was not born for his great work before his appointed
time. They predict that he will, with the hammer of science, demolish
the idols of science; that the demonstration of the truth of his system
will humble the pride of those scientists who are materialists, by
revealing some of the mysteries which lie behind the world of matter;
proving that physical disintegration affects only the mode, and not
the existence, of individual consciousness.
The discovery of vibratory etheric force, even though never utilized
in mechanics, brings us upon the bridge which divides physical science
from spiritual science, and opens up domains the grandeur and glory of
which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into
the mind of man to conceive. The few who understand the nature and
the extent of Keely's vast researches say that he is about to give
a new philosophy to the world, which will upset all other systems;
they say that he knows what force is; and that he seeks to know
what impels and fixes the neutral centre, which attracts to itself
countless correlations of matter, until it becomes a world; that he
is approaching the origin of life, of memory, and of death; and more,
that he knows how ignorant he still is: possessing the humility of a
little child who knows nothing of science. Such a philosopher deserves
the appreciation and the encouragement of all who hold Truth as the
one thing most worth living for--and dying for, if need be.
What is etheric force? the inquirer asks. It is the soul of nature. It
is the primal force from which all the forces of nature spring.
Fichte writes: "The will is the living principle of the world of
spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. I stand between two
opposite worlds; the one visible, in which the act alone avails; the
other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. I
am an effective force in both these worlds."
Newton said that this subtle ether penetrates through all, even the
hardest bodies, and is concealed in their substance. Through the
strength and activity of this spirit, bodies attract each other, and
adhere together when brought into contact. In it, and by it, distance
is annihilated, and all objects touch each other. Through this "life
spirit" light also flows, and is refracted and reflected, and warms
bodies. Through it we are connected in sympathy with all other souls,
and all the objects of nature, even to all the heavenly bodies. The
word ether is from "aithô," to light up or kindle. According
to Pythagoras and all the oldest philosophers, it was viewed as a
divine luminous principle or substance, which permeates all things,
and, at the same time, contains all things. They called it the astral
light. The Germans call it the "Weltgeist," the breath of the Father,
the Holy Ghost, the life-principle.
The sheet-anchor of Keely's philosophy is, in the words of Hooker,
one power, ever present, ever ruling, neglecting not the least, not
quailing before the greatest: the lowest not excluded from its care,
nor the highest exempted from its dominion. A power that presents
itself to us as a force: the one force in nature, thrilling to
its deepest heart, and flowing forth responsive to every call. A
power which does all things, and assumes all forms; which has been
called electricity in the storm, heat in the fire, magnetism in
the iron bar, light in the taper, but ever one grand reality, one
all-embracing law. Cosmical law at the fountain-head, suggesting
that, as the Creator Himself is only one in substance, so also,
primarily, will the creation be, to which He awards existence. The
extreme simplicity of this deduction, made as it is in the face
of all the variety and multiplicity of individualized objects that
there are in the universe, seems to involve many difficulties. But,
as Macvicar writes, different beings, whether classes or individuals,
are known to us, not by any difference in their substance, but only
by differences in their attributes. And since being or substance,
and power or potentiality, differ from each other only in conception,
only as the statical differs from the dynamical, it is reasonable, nay,
in the circumstances it is alone legitimate, to suppose that it is not
in virtue of some absolute difference in substance (for none appears),
but only from differences in the quantity or intensity of substance
or power in the individual, and from the variety of their build,
that different individuals display such different potentialities or
endowments as they do display; and come to be justly classified as
they are into various orders of beings. Inasmuch as the Author of all
is Himself a Spiritual Being, cosmical law leads us to expect that
the type of created being shall be spirit also. Nor can Being in any
object be so attenuated or so far removed from Him who filleth all in
all, but it must surely retain an aura of the spiritual nature. This,
then, is the corner-stone of Keely's philosophy--one power; one law;
order and method reigning throughout creation; spirit controlling
matter; as the divine order and law of creation, that the spiritual
should govern the material,--that the whole realm of matter should
be under the dominion of the world of spirit.
When Keely's discovery has been made known to scientists, a new
field of research will be opened up in the realm of Philosophy, where
all eternal, physical, and metaphysical truths are correlated; for
Philosophy has been well defined by Willcox as the science of that
human thought which contains all human knowledges. He who possesses
the structure of philosophic wisdom built up of all knowledges--grand
and sublime--has a mental abode wherein to dwell which other men have
not. Dr. Macvicar says:--"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
merely 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." In Keely's philosophy, as in Dr. Macvicar's "Sketch of a
Philosophy," the economy of creation is not regarded as a theory of
development all in one direction, which is the popular supposition,
but as a cycle in which, after development and as its fruit, the last
term gives again the first. Herein is found the link by which the
law of continuity is maintained throughout, and the cycle of things
is made to be complete:--the link which is missing in the popular
science of the day, with this very serious consequence, that, to
keep the break out of sight, the entire doctrine of spirit and the
spiritual world is ignored or denied altogether.
Joseph Cook affirms that, "as science progresses, it draws nearer
in all its forms to the proof of the spiritual origin of force--that
is, of the divine immanence in natural law. God was not transiently
present in nature--that is, in a mere creative moment; nor has He now
left the world in a state of orphanage, bereft of a deific influence
and care, but He is immanent in nature, as the Apostle Paul affirmed:
In Him we live, and are moved, and have our being; as certainly as
the unborn infant's life is that of the mother, so it is divinely
true that somehow God's life includes ours."
The philosophy of Keely sets forth the universal ether (denied by
scientists in the last century to suit their views of the celestial
spaces, which they declared to be a vacuum) as the medium by which our
lives are included in God's life; demonstrating how it is that we live
because He lives, and shall live as long as He exists: how our being
is comprised in His, so that if we could suppose the divine life to
come to an end, ours would terminate with it as surely--to compare
great things with small--as a stream would cease to flow when its
fountain is dried up; teaching that our existence may be distinct,
but never separate from His, and that in the hidden depth of the
soul there is somewhere a point where our individual being comes in
contact with God, and is identified with the infinite life.
"If extreme vicissitudes of belief on the part of men of science are
evidence of uncertainty, it may be affirmed that, of all kinds of
knowledge, none is more uncertain than science." The existence of the
universal ether is now affirmed again, and must be affirmed, as one
of the most elementary facts in physical science. Sir J. F. Herschel
asserts that, supposing the ether to be analogous to other elastic
media, an amount of it equal in quantity of matter to that which is
contained in a cubic inch of air (which weighs about one-third of a
grain), if enclosed in a cube of one inch in the side, would exert
a bursting power of upwards of seventeen billions of pounds on each
side of the cube, while common air exerts only fifteen pounds. It
should not, therefore, be surprising to those who have witnessed the
manifestations of etheric force, as exhibited by Keely in producing
a pressure ranging from 8000 to 30,000 pounds to the square inch,
when modern scientists support Herschel's views, as they do,
unhesitatingly; rather should they be surprised at the marvellous
perseverance which has kept Keely, in the face of every discouragement,
true to his inspired mission; conquering every difficulty, surmounting
every obstacle, and turning his mistakes into stepping-stones which
have helped him to attain the goal he has, from the start, aimed at
reaching--viz. the utilizing in mechanics of the power he discovered
many years ago. Before the grandeur and glory of such an attainment,
all things had to give way. Like a General who sees the fortress
looming up in the distance which he must take to complete his victory,
his horse's hoofs trampling the dead and dying in his path, so has
this discoverer and inventor been unmindful of all that lay between
him and his goal. Taking for the key-note of his experiments, in
applying inter-molecular vapour to the running of an engine, that all
the movements of elastic elements are rhythmical, he has had problems
to solve which needed the full measure of inspiration he has received
before he could attain that degree of success which he has now reached.
Mr. Keely realizes the full extent of the difficulties which he yet
has to contend with in obtaining continuity of action, though, with his
sanguine temperament, anticipating near and complete success. To quote
from his writings:--"The mathematics of vibratory etheric science,
both pure and applied, require long and arduous research. It seems to
me that no man's life is sufficient, with the most intense application,
to cover more than the introductory branch. The theory of elliptic
functions, the calculus of probabilities, are but as pigmies in
comparison to a science which requires the utmost tension of the
human mind to grasp. But let us wait patiently for the light that
will come--that is even now dawning."
All we can dream of loveliness within,
All ever hoped for by a will intense,
This shall one day be palpable to sense,
And earth at last become to heaven akin.
These four lines, from Robert Browning's sonnet on Keely's discoveries,
read like an inspired insight into that "Age of Harmony," which
interpreters of scripture prophecies anticipate the twentieth century
will usher into our world; recalling Shakespeare's seeming knowledge,
before Harvey's discovery even, of the circulation of the blood. "All
truth is inspired."
CHAPTER VII.
THE KEY TO THE PROBLEMS. KEELY'S SECRETS.
Causa latet, vis est notissima.--Proverb.
(The cause is hidden, the power is most apparent.)
Electricity is in principle as material as water; so it
appears, and Mr. Carl Hering has expressed the fact with
much of clearness and force. He says, "It is a well-known
fact that the quantity of electricity measured in coulombs
never is generated, never is consumed, and never does grow
less, excepting leakage. The current flowing out of a lamp is
exactly the same in quantity as that going into it; the same
is true of motors and of generators, showing that electricity
of itself is neither consumed while doing work nor is it
generated. After doing work in a lamp or motor, it comes
out in precisely the same quantity as it entered. A battery
is not able to generate quantity or coulombs of electricity;
all it is able to do is to take the quantity which pours in at
one pole, and sends out at the other pole with an increased
pressure. Electricity, therefore, is not merely force (or
a form of energy), but matter. It is precisely analogous to
water in a water circuit....--The Court Journal.
The theory of Aristotle concerning heat, viz. that it is a condition of
matter, together with the dicta of Locke, Davy, Rumford, and Tyndall,
have been consigned of late by many to the tomb of exploded theories,
and are replaced by those of Lavoisier and Black, which make caloric an
actual substance. The Rev. J. J. Smith, M.A., D.D., tells us that the
only way the great problem of the universe can ever be scientifically
solved is by studying, and arriving at just conclusions with regard
to, the true nature and character of force. He maintains, in his
paper upon "The Unity and Origin of Force," that, as it is the great
organizer of matter, it must not only be superior to it, but also
must have been prior, as it existed before organization commenced,
and immanent always. Newton, who scoffed at Epicurus's idea that
"gravitation is essential and inherent in matter," asserted that
gravity must be caused by an agent acting, constantly, according to
certain laws. Heat, gravity, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical
affinities, are all different phases of the primal force discovered by
Keely, and all these forces, it is said, can be obtained from a single
ray of sunlight. "The evidence of unity or oneness even between the
physical, vital, mental, and spiritual is seen in the light of this law
of correlation," says Smith. "A great portion of our muscles contract
and relax in obedience to our wills, thereby proving that the mental
force can be, and is, in every such instance actually converted into
the muscular or the physical." Keely demonstrates the truth of this
assertion, claiming that "all forces are indestructible, immaterial,
and homogeneous entities, having their origin and unity in one great
intelligent personal will force."
The Duke of Argyll says:--"We know nothing of the ultimate seat of
force. Science, in the modern doctrine of conservation of energy,
and the convertibility of forces, is already getting something
like a firm hold of the idea that all kinds of forces are but
forms or manifestations of some one central force, issuing from
some one fountain-head of power." It is Keely's province to prove to
materialists--to the world--that this one fountain-head is none other
than the Omnipotent and all-pervading Will-Force of the Almighty,
"which upholds, guides, and governs, not only our world, but the
entire universe. This important truth is destined to shiver the
tottering fabric of materialism into fragments at no distant day."
Professor George Bush writes:--"The progress of scientific research, at
the present day, has distinguished itself not less by the wideness of
the field over which its triumphs have spread, than by the soundness
and certainty of the inductions by which it is sustained. It is
equally indisputable that we are approximating the true philosophy
which underlies the enlarged and enlarging spiritual experiences and
phenomena of the current age. That this philosophy, when reached,
will conduct us into the realm of the spiritual as the true region of
causes, and disclose new and unthought-of relations between the world
of matter and of mind, is doubtless a very reasonable anticipation,
and one that even now is widely, though vaguely, entertained."
The Egyptians worshipped Ra, their name for the sun, and Ammon,
the emblem of a mysterious power concealed from human perception. The
Supreme Being is the grand central spiritual sun, the source and centre
of all life, "whose revelation is traced in imperishable figures
of universal harmony on the face of Cosmos." "The outward visible
world is but the clothing of the invisible," wrote Coleridge. "The
whole world process, in its content," says von Hartmann, "is only a
logical process; but in its existence a continued act of will." Lilly
continues, "That is what physical law means. Reason and Will are
inseparably united in the universe, as they are in idea. If we will
anything, it is for some reason. In contemplating the structure of the
universe, we cannot resist the conclusion that the whole is founded
upon a distinct idea."
Keely demonstrates the harmony of this "distinct idea" throughout
creation, and shows us that "the sun is the visible effluence and
agent, earthward, of the Being without whose prior design and decree
there would be no order and no systematic rule on earth," as well
as that in "the universal ether" we find the link between mind and
matter. "There is more of heaven than of earth, in all terrestrial
things; more of spirit than of matter in what are termed material
laws." Lange, with prophetic tongue, says that this age of materialism
may prove to be but the stillness before the storm which bursts from
unknown gulfs to give a new shape to the world. Inch by inch, step by
step, physical science has marched towards its desired goal--the verge
of physical nature, says Alcott. When it was thought that the verge
was reached, that the mysteries which lay beyond were for ever barred
to mortals by the iron gate of death, then the discoveries of Faraday,
Edison, and Crookes pushed further away the chasm which separates the
confessedly knowable from the fancied unknowable, and whole domains
previously undreamt of were suddenly exposed to view. Not long since,
Canon Wilberforce asked Keely what would become of his discovery and
his inventions in case of his death before they became of commercial
value to the public. Keely replied that he had written thousands of
pages, which he hoped would, in such an event, be mastered by some
mind capable of pursuing his researches to practical ends; but in
the opinion of the writer, there is no man living who is fitted for
this work.
Diogenes of Apollonia identified the reason that regulated the world
with the original substance, air. Keely teaches that "the original
substance" is ether, not air; and that the world is regulated through
this ether by its Creator. There are many molecules which contain no
air--not one molecule that does not contain the one true "original
substance," ether.
Up to 1888 Keely was still pursuing the wrong line of research, still
trying to construct an engine which could hold the ether in "a rotating
circle of etheric force;" still ignorant of the impossibility of ever
reaching commercial success on that line. It was the end of the year
before he could be brought to entirely abandon his "perfect engine;"
and to confine himself to researches, which he had been pursuing
in connection with his repeated failures on the commercial line,
to gain more knowledge of the laws which govern the operation of the
force that, like a "Will-o'-the-wisp," seemed to delight in leading
him astray.
Up to this time his researching devices had been principally of his own
construction; but from the time that he devoted himself to the line
of research, marked out for him to follow, he was supplied with the
best instruments that opticians could make for him after the models
or designs which he furnished. If, from 1882 to 1888, he walked with
giant strides along the borders of the domain that he had entered,
from 1888 to the present time he has made the same progress beyond its
borders. From the hour in which he grasped "the key to the problem,"
the "principle underlying all," the dawn of "a new order of things,"
broke upon his vision, and he was no longer left at the mercy of the
genii whom he had aroused.
In July, 1888, the T.P.S. published the succeeding paper, which had
a wide circulation.
KEELY'S SECRETS. 1888.
Part I.
Science is to know things.--Herodotus.
Knowledge is developed by experience from innate ideas.--Plato.
Truth is not attained through reflection, but through immediate
intuition. "We neither originate thought nor its form.--Aryan
Teachings.
It may be said that if all things come from only one cause or
internal source, acting within itself, then motion and matter
must be fundamentally and essentially one and the same, and
we may look upon matter as being latent force and upon force
as being free matter.--Franz Hartmann, M.D.
John Worrell Keely--the discoverer of compound inter-etheric force,
as the result of more than twenty years of persistent effort to apply
this force to the operation of machinery has, at last, been enabled
to produce partial continuity of motion in his engine; but, up to
this time, he has not so mastered this subtle force as to control
reversions. The development of his various discoveries has been one
uninterrupted work of evolution, reaching, within the last year, he
thinks, the sphere of perfect vibratory sympathy, both theoretically
and practically. The proof of this is found in the fact that he now
transmits vibrations along a wire, connected at one end with the
vibratory machine which is the source of power, and at its other end
with the engine or cannon, as the case may be, which is operated by
such vibratory power. Until recently, comparatively speaking, Keely
stored force, as he generated it, in a receiver; and experiments were
made by him in the presence of thousands, at various times, for the
purpose of testing the operations of this force, liberated in the
presence of his audience and stored up in this small receiver. The
editor of the Scientific Arena thus describes what took place at one
of these exhibitions, when he was present:--"The confined vapour was
passed through one of the small flexible tubes to a steel cylinder
on another table, in which a vertical piston was fitted so that its
upper end bore against the underside of a powerful, weighted lever. The
superficial area of this piston was equal to one-half of a square inch,
and it acted as a movable fulcrum placed close to the hinged end of
the short arm of this lever, whose weight alone required a pressure
of 1500 pounds to the square inch against the piston to lift it.
"After testing the pressure by several small weights, added to that
of the lever itself, in order, to determine how much power had already
been accumulated in the receiver, the maximum test was made by placing
an iron weight of 580 pounds, by means of a differential pulley, on the
extreme end of the long arm of the lever. To lift this weight, without
that of the lever supporting it, would require a pressure against the
piston of 18,900 pounds to the square inch, counting the difference
in the length of the two arms and the area of the piston, which we,
as well as several others present, accurately calculated. When all was
ready, and the crowded gathering had formed as well as possible to see
the test, Keely turned the valve-wheel leading from the receiver to
the flexible tube, and through it into the steel cylinder beneath the
piston, and simultaneously with the motion of his hand the weighted
lever shot up against its stop, a distance of several inches, as if
the great mass of iron had been only cork. Then, in order to assure
ourselves of the full 25,000 pounds to the square inch claimed, we
added most of our weight to the arm of the lever without forcing the
piston back again.
"After repeating this experiment till all expressed themselves
satisfied, Keely diverted his etheric gas to the exciting work of
firing a cannon, into which he placed a leaden bullet about an inch
in diameter. He conveyed the force from the receiver by the same
kind of flexible copper tube, attaching one end of it to the breech
of the gun. When all was again in readiness he gave a quick turn to
the inlet valve, and a report like that of a small cannon followed,
the ball passing through an inch board and flattening itself out
to about three inches in diameter, showing the marvellous power and
instantaneous action of this strange vapour."
The difficulty encountered by Keely in his old generator of etheric
force grew out of the fact, in part, that the vaporic power produced
was so humid that he could not, when he attempted to utilize it, obtain
its theoretical value in work. This difficulty has been entirely
overcome by dispensing with the water which he used in liberating
etheric force, by his old generator; and, by this departure, he has
attained a success beyond that which was anticipated by himself,
when he abandoned his original line of experiment. [4]
Ignorant, indeed, of the nature of Keely's work must those men be
who accuse him of "abandoning his base" or "principle," each time
that he discovers his mistakes:--using them as stepping-stones to
approach nearer and still nearer to his goal. Reproaching him, even,
for keeping his own counsel, until certainty of success rendered
it prudent for him to make known that he had changed his field of
experiment from positive attraction to negative attraction.
Equally ignorant are those, who would wrench by force his secrets
from him before the time is ripe for their disclosure. Let us suppose
that Faraday, when he discovered radiant matter in 1816, had formed a
"Faraday Phospho-Genetic Radiant Company," to enable him to experiment:
fully cognizant of all that Crookes has since discovered, and had
taken for his base in experimenting the principle involved in Crookes's
discovery. Not succeeding at first, we will suppose that the Company
became clamorous for returns, and demanded that his secret principle
should be made public. Had he been driven into making it known, who
would have credited what Crookes is now able to prove? The effect
would have been upon the Faraday Company the same as if a balloon were
punctured just as it was soaring heavenward. The same with the Keely
Motor Company, had Keely obeyed the order of the Court in 1882, and
made his marvellous secret public. It would have collapsed. Therefore,
he has maintained his secret in the interests of the stockholders
of the Keely Motor Company with a firmness worthy of a Christian
martyr. The one person to whom alone Keely then disclosed it thought
him under a delusion, until he had demonstrated its soundness.
Charles B. Collier, Keely's patent lawyer, writes as follows,
concerning the difficulties attendant upon "the supposed duty" of
his client's imparting his "secrets," as ordered by the Court to do,
some time since:--
"If to-day, for the first time in your lives, you saw a harp, attuned
and being played upon, and the science of music was unknown to you,
you would hardly expect, without considerable time and study, to be
able to reproduce the harp, attune its strings in proper relation to
each other, and to play upon it so as to produce the harmonies which
you had listened to. Mr. Keely's work is analogous to the illustration
which I have presented, inasmuch as he is dealing with the subject
of sound, or acoustics, but in a much more involved form than as
applied simply for the production of harmonies for the delight of
the ear. Mr. Keely's engine is analogous to the mechanism of the
human ear, in the respect that it is a structure operated upon,
and its motion induced by vibration; and to the end of securing and
attaining, in and by it, uniformity or regularity of motion, there
must be perfect unison, or synchronism, as between it and his structure
which is the prime source of vibration. To attain this perfect unison
or synchronism, has involved unparalleled research and experiment
upon his part--experiments that have varied from day to day. No one,
in my opinion, who had not stood by his side, as his shadow, watching
every experiment, could have kept fully abreast of him. To pursue my
simile, I may say that his harp (engine) is not yet perfectly attuned
("graduated"); when it is so, it will produce nothing but harmony
(regularity of motion), and his work will be finished.
"At such time, I doubt not that he will be able to give to Mr. Boekel,
myself or another, the scale with which to reconstruct and attune
another apparatus so as to produce like results with it; but to go
over the ground that he has gone over, to explore the wilderness in
which he has been the pioneer, in other words, the study, to a full
understanding of them, of his experiments and researches, as recorded
in his writings and illustrated in the beautiful charts which he has
produced, will be a work rather for scientists than for mechanicians
or engineers."
Keely's "Theoretical Exposé" is in preparation for the press; and, when
these volumes are issued, we may look for a change of attitude towards
him in all men who hold themselves "ready to abandon, preconceived
notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict truths;"
which, Herbert Spencer says, is the first condition of success
in scientific research. The Rev. J. J. Smith, M.A., D.D., tells
us that the only way the great problem of the universe can ever be
scientifically solved is by studying, and arriving at just conclusions
with regard to the true nature and character of force. This has
been Mr. Keely's life study; and he is able to demonstrate all that
he asserts.
Laurence Oliphant writes: "Recent scientific research has proved
conclusively that all force is atomic--that electricity consists
of files of particles, and that the interstellar spaces contain
substances, whether it be called ether or astral fluid (or by any
other name), which is composed of atoms, because it is not possible
to dissever force from its transmitting medium. The whole universe,
therefore, and all that it contains, consists of matter in motion,
and is animated by a vital principle which we call God.
"Science has further discovered that these atoms are severally
encompassed by an ethereal substance which prevents their touching
each other, and to this circumambient, inter-atomic element they have
given the name of dynasphere; but, inasmuch as has further been found,
that in these dynaspheres there resides a tremendous potency, it is
evident that they also must contain atoms, and that these atoms must in
their turn be surrounded by dynaspheres, which again contain atoms, and
so on ad infinitum. Matter thus becomes infinite and indestructible,
and the force which pervades it persistent and everlasting.
"This dynaspheric force, which is also called etheric, is conditioned
as to its nature on the quality of the atoms which form its
transmitting media; and which are infinite both in variety and in
their combinations. They may, however, be broadly divided into two
categories; viz. the sentient and the non-sentient atoms. Dynaspheric
force, composed of non-sentient atoms, is the force that has been
already mechanically applied by Mr. Keely to his motor; and which will
probably ere long supersede the agencies now used for locomotive,
projectile, and other purposes. When the laws which govern it come
to be understood, it will produce materially a great commercial and
industrial revolution....
"The most remarkable illustration of the stupendous energy of
atomic vibratory force is to be found in that singular apparatus in
Philadelphia--which for the last fifteen years has excited in turn the
amazement, the scepticism, the admiration, and the ridicule of those
who have examined it--called 'Keely's Motor'" ... "In the practical
land of its origin, it has popularly been esteemed a fraud. I have
not examined it personally, but I believe it to be based upon a sound
principle of dynamics, and to be probably the first of a series of
discoveries destined to revolutionize all existing mechanical theories,
and many of the principles upon which they are founded." ... "Those
who are sufficiently unprejudiced to connect the bearings of this
discovery, of what must be dynaspheric force, with phenomena which
have hitherto been regarded as supernatural by the ignorant, will
perceive how rapidly we are bridging over the chasm which has divided
the seen from the unseen."...
In 1882 a lady, conversing with Mr. Keely, said, "You have opened the
door into the spirit-world." He answered, "Do you think so? I have
sometimes thought I might be able to discover the origin of life." At
this time Mr. Keely had given no attention whatever to the occult
bearing of his discovery; and it was only after he had pursued his
researches, under the advantages which his small Liberator afforded
him for such experiments, that he realized the truth of this woman's
assertion. It was then, in 1887, that a "bridge of mist" formed itself
before him, connecting the laws which govern physical science with the
laws which govern spiritual science, and year by year this bridge of
mist has solidified, until now he is in a position to stand upon it,
and proclaim that its abutments have a solid foundation--one resting
in the material and visible world, and the other in the spiritual
and unseen world; or, rather, that no bridge is needed to connect
the two worlds, one law governing both in its needed modifications.
"The physical thing," writes a modern scientist, "which energizes
and does work in and upon ordinary matter, is a separate form of
matter, infinitely refined, and infinitely rapid in its vibrations,
and is thus able to penetrate through all ordinary matter, and to make
everywhere a fountain of motion, no less real because unseen. It is
among the atoms of the crystal and the molecules of living matter;
and, whether producing locked effects or free, it is the same cosmic
thing, matter in motion, which we conceive as material energy, and
with difficulty think of as only a peculiar form of matter in motion."
The President of the British Association, Sir Henry Roscoe, in his
address before that body, said: "In nature there is no such thing
as great or small; the structure of the smallest particle, invisible
even to our most searching vision, may be as complicated as that of
any of the heavenly bodies which circle round our sun." As to the
indivisibility of the atom, he asks this question: "Notwithstanding
the properties of these elements have been studied, and are now
known with a degree of precision formerly undreamt of, have the
atoms of our present elements been made to yield?" He continues:
"A negative answer must undoubtedly be given, for even the highest
of terrestrial temperatures, that of the electric spark, has failed
to shake any one of these atoms in two."
This is an error, for it is well known by those who are fully
acquainted with the principle involved in Keely's inventions that
the intense vibratory action which is induced in his "Liberator"
has accomplished what the retort of the chemist has failed to do,
what the electric spark has left intact, and what the inconceivably
fierce temperature of the sun and of volcanic fires has turned over to
us unscathed. The mighty Genii imprisoned within the molecule, thus
released from the chains and fetters which Nature forged, has been
for years the tyrant of the one who rashly intruded, without first
paving the way with the gold which he has since been accused of using
in experiments with reckless and wanton waste! For more than a score
of years has Keely been fighting a hand-to-hand fight with this Genii;
often beaten back by it, paralyzed at times, even, by its monstrous
blows; and only now so approaching its subjugation as to make it safe
to harness it for the work that is calling for a power mightier than
steam, safer and more uniform in operation than electricity; a power
which, by its might and beneficence, will ameliorate the condition
of the masses, and reconcile and solve all that now menaces our race:
as it was never menaced before, as has been said.
The structure of the air molecule, as believed in by Keely, is as
follows:--Broken up, by vibratory action, he finds it to contain what
he calls an atomic triplet. The position of a molecule, on the point
of a fine cambric needle sustains the same relation to the point of
the needle that a grain of sand sustains to a field of ten acres.
Although, as Sir H. Roscoe has said, "In nature there is no such thing
as great or small," the human mind cannot conceive such infinitesimal
minuteness. We will, then, imagine a molecule magnified to the size
of a billiard ball, and the atomic triplet magnified to the size
of three marbles, in the triangular position, within that molecule,
at its centre; unless acted upon by electricity, when the molecule,
the billiard ball, becomes oblate, and the three atoms are ranged
in a line within, unless broken up by the mighty force of vibratory
action. Nature never gives us a vacuum; consequently, the space within
the molecule not occupied by the atomic triplet must e filled with
something. This is where the Genii--"the all-pervading ether"--has
made its secret abode through untold æons, during which our world
has been in course of preparation for its release, to fulfil its
appointed task in advancing the progress of the human race.
Step by step, with a patient perseverance which some day the world
will honour, this man of genius has made his researches, overcoming
the colossal difficulties which have raised up in his path what
seemed to be insurmountable barriers to further progress: but never
before has the world's index finger so pointed to an hour when all
is making ready for the advent of the new form of force that mankind
is waiting for. Nature, always reluctant to yield her secrets, is
listening to the demands made upon her by her master, necessity. The
coal mines of the world cannot long afford the increasing drain made
upon them. Steam has reached its utmost limits of power, and does
not fulfil the requirements of the age. Electricity holds back, with
bated breath, dependent upon the approach of her sister colleague. Air
ships are riding at anchor, as it were, waiting for the force which
is to make aerial navigation something more than a dream. As easily
as men communicate with their offices from their homes by means of
the telephone, so will the inhabitants of separate continents talk
across the ocean. Imagination is palsied when seeking to foresee the
grand results of this marvellous discovery when once it is applied
to art and mechanics. In taking the throne which it will force steam
to abdicate, dynaspheric force will rule the world with a power so
mighty in the interests of civilization, that no finite mind can
conjecture the results.
In 1746, when Franklin's attention was drawn to the phenomena of
electricity, little more was known on the subject than Thales had
announced two thousand years before. Von Kleist in Leyden, Collinson
in London, and others in as widely-separated cities in Europe, were
experimenting in the same field of research. What our last century
has done toward subduing this tyrant which Franklin succeeded in
bringing down to earth, from the clouds, the next century will see
surpassed beyond man's wildest conjectures, should Keely's utilization
of this unknown force of nature bestow upon humanity the costless
motive power, which he anticipates it will. Reynolds predicted that
those who "studied the mysteries of molecular vibration would win the
victorious wreaths of successful discovery." After such discoveries
as Mr. Keely has made in this field of research, it matters not to
him whether he succeeds commercially or not. His work of discovery
commenced when, as a boy of twelve, he held the sea-shells to his
ear as he walked the shore and noted that no two gave forth the
same tone. From the construction of his first crude instrument,
his work of evolution progressed slowly for years; but within the
last five years he has made giant strides towards the "Dark Tower"
which is his last fortress to take. When he is ready, "Dauntless the
slug-horn to his lips" he will set; and the world will hear the blast,
and awaken from its slumber into new life.
Molecular vibration is thus seen to be Keely's legitimate field of
research; but more than once has he had to tear down portions of
the vibratory scaffolding which aided him in the building up of his
edifice of philosophy; therefore, he is ever ready to admit that
some of the present scaffolding may have to be removed. The charge
of "abandoning his base," recently brought against him by one of
the editors of The New York Times, could only have been made by one
who is utterly ignorant of the subject upon which he writes. Under
the heading "A Cool Confession," this editor asserts that Keely has
"given up the Keely Motor as a bad job," and that he admits that he
is a "bogus inventor" and a "fraud." This is not true.
What Keely does admit is that, baffled in applying vibratory force to
mechanics, upon his first and second lines of experimental research,
he was obliged either to confess a commercial failure, or to try a
third departure from his base or principle; seeking success through
another channel of experiment. While experimenting upon this third
line, until his efforts were crowned with success, he kept his secret
from all men; with the approbation of the one who furnished the money
for these experiments. There is a time when silence is golden; and the
charge made by the same editor that Keely had been "receiving money
from the Keely Motor Company on false pretences from the time that
he abandoned his original plans," could only have been made by one
who knows nothing of the facts of the case: for years have passed
away since the Keely Motor Company broke its contract with him,
and since it has furnished him with any money for his experiments.
But let Keely speak for himself in reference to his work:--
"In considering the operation of my engine, the visitor, in order to
have even an approximate conception of its modus operandi, must discard
all thought of engines that are operated upon the principle of pressure
and exhaustion, by the expansion of steam or other analogous gas which
impinges upon an abutment, such as the piston of a steam-engine. My
engine has neither piston nor eccentrics, nor is there one grain of
pressure exerted in the engine, whatever may be the size or capacity
of it.
"My system, in every part and detail, both in the developing of this
power and in every branch of its utilization, is based and founded
on sympathetic vibration. In no other way would it be possible to
awaken or develop this force, and equally impossible would it be to
operate my engine upon any other principle.
"All that remains to be done is to secure a uniform speed under
different velocities and control reversions. That I shall accomplish
this is absolutely certain. Some few years ago, I contemplated using
a wire as a connective link between two sympathetic mediums, to
evolve this power as also to operate my machinery--instead of tubular
connections as heretofore employed--I have only recently succeeded in
accomplishing successfully such change. This, however, is the true
system; and henceforth all my operations will be conducted in this
manner--that is to say, the power will be generated, my engines run,
my cannon operated, through a wire.
"It has been only after years of incessant labour, and the making of
almost innumerable experiments, involving not only the construction
of a great many most peculiar mechanical structures, and the closest
investigation and study of the phenomenal properties of the substance
"ether," per se, produced, that I have been able to dispense with
complicated mechanism, and to obtain, as I claim, mastery over the
subtle and strange force with which I am dealing.
"When my present process of adjustment is completed, the force, the
mechanism, and all that pertains to it, will be fully explained in a
theoretical exposition of the subject, with appropriate diagrams, which
I shall publish to the world; through which medium, and my patents,
when taken out, a knowledge of all that is required for its commercial
employment will be more easily acquired than is the necessary skill
required to enable one to safely operate a steam-engine.
"The power will be adapted to engines of all sizes and capacities,
as well to an engine capable of propelling the largest ship as to one
that will operate a sewing machine. Equally well and certain is it that
it will be adapted as a projectile force for guns and cannons of all
sizes, from the ordinary shoulder-piece to the heaviest artillery."....
When Keely obtained continuity of motion (for a time) in his engine
he thought that his last difficulty had been overcome: but, up to
the present time, he has not succeeded in governing its speed nor in
controlling reversions. He has, however, again reduced in size the
instrument with which he produces the force. From 1882 to 1884 the
"Generator" was a structure six feet long and correspondingly wide and
high; but, failing in his attempt to make an automatic arrangement
upon which its usefulness in mechanics depended, Keely found a
new standard for research in an experiment often made by himself,
but never before successful, which resulted in the production of
a machine in 1885 which he named a "Liberator"--not so large as a
lady's small round work-table. Continuing his labour of evolution
Keely within one year made such astonishing progress, from experiments
with this beautiful piece of vibratory mechanism, as to combine the
production of the power, and the operation of his cannon, his engine
and his disintegrator in a machine no larger than a dinner plate, and
only three or four inches in thickness. This instrument was completed
in 1886, up to which time his experiments had been conducted upon a
principle of sympathetic vibration, for the purpose of liberating a
vapoury or etheric product. His later experiments have been confined
to another modification of vibratory sympathy; and the size of the
instrument used now, '88, for the same purposes is no larger than an
old-fashioned silver watch, such as we see in Museum collections. The
raising of a lever with an apparent uplifting expansive force of
between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds to the square inch, the running of
the engine, the firing of the cannon, are conducted without one ounce
of pressure in any part of the apparatus, and without the production
or presence of what has been known as Keely's ether. The force is now
transmitted along a wire (of platinum and silver), and when the lever
is lowered there is no exhaustion, into the atmosphere of the room,
of any up-lifting vapour, as was always the case when the ether was
used in this experiment; nor is there any vapour impinging upon the
piston under the lever to raise it.
Keely has named this new modification of the one force in nature
"Negative Attraction," which to the uninitiated does not suggest as
much as it would had he called it "Negative Humbug."
The two forms of force which he has been experimenting with, and the
phenomena attending them, are the very antithesis of each other. Keely
does not feel the shadow of a doubt as to his eventual success in
producing engines of varying capacities; small enough, on the one hand,
to operate sewing machines with, and large enough, on the other hand,
to propel the largest ships that plough the seas. Every fact and
feature surrounding the case warrants the belief, notwithstanding the
incredulity of all who have not witnessed the progress of Mr. Keely,
step by step, that his success will be complete, and his work stand
as the most colossal example of the survival of the fittest, in
the process of inventive evolution. Cox says: "Not one of the great
facts which science now accepts as incontrovertible truths but was
vehemently denied by the scientists of its time:--declared to be a
priori impossible, its discoverers and supporters denounced as fools
or charlatans, and even investigation of it refused as being a waste of
time and thought." "History repeats itself," and Amiel's definition of
science gives the key to the incredulity of scientists in reference
to Mr. Keely's discovery; for if, as Amiel has said, "science is
a lucid madness occupied with tabulating its own hallucinations,"
it is not strange that men of science should refuse to investigate
what they consider the hallucinations of others.
It is an undisputed fact that "too much has been conceded to science,
too little to those sublime laws which make science possible." But
the one law which regulates creation, and to which all other laws
are made subservient, keeping in harmony the systems upon systems
of worlds throughout space, developing sound and colour, animal and
vegetable growth, the crystallization of minerals, is the hidden law,
which develops every natural science throughout the universe; and which
both Kepler and Newton anticipated would be revealed in our age. "You
can even trace the poles in sound," writes Mrs. F. J. Hughes, in her
work upon the "Evolution of Tones and Colours." The experiments made
by Mrs. Watts Hughes, at the annual Reception of the Royal Society,
and the [5]Pendulograph writings by Andrew of Belfast, have a bearing
upon Keely's discovery; illustrating the workings of this hidden law
of nature.
Of the law of periodicity, Hartmann writes: "Its actions have long
ago been known to exist in the vibrations producing light and sound,
and it has been recognized in chemistry by experiments tending to
prove that all so-called simple elements are only various states of
vibration of one primordial element, manifesting itself in seven
principal modes of action, each of which may be subdivided into
seven again. The difference which exists between so-called single
substances appears, therefore, to be no difference of substance
or matter, but only a difference of the function of matter in the
ratio of its atomic vibration." It is by changing the vibrations of
cosmic ether that Mr. Keely releases this energy, and Dr. Kellner in
Austria produces electricity in the same way; while it is said that
a chemist in Prague produces magnetism; also Dr. Dupuy, of New York,
who has been for years experimenting in this field without meeting
with Keely's progressive successes.
Horace Wemyss Smith, in commenting upon the fact that, at the time
of Franklin's discovery, men in France, in Belgium, in Holland,
and in Germany were pursuing the same line of experiment, says that
there is something worthy of observation in the progress of science
and human genius, inasmuch as in countries far distant from each
other men have fallen into the same tracks, and have made similar
and corresponding discoveries, at the same period of time, without
the least communication with each other.
Laurence Oliphant's recent works give us the clue to an explanation
of this fact; and Lowe, in his "Fragments of Physiology," condenses
the answer in these words: "Man is not the governor and commander of
the created world; and were it not for superhuman influence constantly
flowing into created forms, the world would perish in a moment."
There are men in various parts of the world, unknown even by name to
each other, who tell us by "the signs of the times" that the season
of harvesting is approaching; the season for gathering the fruit,
which has been deferred, century after century, because mankind is not
yet ready, in the opinion of many, to share the fruit with one another.
It has been said that when Keely's vibratory force shall have taken
the place of steam-engines, the millions of working men who gain with
difficulty their daily bread by the work of their hands, will find
themselves without occupation. The same prediction was made in regard
to steam, but instead we find the city of Boston giving work to thirty
thousand men in one manufactory of boots and shoes by steam, in place
of the three thousand shoemakers who were all that were occupied in
this branch of labour in that city when the work was done by hand.
Dr. Kellner's colleague, Franz Hartmann, M.D., writing in reference
to Keely's discovery, says: "I have taken great interest in him ever
since I first heard of him in 1882. As gaslight has driven away,
in part, the smoky petroleum lamp, and is about to be displaced
by electricity, which in the course of time may be supplanted by
magnetism, and as the power of steam has caused muscular labour to
disappear to a certain extent, and will itself give way before the
new vibratory force of Keely, likewise the orthodox medical quackery
that now prevails will be dethroned by the employment of the finer
forces of nature, such as light, electricity, magnetism, etc."
When the time is ripe, these are of the true scientists who will
come to the front "to lead as progress leads," men who know how to
wait upon God, viz., to work while waiting; and to such the end is,
sooner or later, victory! "God never hurries." He counts the centuries
as we count the seconds, and the nearer we approach to the least
comprehension of His "underlying purpose" the more we become like
Tolstoi's labourer, who knew that the fruit was ripening for him
and his fellow-men, trusting implicitly in the superior wisdom of
his master.
No man, whose spiritual eyes have been opened to "discern the signs
of the times," can doubt that we are on the eve of revelations which
are to usher in the dawn of a brighter day than our race has yet
known; and no prophecy of this brighter day, foretold by prophets,
apostles, and inspired poets, was ever made in truer strains than in
these glorious lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:--
Verily many thinkers of this age,
Aye, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single nor alone;
The Great Below clenched by the Great Above.
Part II.
One Phase of Keely's Discovery in its Relations to the Cure or Disease.
I know medicine is called a science. It is nothing like a
science. It is a great humbug! Doctors are mere empirics when
they are not charlatans. We are as ignorant as men can be. Who
knows anything in the world about medicine? Gentlemen, you
have done me the honour to come here to attend my lectures,
and I must tell you now, frankly, in the beginning, that I
know nothing about medicine, nor do I know anyone who does
know anything about it. Nature does a great deal, imagination
does a great deal, doctors do devilish little when they do
not do harm. Sick people always feel they are neglected,
unless they are well drugged, les imbéciles!
Professor Magendie (before the students of his class in
"The Allopathic College of Paris").
In the year 1871, the writer was sent from Paris to Schwalbach, by
Dr. Beylard, and recommended to the care of Dr. Adolph Genth. She said
to the physician, "I wish for your opinion and your advice, if you
can give it to me without giving me any medicine." He replied, "With
all my heart, madam; and I wish to God there were more women like you,
but we should soon lose most of our patients if we did not dose them."
This is a terrible excuse for the use of those agencies which Dr. John
Good says have sent more human beings to their graves than war,
pestilence and famine combined. Keely holds the opinion that Nature
works under the one law of Compensation and Equilibrium--the law of
Harmony; and that when disease indicates the disturbance of this law
Nature at once seeks to banish the disease by restoring equilibrium,
He seeks to render assistance on the same plan; replacing grossly
material agencies by the finer forces of nature; as has been so
successfully done by Dr. Pancoast and Dr. Babbitt in America.
"Nature," says Dr. Pancoast, author of The True Science of Light,
"works by antagonism in all her operations: when one of her forces
overdoes its work, disease, or at least a local disorder, is the
immediate consequence; now, if we attack this force, and overcome it,
the opposite force has a clear field and may re-assert its rights--thus
equilibrium is restored, and Equilibrium is health. The Sympathetic
System, instead of attacking the stronger force, sends recruits to
the weaker one, and enables it to recover its powers; or, if the
disorder be the result of excessive tension of Nerves or Ganglia,
a negative remedy may be employed to reduce the tension. Thus, too,
equilibrium is restored."
Dr. Hartmann writes:--
Mr. Keely is perfectly right in saying that 'all disease is a
disturbance of the equilibrium between positive and negative
forces.' In my opinion, no doctor ever cured any disease. All he
can possibly do is to establish conditions under which the patient
(or nature) may cure himself.
If you enter the field of therapeutics and medicine, we find a
decided fermentation of new ideas; not among the fossil specimens of
antediluvian quackery, but among those who are called "irregulars,"
because they have the courage to depart from the tracks trodden out
by their predecessors. The more intelligent classes of physicians
have long ago realized the fact that drugs and medicines are
perfectly useless, excepting in cases where diseases can be traced
to some mechanical obstruction, in some organ that may be reached
by mechanical action. In all other cases our best physicians have
become agnostics, leaving nature to have her own way, and observing
the expectative method, which, in fact, is no method of cure at all,
but merely consists in doing no harm to the patient. Recently,
however, light, electricity, and magnetism have been employed;
so that even in the medical guild the finer forces of nature are
taking the place of grossly material, and therefore injurious
substances. The time is probably near when these finer forces
will be employed universally. Everybody knows that a note struck
upon an instrument will produce sound in a correspondingly attuned
instrument in its vicinity. If connected with a tuning fork, it will
produce a corresponding sound in the latter; and if connected with
a thousand such tuning forks, it will make all the thousand sound,
and produce a noise far greater than the original sound, without the
latter becoming any weaker for it. Here, then, is an augmentation or
multiplication of power. If we had any means to transform sound again
into mechanical motion, we would have a thousand-fold multiplication
of mechanical motion. It would be presumptuous to say that it will
not be as easy for the scientists of the future to transform sound
into mechanical motion, as it is for the scientist of the present to
transform heat into electricity. Perhaps Mr. Keely has already solved
the problem. There is a fair prospect that in the very near future,
we shall have, in his ethereal force, a power far surpassing that
of steam or electricity. Nor does the idea seem to be Utopian if
we remember that modern science heretofore only knew the law of the
conservation of energy; while to the scientist of the future the law
of the augmentation of energy will be unveiled.... As the age which
has passed away has been the age of steam, the coming era will be
the age of induction. There will be a universal rising up of lower
vibrations into higher ones, in the realm of motion. Mr. Keely will,
perhaps, transform sound into mechanical motion by applying the law
of augmentation and multiplication of force."...
Keely, writing on brain disturbance, says, In considering the mental
forces as associated with the physical, I find, by my past researches,
that the convolutions which exist in the cerebral field are entirely
governed by the sympathetic conditions that surround them.
The question arises, what are these aggregations and what do they
represent, as being linked with physical impulses? They are simply
vibrometric resonators, thoroughly subservient to sympathetic acoustic
impulses given to them by their atomic sympathetic surrounding media,
all the sympathetic impulses that so entirely govern the physical
in their many and perfect impulses (we are now discussing purity
of conditions) are not emanations properly inherent in their own
composition. They are only media--the acoustic media--for transferring
from their vibratory surroundings the conditions necessary to the
pure connective link for vitalizing and bringing into action the
varied impulses of the physical.
All abnormal discordant aggregations in these resonating convolutions
produce differentiation to concordant transmission; and, according
as these differentiations exist in volume, so the transmissions are
discordantly transferred, producing antagonism to pure physical action.
Thus, in Motor Ataxy a differentiation of the minor thirds of the
posterior parietal lobule produces the same condition between the
retractors and extensors of the leg and foot; and thus the control of
the proper movements is lost through this differentiation. The same
truth can be universally applied to any of the cerebral convolutions
that are in a state of differential harmony to the mass of immediate
cerebral surroundings. Taking the cerebral condition of the whole
mass as one, it is subservient to one general head centre, although
as many neutrals are represented as there are convolutions.
The introductory minors are controlled by the molecular; the
next progressive third by the atomic; and the high third by the
Etheric. All these progressive links have their positive, negative,
and neutral position. When we take into consideration the structural
condition of the human brain, we ought not to be bewildered by the
infinite variety of its sympathetic impulses; inasmuch as it unerringly
proves the true philosophy that the mass chords of such structures are
governed by vibratory etheric flows--the very material which composes
them. There is no structure whatever, animal, vegetable, mineral,
that is not built up from the universal cosmic ether. Certain orders
of attractive vibration produce certain orders of structure; thus,
the infinite variety of effects--more especially in the cerebral
organs. The bar of iron or the mass of steel, have, in each, all
the qualifications necessary, under certain vibratory impulses, to
evolve all the conditions that govern that animal organism--the brain:
and it is as possible to differentiate the molecular conditions of
a mass of metal of any shape so as to produce what you may express
as a crazy piece of iron or a crazy piece of steel; or, vice versâ,
an intelligent condition in the same.
I find in my researches, as to the condition of molecules under
vibration, that discordance cannot exist in the molecule proper;
and that it is the highest and most perfect structural condition
that exists; providing that all the progressive orders are the
same. Discordance in any mass is the result of differentiated groups,
induced by antagonistic chords, and the flight or motions of such,
when intensified by sound, are very tortuous and zig-zag; but when free
of this differentiation are in straight lines. Tortuous lines denote
discord, or pain; straight lines denote harmony, or pleasure. Any
differentiated mass can be brought to a condition of harmony, or
equation, by proper chord media, and an equated sympathy produced.
There is good reason for believing that insanity is simply a condition
of differentiation in the mass chords of the cerebral convolutions,
which creates an antagonistic molecular bombardment towards the neutral
or attractive centres of such convolutions; which, in turn, produce a
morbid irritation in the cortical sensory centres in the substance of
ideation; accompanied, as a general thing, by sensory hallucinations,
ushered in by subjective sensations; such as flashes of light and
colour, or confused sounds and disagreeable odours, etc., etc.
There is no condition of the human brain that ought not to be
sympathetically coincident to that order of atomic flow to which its
position, in the cerebral field, is fitted. Any differentiation in
that special organ, or, more plainly, any discordant grouping tends
to produce a discordant bombardment--an antagonistic conflict; which
means the same disturbance transferred to the physical, producing
inharmonious disaster to that portion of the physical field which is
controlled by that especial convolution. This unstable aggregation
may be compared to a knot on a violin string. As long as this knot
remains it is impossible to elicit, from its sympathetic surroundings,
the condition which transfers pure concordance to its resonating
body. Discordant conditions, i.e., differentiation of mass, produce
negatization to coincident action.
The question now arises, What condition is it necessary to bring about
in order to bring back normality, or to produce stable equilibrium
in the sympathetic centres?
The normal brain is like a harp of many strings strung to perfect
harmony. The transmitting conditions being perfect, are ready, at
any impulse, to induce pure sympathetic assimilation. The different
strings represent the different ventricles and convolutions. The
differentiations of any one from its true setting is fatal, to a
certain degree, to the harmony of the whole combination.
If the sympathetic condition of any physical organism carries a
positive flow of 80 per cent. on its whole combination, and a negative
one of 20 per cent., it is the medium of perfect assimilation to one
of the same ratio, if it is distributed under the same conditions to
the mass of the other. If two masses of metal, of any shape whatever,
are brought under perfect assimilation, to one another, their unition,
when brought into contact, will be instant. If we live in a sympathetic
field we become sympathetic, and a tendency from the abnormal to the
normal presents itself by an evolution of a purely sympathetic flow
towards its attractive centres. It is only under these conditions that
differentiation can be broken up, and a pure equation established. The
only condition under which equation can never be established is
when a differential disaster has taken place, of 66 2/3 against the
100 pure, taking the full volume as one. If this 66 2/3 or even 100
exists in one organ alone, and the surrounding ones are normal, then
a condition can be easily brought about to establish the concordant
harmony or equation to that organ. It is as rare to find a negative
condition of 66 2/3 against the volume of the whole cerebral mass, as
it is to find a coincident between differentiation; or, more plainly,
between two individuals under a state of negative influence. Under
this new system, it is as possible to induce negations alike as it
is to induce positives alike.
Pure sympathetic concordants are as antagonistic to negative
discordants as the negative is to the positive; but the vast volume
the sympathetic holds over the non-sympathetic, in ethereal space,
makes it at once the ruling medium and re-adjuster of all opposing
conditions if properly brought to bear upon them.
Until Keely's "Theoretical Exposé" is given to science, there are
few who will fathom the full meaning of these views.
His discoveries embrace the manner or way of obtaining the keynote,
or "chord of mass," of mineral, vegetable, and animal substances;
therefore, the construction of instruments, or machines, by which
this law can be utilized in mechanics, in arts, and in restoration of
equilibrium in disease, is only a question of the full understanding
of the operation of this law.
Keely estimates that, after the introductory impulse is given on the
harmonic thirds, molecular vibration is increased from 20,000 per
second to 100,000,000.
On the enharmonic sixths, that the vibration of the inter-molecule
is increased to 300,000,000.