Professor Olive Lodge, in his address before the British Association,

at Cardiff, said: "Let me try to state what this field is, the

exploration of which is regarded as so dangerous. I might call

it the borderland of physics and psychology. I might call it the

connection between life and energy; or the connection between mind

and matter. It is an intermediate region, bounded on the north by

psychology, on the south by physics, on the east by physiology, and

on the west by pathology and medicine. An occasional psychologist

has groped down into it and become a metaphysician. An occasional

physicist has wandered up into it and lost his base, to the horror of

his quondam brethren. Biologists mostly look at it askance, or deny

its existence. A few medical practitioners, after long maintenance

of a similar attitude, have begun to annex a portion of its western

frontier.... Why not leave it to the metaphysicians? I say it has

been left to them long enough. They have explored it with insufficient

equipment. Their methods are not our methods; they are unsatisfactory

to us, as physicists. We prefer to creep slowly from our base of

physical knowledge; to engineer carefully as we go, establishing

forts, constructing roads, and thoroughly exploring the country,

making a progress very slow but very lasting. The psychologists from

their side may meet us. I hope they will; but one or the other of us

ought to begin...."

In America, we have Buchanan and many others investigating in this

field; and Dr. Bowne, the orthodox Dean of the Boston University,

in his answer to Herbert Spencer, answering the question,

"What is Force?" tells us: "Not gravitation, nor electricity,

nor magnetism, nor chemical affinity, but will, is the typical

idea of force. Self-determination, volition is the essence of the

only causation we know. Will is the sum-total of the dynamic idea:

it either stands for that or nothing. Now science professes itself

unable to interpret nature without this metaphysical idea of power. The

experiments made by Professor Barker and others, which are said to

establish the identity of heat and mental force, really prove only

a correlation between heat and the nervous action which attends

thinking. Nervous action and heat correlate, but the real point is

to prove that nervous action and mental force correlate. This has

never been done."

"The concept of will," says Arthur Schopenhauer, "has hitherto commonly

been subordinated to that of force; but I reverse the matter entirely,

and desire that every force in nature be thought of as will. It

must not be supposed that this is mere verbal quibbling and of no

consequence: rather it is of the greatest significance and importance."

Thus it will be seen that the field which Professor Lodge, with rare

courage, invited his fellow-physicists to enter and bring with them

their appropriate methods of investigation (unless these philosophers

are astray) may prove to be "the immense and untrodden field" which

Buckle said must be conquered before Science can arrogate to herself

any knowledge of nature's laws that is not purely empirical. A

little reflection will enable the average mind to see in the signs

of the times a tendency to movements on a grander scale, such as are

involved in the higher view which Keely is himself now taking since

his researches have extended beyond the order he was pursuing when

he was thinking only of mechanical success.

Man's progress has been so enormous that nothing too extravagant can be

imagined for the future, when once psychical investigation is conducted

as proposed by Professor Lodge; who is trying to unravel the mystery

as to what force is, and by what means exerted. There is something

here not definitely provided for in the orthodox scheme of physics;

but Keely's themes explain this mystery. "Luminiferous ether," he

writes, "or celestial mind force, a compound inter-etheric element,

is the substance of which everything visible is composed. It is the

great sympathetic protoplastic element; life itself. Consequently,

our physical organisms are composed of this element. This focalizing,

or controlling media, of the physical, has its seat in the cerebral

convolutions; from which sympathetic radiation emanates. This

sympathetic outreach is mind flow proper, or will force; sympathetic

polarization to produce action; sympathetic depolarization to

neutralize it. Polar and depolar differentiation, resulting in

motion. The true protoplastic element sympathetically permeates all

forms and conditions of matter; having, for its attendants, gravity,

electricity, and magnetism; the triple conditions born in itself. In

fact, it is the soul of matter; the element from which all forms of

motion receive their introductory impulse."

Not long since, Mr. Keely was congratulated upon having secured

the attention of men of science, connected with the University of

Pennsylvania, to his work of research. Now, you will be known as

a great discoverer, not as Keely the motor-man, said one of the

professors present. Keely answered, I have discovered so little,

in comparison with what remains to be discovered, that I cannot call

myself a discoverer. Another of the professors present took Keely by

the hand and said, You are a great discoverer.

Had the discoverer of this unknown force not been dependent upon a

company, "a ring," for funds to pursue his investigations, scientists

would have better understood the nature of this work at an earlier

stage of his experimental research; but following close upon Keely's

production of the latent force carried in all forms of aggregated

matter, he became entangled in the meshes of an organization that

cared nothing for science, and a great deal for the wealth which,

it was seen by practical business men, must sooner or later accrue

as the result of a costless motive power. In other words, those who

interested themselves in Keely's discoveries were interested solely

in their marketable value; or if there chanced to be one who was

not so interested, that one was not of sufficient influence in the

scientific world to be able to induce capitalists to come forward and

contribute towards saving the discovery to this age, by protecting

the discoverer from the persecution that he was subjected to from

those who had the management of the commercial affairs of the company.

Aratus, the poet of Cilicia, the author of "Phenomena," wrote, "We

are the offspring of God;" and St. Paul, quoting Aratus, continued,

"In Him we live and move and have our being." From that hour,

down the blood-stained path of the age to the present, there have

been men, spiritually endowed, who have taught that He who created,

commands and governs, the universe, sustains it by the power of His

will; and that were it not for the celestial streams of radiation,

this superhuman influence, constantly flowing into all created forms,

the universe would pass out of existence, would perish in a moment. So

well did Macvicar, the great Scotch divine, understand this conception

of Deity, that he wrote, "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."

We call this the sphere of the natural; but, when we come to

higher workings of natural laws, with which we are not familiar, we

designate them as "supernatural;" and scientists witnessing some of

Keely's experiments, like those of overcoming gravity, of rotation

of the needle of a compass, [14] of the disintegration of water,

etc., and not believing in any workings of laws unknown to them,

followed in the footsteps, still unobliterated, of the narrow-minded,

bigoted persecutors of Galileo; and have denounced Keely as "a

modern Cagliostro." When men of more extended research have been

on the eve of investigating for themselves they have, until 1889,

been deterred from doing so by the representations made to them

that Keely was "using compressed air to humbug his audiences." Until

Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox gave their attention to Mr. Keely's

claims as the discoverer of a new form of energy, the way was not

open for Mr. Keely to disclose his conjectures, his hypotheses and

his theories. Regrettable as this fact has seemed to be, it is now

seen that any previous revelation of his discovery, other than to

scientists, might have been premature; so little did Keely himself

know, until within two years, of the developments he has at last

reached in his work of evolution. The time was not ripe for the

disclosure.

It is a canon of science that molecular aggregation generally involves

dissipation of energy. On the contrary, for more than fifteen years

Keely has demonstrated that all molecular aggregation is attended

with an absorption of energy; relieving by vibratory power the latent

force held in a few drops of water and showing thereby a pressure of

from ten to fifteen tons per square inch; claiming that resultant

development of any force and of all forces is only accomplished by

conditions that awaken the latent energy carried during molecular

aggregation. It is conceded by those most conversant with the nature

of Keely's discoveries that he must either create force, or liberate

latent energy. As Omnipotence alone creates, it follows that science

must be wrong in two of her most fundamental laws; one relating to the

indivisibility of the atom; the other to the dissipation of energy in

molecular aggregation. This, Keely establishes in the one experiment

of disintegration of water, releasing from three drops the latent

energy carried, during and from the time of molecular aggregation,

and showing a pressure of fifteen tons to the square inch. Therefore,

it is not "a waste of time and thought" to give attention to Keely's

theories, and to investigate from the standpoint of vibratory physics,

instead of setting limits to the operations of Nature and the power

of the Almighty from the narrow platform of mechanical physics.

Keely's Theories.

The action of Nature's sympathetic flows, writes Keely, regulates the

differential oscillatory range of motion of the planetary masses as

regards their approach toward and recession from each other. These

flows may also be compared to the flow of the magnet which permeates

the field, existing between the molecules themselves, sensitizing

the combined neutral centres of the molecules without disturbing,

in the least, the visible molecular mass itself. In the planetary

masses--balanced as it were in the scales of universal space, like

soap-bubbles floating in a field of atmospheric air--the concentration

of these sympathetic streams evolves the universal power which

moves them in their oscillating range of motion to and from each

other. This sympathetic triple stream focalizes and defocalizes

on the neutrals of all such masses; polarizing and depolarizing,

positive and negative action, planetary rotation, etc., etc. It is

thus that all the conditions governing light, heat, life, vegetation,

motion, are all derived from the velocity of the positive and negative

interchange of celestial sympathy with the terrestrial.

Every harmonious condition of Nature's evolutions is governed by one

incontrovertible law; that of concordant assimilative harmony. This

concordant key is the ruling one over all the antagonistic,

negative, discordant ones; the one that diverts the disturbance of

sympathetic equilibrium to one general concentrative centre for

redistribution. Harmony concentrates, harmony distributes. The

focalizing point of concordant sympathetic concentration is the

percussive electric field, where the velocity of its sympathetic

streams rebounds with a power that throws them far out into universal

space; and so far beyond their equative centre of equilibrium as to

bring them in sympathy with the universal attraction of the combined

neutral centres of all planetary masses.

Sympathetic Streams which Control the Action and Reaction of all

Visible Forms of Matter.

What is light and heat, and how are they evolved? and why are they

so intensely perceptible as emanating from the solar world?

Light and heat, considered theoretically, belong to the highest orders

of the phenomenal. They can only be accounted for by the velocity

of sympathetic streams, as interchangeable to and from centres of

negative and attractive focalization. In considering the velocity

of vibration, as associated with the projection of a ray of light,

to be at least one hundred thousand billions per second, it is easy

to account for the origin and demonstration of these two elements by

the action of celestial sympathetic streams.

1st. Light and heat are not evolved until the force of the vibratory

sympathetic stream, from the neutral centre of the sun, comes into

atomic percussive action against the molecular atmosphere or envelope

of our planet. The visibility of the planets can only be accounted

for in this way, some in a great degree, some in less. Innumerable

thousands, it may be, remain invisible to us by not having the

conditions surrounding them, and associated with them, which favour

the atomic and molecular antagonistic friction necessary to make

them visible. The velocity of a steel ball passing through the

atmospheric envelope, at a speed of thousands of billions times

less than an etheric sympathetic stream, would be dissipated into

vapour in an indefinite period of a second of time. Light and heat,

in a certain sense, are one and the same; light giving heat, and heat

giving light. The whole mystery, as associated with their evolution,

is explained by the bombardment of the sympathetic etheric stream

on the dense portion of the molecular, in seeking the sympathetic,

concordant, neutral centre of the planetary mass that surrounds the

point of focalization.

The positive and negative interchange of this true sympathetic stream

keeps intact the magnetic force of the polar envelope of the earth;

making it, as it were, a great magnet of itself. The fact of this

magnetic force being universally present, on and in our planet,

proves the immeasurable speed and power of etheric sympathetic

interchange. Thus it is that, from the velocity of these sympathetic

rays, the earth's standard of heat and light is evolved and kept in

balance. This interchange of sympathetic radiation, between the solar

world and its system of planets, equates the sympathetic volume by

the reception of the full amount expended on sympathetic distribution;

thus showing the never-ending restoration of equilibrium by the same

medium that disturbs it during intermittent sympathetic action. There

are very many facts in vibratory physics which prove that the volume

of heat, supposed by many to emanate from the sun, if concentrated

upon a centre of the volume represented by the sun, would give enough

focal force, if projected upon the system of planets that is under

its control, to vaporize them in one month's time. A ray of heat one

billion times greater than the whole volume of the sun represents

could not pass through the dark vacuous boundaries which lie between

us and the sun without being neutralized and absorbed.

What is Electricity?

Electricity is the result of three differentiated sympathetic

flows, combining the celestial and terrestrial flows by an order of

assimilation negatively attractive in its character. It is one of

Nature's efforts to restore attractive differentiation. In analyzing

this triple union in its vibratory philosophy, I find the highest

order of perfection in this assimilative action of Nature. The

whole condition is atomic, and is the introductory one which has

an affinity for terrestrial centres, uniting magnetically with the

Polar stream; in other words, uniting with the Polar stream by neutral

affinity. The magnetic or electric forces of the earth are thus kept

in stable equilibrium by this triune force, and the chords of this

force may be expressed as 1st, the dominant, 2nd, the harmonic,

and 3rd, the enharmonic. The value of each is, one to the other,

in the rates of figures, true thirds. E flat--transmissive chord or

dominant; A flat--harmonic; A double flat--enharmonic. The unition of

the two prime thirds is so rapid, when the negative and the positive

conditions reach a certain range of vibratory motion, as to be compared

to an explosion. During this action the positive electric stream

is liberated and immediately seeks its neutral terrestrial centre,

or centre of highest attraction.

The power of attractive vibration of the solar forces is the great

coincident towards which the terrestrial-magnetic-sympathetic flow

is diverted. This force is the celestial current that makes up

the prime third of the triple association. It also induces aqueous

disintegration and thermal concentration, the two prime conductors

towards this coincident chord of sympathy with itself. Without this

aqueous disintegration there would be no connective link between the

celestial and terrestrial. There would exist nothing but a condition

of luminous radiation on the order of the aurora--a reaching out for

the concordant without any sympathetic diversion to create unstable

equilibrium of terrestrial magnetism. In fact, under such a condition,

the absence of the sun on one side, or the absence of water on the

other, the magnetic or electric force would remain in a stable state

of equilibrium, or the highest order of the chaotic. Disturbance

of equilibrium and sympathetic equation constitute the dual power

that governs all the varied forms of life and motion which exist

terrestrially, of which the electric or magnetic is the prime mover

and regulator. All electrical action, no matter of what character,

has its sympathetic birth by the intervention of that current

of the triune flow, which I call the dominant, with the Polar

harmonic current; all sympathetic flows being composed of three

currents. They become associative one with the other only near

the junction of terrestrial interference. The great vacuous field

which exists between the planetary ranges holds this portion of

the etheric flow free of all antagonism, molecularly or otherwise,

till the associative point is reached; so wonderfully planned by

the Great Creator, for instant electric evolution and assimilation

with terrestrial centres of attraction. I call this intervention,

atomic-inter-molecular and molecular density. The combination of

the action of the triune sympathetic-celestial stream with the same

intervening medium induces heat and light, as the resultant of these

corpuscular conflictions with sympathetic celestial and terrestrial

focalized centres of neutral radiation. I do not recognize electricity,

nor light, nor heat as coming from the sun. These conditions, according

to my theories, emanate from atomic and inter-atomic interference

on induced molecular vibration, by sympathetic etheric vibration,

the celestial-attractive being the prime mover. In my estimation

this is not at all phenomenal; it is only phenomenal as far as the

knowledge of its action in mechanical physics is concerned. Physicists

have been working in the wrong direction to lead them to associate

themselves with Nature's sympathetic evolutions. [15] The expression

"Electricity attracts at a distance" is as bad as, if not worse than,

the "microbe of the magnet." Clerk Maxwell seems, when theorizing

on sound transmission by an atmospheric medium, not to have taken

into consideration the philosophy attending the phenomena of the

origination of electric streams in celestial space. Light is one of

the prominent evolved mediums in electric action, and is evolved by

corpuscular bombardment induced by sympathetic streams acting between

the neutral centres of planetary masses, all of which are under a

condition of unstable equilibrium. These unstable conditions were

born in them, and were thus designed by the Architect of Creation

in order to perpetuate the connective link between the dispersing

positive and the attractive negative. The action that induces this

link I call sympathetic planetary oscillation.

Attraction, Propulsion, &c.

The action of the magnetic flow is dual in its evolution, both

attractive and propulsive. The inclination of the plane on which the

subtle stream moves, either to the right or to the left, has nothing to

do with positive or negative conditions. The difference in conditions

of what is called, by electricians, positive and negative electricity,

is the difference between receptive and propulsive vibrations. They

can be right or left receptive, or right or left propulsive. The

positive vibrations are the radiating; the negative vibrations are

the ones that are attracted toward the neutral centre.

The negative-sympathetic polar stream is the magnetic flow proper,

and it is in sympathetic coincidence with the second atomic flow; the

electric current is the first and second order of atomic vibration,

a dual force, the flow of which is too tenuous to displace the

molecules. It can no more do so than the flow from a magnet can

displace the molecules of a glass plate when it is passed under it. The

flow from a magnet is too fine to disturb the plate molecules, but

passes as freely between them as a current of air would through a

coarse sieve.

Like poles do not repel each other, simply because there is a perfect

sympathetic equation between them; the same in unlike poles. If a

differentiation of 33 1/3 against 100 is established between them,

whether like or unlike, they become attractive to each other. They

become repellent after differentiating them, 66 2/3 of the one against

100 of the other, by sympathetic vibration.

Taking into consideration even the introductory conditions of the

etheric stage, etheric vibration has proved to me that the higher the

velocity of its rotating stream the greater is its tendency towards the

neutral centre or centre of sympathetic coincidence. Were it otherwise,

how could there ever be any planetary formations or the building up

of visible structures? If a billiard ball were rotated to a certain

velocity, it would separate in pieces, and the pieces would fly off

in a tangent; but if it were a ball of ether, the higher the velocity

of rotation the stronger would be the tendency of its corpuscules to

seek its centre of neutrality, and to hold together.

It is not a magnetic force that is borne on the etheric atom which

gives it its power to draw to it streams of coincidence. The magnet

is only susceptive to certain aggregated forms of matter; iron,

for instance, and its preparations.

All moving bodies of visible matter produce heat as according to

their velocity. The flow of gases only induces thermal reduction from

molecular friction. By this term it must not be understood that the

molecules actually come in contact, and rub against each other. There

is no pressure, however great, that can cause molecular contact. The

area of the volume of the molecule can be reduced by enormous

pressure, and the tension thus brought to bear on their rotating

envelopes induces heat. The heat thus induced is a positive proof of

the wonderful velocity of the etheric envelope. If the molecules were

dead--which is an infinite impossibility--to sympathetic vibration,

and without a rotatory envelope if all the pressure possible to

conceive were brought to bear upon them, it would not induce the

slightest thermal change.

Energy.

Energy is a sympathetic condition inherent in all forms of aggregated

matter, visible and invisible. It is ever present, in its latent

condition, and is aroused by the sympathetic disturbers of its

equilibrium. By this conservation it becomes transferable. The

sympathetic correlation of will-force in the cerebral convolutionary

centres transfers its energy to the physical organism.

Bring a steel rod in contact with a magnet, and the latent energy in

the rod is brought into action without its becoming impregnated by

its magnetic exciter. Energy is an infinite latent force. If it did

not exist it could not be generated. Consequently, there would be no

energy to lose nor to conserve. The volume of latent energy in the

etheric domain never increases nor ever grows less. It will remain

the same, as yesterday to-day and for ever.

Inaudible Vibrations.

Nature has established her sympathetic concordants from the birth of

the neutral centres of the planets. This is gravity; therefore gravity

is fixed, inherent. There is no flight of gravity. The difference in

the condition of the sympathetic nerve centres, and the variations in

the chord aggregation of the masses, as established in the man or woman

at birth, constitutes the molecular condition of the individual. The

molecular state of animals, vegetables, and minerals, depends upon

the aggregation of their chord centres. It is impossible to make two

coins from one die the same in its molecular aggregation. The mere

picking up of a coin and replacing it causes billions of molecules to

be lost. This produces a change in the chord of mass of the coin. As

this fact has only been developed by persistent progressive research,

it is quite easy to comprehend the nature of the difficulties that

lie in the way of perfecting devices for the guidance of artificers

and mechanics, whereby they can bring a proper vibratory action

into play to induce positive sympathetic transmission. In order to

transmit my knowledge by demonstration it will be necessary to have

much more perfect instruments than those crude devices which I first

constructed for my researches. One of my perfected instruments shows

to the eye, in the molecular effects produced by a certain order

of vibration, when the chord of harmony is established between two

neutral centres. Another, when connected with the sympathizer, denotes

accurately, by the colour of a certain sound or combination of sounds

the number of vibrations that are necessary to induce certain effects

of mechanical combinations.

Inaudible vibrations are tested by the magnetic needle and sound

colours. Every gaseous molecule is a resonator of itself and

is sensitive to any and all sounds induced, whether accordant or

discordant. At the normal density of the atmosphere we hear a volume

of sound, focalized by the combined association of every molecule

brought under sound influence. When we reduce the atmospheric volume

of a chamber to 50/100, then the ear is sensitive to the reduction

of the acoustic force evolved on the same ratio, and so on, until

sound becomes inaudible. This inaudibility to our organ of hearing is

no proof whatever of any reduction of the acoustic force evolved on

the introductory impulse given to the bell. It is only a proof that

the number of the molecules left for the acoustic force to act upon

has been so reduced by increasing the vacuum, that the concentration

of sound from the diminished number cannot be heard. The ear is not

susceptible to the acoustic force emanating from one molecule, nor

even from the concentration of one hundred millions of billions of

molecules. The highest vacuum that can be induced, taking but a cubic

inch in volume to act upon, will leave a residual number of molecules

one hundred billion times as great as the above given number, and yet

be perfectly inaudible when all their acoustic forces are focalized.

The audible has been conquered in my instruments to that extent which

brings me into sympathetic contact with the inaudible, the vitalized

conditions of which as regards sympathetic union with the terrestrial

are the pure and only essentials necessary towards establishing the

sensitive link, between the instrument and terrestrial chord-masses,

in order to run sympathetic machinery. But there is still before me a

vast region to be explored before the keystone of this sympathetic arch

is set in position to carry the high order of sympathetic transfer that

I aim at. I have every reason to hope that when I have mastered these

mechanical difficulties I shall be able to control this most subtle of

Nature's forces. When this is done, the commercial engine will soon

follow. There is no truer nor quicker way to reach that end than the

one I am now pursuing. My obligations on this line once fulfilled,

I shall be at liberty to turn my attention to the consideration

of the mental forces associated with the physical, and in fact the

solution of the mechanical problem is one and the same in principle,

as is the physical and mental. When one is solved all is solved. The

convolutions which exist in the cerebral field are entirely governed

by the sympathetic conditions that surround them.

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

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

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 exteriors 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. There is no structure whatever--animal, vegetable,

or mineral--that is not built up from the cosmic ether. Certain

orders of attractive vibration produce certain orders of structure;

thus the infinite variety of effects; more especially in the cerebral

organs. Discordance cannot exist in the molecule proper. Discordance in

any mass is the result of differentiated groups induced by antagonistic

chords, and any differentiated mass can be brought to a condition of

harmony or equation by proper chord media, and an equated sympathy

produced whether the mass be metal or brain.

There is good reason for believing that insanity is simply a condition

of differentiation in the mass-chords of the convolutions, which

creates an antagonistic molecular bombardment towards the neutral

or attractive centres of such convolutions. This 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. 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, when properly brought to bear upon them....

Josiah Royce is right as regards correspondent sympathetic association

between two conditions. If concordance can be established, even of

unlike states, no matter whether it be of the high tenuous forces

of nature, gases with liquids, liquids with solids, solids with

gases, the structural conditions can be perfectly adverse. Their

neutral centres are the focalized seat of sympathetic concordance

for controlling any differentiation that may exist outside, or

in the mass that surrounds them. Certain orders of vibration can

reach these centres and establish a concordant flow of sympathy,

independent of any and all mass antagonism; in other words, certain

orders of sympathetic vibratory transmission can correct and equate

all differentiation that may exist between physical organisms and

their cerebellic flows. Discord is disease. Harmony is health.--Keely.

The Standard calls attention to the fact that Lord Rosebery has pointed

out how fast mental disease of one form or another is growing among

the population of London--so fast that a new asylum, containing 5000

patients, must be built every five years. "This," said his lordship,

"is a penalty of civilization."

When we take into consideration the effect upon the nerves, in

sensitive organizations, of living in the vicinity of railways, more

especially of the elevated railways in cities, the incessant jarring

vibrations which are communicated to houses, even from underground

railways, to say nothing of the piercing shrieks of the steam whistle,

is it to be wondered at that mental disorders and nervous diseases

are on the increase? With this increase of the most terrible form of

affliction, the remedy will follow; for our necessities are known to

One who "with a Father's care and affectionate attention supplies

the wants, as they arise, of the worlds which lie like children in

His bosom." Sympathetic Vibratory Physics will, in due time, make

known the curableness of many disorders now considered incurable.

On this subject Mr. Keely writes:--Every disease that the physical

organism is subject to has its connective link in the cerebral

domain; where it unerringly telegraphs, as it were, its molecular

differentiations, through the spinal dura mater or physical sympathetic

transmitter, and vice versâ back again. The sympathetic communication,

as between the physical and mental forces, shows up truthfully the pure

conditions that govern the celestial and terrestrial link of sympathy,

as between the finite and the Infinite in planetary suspension. The

whole system governing the suspension of the innumerable planetary

masses,--the infinite certainty and harmony of their eccentric and

concentric evolutions and revolutions, in their orbital and oscillating

ranges of motion,--the triune sympathetic streams of Infinity that

permeate their molecular masses--focalizing and defocalizing on

their neutral centres of attraction--are all subservient to that

Great Ruling Power: Mind-Flow. There is not a grain of sand, nor an

invisible corpuscule of floating matter, that does not come under

the same rule that governs the most mighty of planets....

"All's love, yet all's law."

As the offspring of God, only by living in love and harmony can we

fulfil the law and maintain health and happiness, either individually

in family life, or collectively in our intercourse with the world. As

Goethe taught:--

Let the God within thee speak,

Love all things that lovely be,

And God will show His best to thee.

CHAPTER XV.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.--KEELY THE FOUNDER OF A SYSTEM.

"Were half the power that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals and forts."

As long as men remain "demons of selfishness and ignorance,"

so long will they fight for their turn to tyrannize over

their brother men. Instruction and education can alone prepare

the way for a peaceful solution of the greatest problem that

mankind has ever had to deal with; for, before we can hope

to enter into a 'brotherhood of humanity,' the earth must be

'filled with the knowledge of the Lord.'--H. O. Ward, in the

Nationalization News.

As for myself I hold the firm conviction that unflagging

research will be rewarded by an insight into natural mysteries

such as now can rarely be conceived.--Prof. Wm. Crookes.

Though "it is the spirit that quickeneth, and the flesh

profiteth nothing," the grand reign of the Spirit will not

commence until the material world shall be completely under

man's control.--Renan, Future of Science.

If truth is to obtain a complete victory, if Christianity

is ever really to triumph on the earth, then must the State

become Christian and science become Christian. Such then

is the two-fold problem which our age is called upon to

solve.--Frederich von Schlegel.

I come soon and will renew all things.--Scripture.

Frederich von Schlegel, in his Lecture "On the General Spirit of the

Age," (1846) says, There are in the history of the eighteenth century,

many phenomena which occurred so suddenly, so instantaneously, that

although on deeper consideration we may discover their efficient

causes in the past, in the natural state of things, and in the general

situation of the world, yet are there many circumstances which prove

that there was a deliberate, though secret, preparation of events, as,

indeed, in many instances has been actually demonstrated. In tracing

the origin of this "secret and mysterious branch of illuminism," and

its influence in regard to the true restoration of society founded

on the basis of Christian justice, Schlegel gives it as his opinion

that the order of Templars was the channel by which this esoteric

influence was introduced into the West, handing down the Solomonian

traditions connected with the very foundation of this order, and the

religious masonic symbols which admit of a Christian interpretation:

but, as he says, the idea of an esoteric society for the propagation

of any secret doctrine is not compatible with the very principle of

Christianity itself; for Christianity is a divine mystery which lies

open to all.

Continuing from Schlegel's writings, the Christian faith has the living

God and His revelation for its object, and is itself that revelation;

hence every doctrine taken from this source is something real and

positive, while, in science, the absolute is the idol of vain and

empty systems, of dead and abstract reason. In the absolute spirit

of our age, and in the absolute character of its factions, there

is a deep-rooted intellectual pride, which is not so much personal

or individual as social, for it refers to the historical destiny of

mankind and of this age in particular. Actuated by this pride, a spirit

exalted by moral energy, or invested with external power, fancies it

can give a real existence to that which can only be the work of God;

as from Him alone proceed all those mighty and real regenerations

of the world, among which Christianity--a revolution in the high and

divine sense of the word--occupies the first place. For the last three

hundred years this human pride has been at work; a pride that wishes

to originate events, instead of humbly awaiting them and of resting

contented with the place assigned to it among those events.... It was

indeed but a very small portion of this illuminism of the eighteenth

century that was really derived from the truths of Christianity and

the pure light of Revelation. The rest was the mere work of man,

consequently vain and empty; or at least defective, corrupt in parts,

and on the whole destitute of a solid foundation;--therefore devoid

of all permanent strength and duration. But when once, after the

complete victory of truth, the divine Reformation shall appear,

that human Reformation which till now has existed will sink to the

ground and disappear from the world. Then, by the universal triumph

of Christianity, and the thorough religious regeneration of the age,

of the world, and of governments themselves, will dawn the era of a

true Christian Illuminism. This period is not perhaps so remote from

our own as the natural indolence of the human mind would be disposed

to believe, says Schlegel.

Never was there a period that pointed so strongly, so clearly, so

generally towards the future, as our own. In order to comprehend in

all its magnitude the problem of our age, the birth of Christianity

must be the great point of survey to which we must recur; in order

to examine clearly what has remained incomplete, what has not yet

been attained. For, unquestionably, all that has been neglected,

in the earlier periods and stages of Christian civilization, must be

made good in this true, consummate regeneration of society. If truth

is to obtain a complete victory--if Christianity is really to triumph

on the earth, then must the state become Christian and science become

Christian. Such then is the two-fold problem which our age is called

upon to solve. Whatever man may contribute towards the religious

regeneration of government and science, Schlegel reasons that we must

look for the consummation, in silent awe, to a higher Providence,

to the creative fiat of a last period of dispensation, to "the dawn

of an approaching era of love and harmony," which will emancipate

the human race from the bondage in which it has been held by false

teachings; leading men and nations to consider and estimate time,

and all things temporal, not by the law and feeling of eternity:--but

for temporal interests, or from temporal motives; forgetting the

thoughts and faith of eternity. All progress in the great work of

the religious regeneration of science Schlegel hails as the noblest

triumph of genius; for it is, he says, precisely in the department of

physics that the problem is the most difficult; and all that rich and

boundless treasure of new discoveries in nature, which are ever better

understood when viewed in connection with the high truths of religion,

must be looked upon as the property of Christian science. Our various

systems of philosophic Rationalism, he foretells, will fall to the

ground: and vulgar Rationalism, which is but an emanation of the

higher, will finally disappear. Then science will become thoroughly

Christian. In the progress of mankind now, as in the past, a divine

hand and conducting Providence are clearly discernible. Earthly

and visible power has not alone co-operated in this progress;--that

the struggle has been, in part, carried on under divine, and against

invisible might, has been substantiated by Schlegel on firm and solid

grounds, if not proved to mathematical evidence; which evidence, as he

remarks, is neither appropriate nor applicable to the subject. Schlegel

concludes his work on The Philosophy of History, by a retrospective

view of society, considered in reference to that invisible world and

higher region, from which a pure philosophy teaches us the operations

of this visible world proceed; in which its great destinies have their

root, and which is the ultimate and highest term of all its movements.

Both Schlegel and Keely teach that we shall prize with deeper, more

earnest and more solid affection the great and divine era of man's

redemption and emancipation, by Christianity, the more accurately

we discriminate between what is essentially divine and unchangeably

eternal in this revelation of love, and those elements of destruction

which false teachings have opposed thereto or intermingled therewith;

tracing in the special dispensations of Providence, for the advancement

of Christianity and the progress of civilization and regeneration,

the wonderful concurrence of events towards the single object of divine

love, or the unexpected exercise of divine justice long delayed. (See

Vera Vita, by David Sinclair.)

Sir G. G. Stokes Bart., M.P., reasoning on the difficulties as to

good arising out of evil, says, "In our study of nature we are most

forcibly impressed with the uniformity of her laws. Those uniform

laws are, so far as we can judge, the method by which the ordinary

course of nature is carried on. That is to say, if we recognize the

ordinary course of nature as designed by a Supreme Being, that it is

according to His will that the course of Nature should, as a rule,

be carried on in this regular methodical manner, we should expect,

therefore, to find the operation of regular laws in the moral, no

less than in the physical world, although their existence is less

obvious on account of the freedom of the will....

There is a conflict of opinion and a restlessness of men's minds

at the present day; but we may confidently hope that if men will

in a straightforward manner seek after what is true, and that in a

humble spirit, without arrogating to themselves the monopoly of truth

and contemning others whose opinions may be different, the present

conflict of opinion will in time settle down....

It is in this frame of mind that searchers after truth are now

examining the claims of Keely as a discoverer, and as the founder

of a new and pure philosophy. If the most important subject and the

first problem of philosophy is, as Schlegel declares, the restoration

in man of the lost image of God, so far as this relates to science,

all revolution, as well as all revelation, must tend toward the full

understanding of this restoration in the internal consciousness,

and not until it is really brought about will the object of pure

philosophy be fully attained.

The philosophy of history shows clearly how, in the first ages of

the world, the original word of Divine revelation formed the firm

central point of faith for the future reunion of the dispersed race

of man; how later, amidst the various powers intellectual as well

as political which (in the middle period of the world) all ruling

nations exerted on their times, according to the measure allotted

to them, it was alone the power of eternal love in the Christian

religion which truly emancipated and redeemed mankind; and how the

pure light of this Divine truth, universally diffused through the

world and through all science, will crown in conclusion the progress

of this restoration in the future.

The fulfilment of the term of all Christian hope and Divine promise is

reserved for the last period of consummation--for the new dispensation

which the closing century is ushering in. The esoteric meaning of the

second coming of our Lord is thus intimated to those who are watching

for the triumph of justice and truth. "Behold I come quickly; and my

reward is with me, to give every man according to his work."

Theosophy interprets the often-quoted Scripture passage of "the

seven Spirits which are before His throne" as the cosmical, creative,

sustaining, and world-governing potencies, the principles of which

God avails Himself as His instruments, organs, and media. This is

what the Kabbala implies with its seven "Sephiroth," what Schelling

means by the "potencies," or principles in the inner life of God;

and it is by their emergence, separation, and tension that they become

cosmical potencies. If we stop short at these general considerations,

this is precisely the idea of Theosophy. When it is asked what special

activities are to be ascribed to each of the seven Spirits, striving

to apprehend more closely the uncreated potencies through which the

Deity works in its manifestation, and to which Scripture itself makes

unmistakable allusion, revelation is silent, intimating only by veiled

suggestions. It is here that Theosophy leads the way to the open book

of Nature: the title-page of which we have only begun to turn.

Theosophy, says Bishop Martensen, signifies wisdom in God: "Church

Theology is not wise in assuming a hostile attitude towards Theosophy,

because it hereby deprives itself of a most valuable leavening

influence, a source of renewal and rejuvenescence, which Theology so

greatly needs, exposed as it is to the danger of stagnating in barren

and dreary scholasticism and cold and trivial criticism. In such a

course no real progress can be made in the Christian apprehension

of truth." Jacob Böhme, who was the greatest and most famous of

all Theosophists in the world, [16] said of philosophers and other

disputants who attack not only Theosophy but also theology, and even

Christianity itself, in the name of modern science:--"Every spirit

sees no further than its mother, out of which it has its original,

and wherein it stands; for it is impossible for any spirit, in its

own natural power to look into another principle, and behold it,

except it be regenerated therein." This is what Christ taught: "Ye

must be born again." Only those who are regenerated, by the principle

of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus, can understand the quickening of

the Spirit which comes alone from Him who gives this new birth to all

who seek it, and in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge

are hidden:--"hidden, not in order that they may remain secret,

but in order that they may ever increasingly be made manifest and

appropriated by us."

Jacob Böhme, who was born in 1575, "brought to the birth" an idea

which, three centuries later, is developing into a system of pure

philosophy, that promises to "cover the earth with wisdom and

understanding in the deep mysteries of God."

Böhme gave birth to an idea. Keely is giving birth to a system. Both

are exceedingly imperfect in the expression of their views; yet in

points of detail each possesses a firm dialectical grip. In their

writings both seem overwhelmed by the vast extent of the realm they

are exploring. Both find in harmony the object and the ending of

the world's development. Conflicting with modern science at very

many points, visionary as both appear to be, powerful expression is

given to an idea of life both in the macrocosm and the microcosm,

the validity of which can be questioned only by materialism. The

idea of the one and the system of the other teach that when Nature

is affirmed in God it is in a figurative and symbolical sense:--that

it is, in comparison with what we call nature, something infinitely

more subtle and super-material than matter; that it is the source of

matter; a plenitude of living forces and energies. This system teaches,

as "Waterdale" has expressed it, "the existence of a Great Almighty,

as being in virtue of the perfect organization of the universe, even

as the existence of man is incidental to the organic structure of his

body;" and that the attribute of omniscience is represented by "the

perfect conveyance of signs of atomic movement in vibratory action

through the length and breadth of our universe." We are led by it to

look from nature up to nature's God and to comprehend the attributes

of deity as never before in any other system. It lays hold, with a

giant's grasp, of the heart of the problems which science is wrestling

with. It answers the question asked by Professor Oliver Lodge in his

paper, read at Cardiff, last August, "By what means is force exerted,

and what definitely is force?" It was a bold speculation of Professor

Lodge, who is known as "a very careful and sober physicist," when,

after admitting that there is herein something not provided for in

the orthodox scheme of physics, he suggested that good physicists

should carry their appropriate methods of investigation into the

field of psychology, admitting that a line of possible advance lies

in this direction. Without speculation science could never advance in

any direction; discussion precedes reform, there can be no progress

without it. It required rare courage for a physicist to step from the

serried ranks that have always been ready to point their javelins at

psychologists, and to show, with the torch of science, the hand on the

signpost at the cross roads pointing in the right direction. It is the

great high road of knowledge; but those who would explore it must do

so with cautious tread, until the system of sympathetic association is

completed which Keely is bringing to birth, for the road is bordered

with pitfalls and quicksands and the mists of ignorance envelop it.

Ernest Renan, in "The Future of Science," illustrates the thesis

that, henceforth, the advancement of civilization is to be the work

of science; the word science being used in its largest signification

as covering intellectual achievement in every direction open to the

mind, and the co-ordination of the results in a progressive philosophy

of life. The fundamental distinction which is expressed or implied,

on every page, is that the earlier processes of civilization belong

to an age of spontaneity, of unreflective productivity; an age that

expressed itself in myths, created religions, organized social forms

and habits, in harmony with the spontaneous creations; and that we

have now entered upon the critical, defining, intellectual age; in

short, as Mr. Nisbet has said, that the evolution of the human race

has passed from the physiological into the psychical field; and that

it is in the latter alone, henceforward, that progress may be looked

for toward a higher civilization. [17] Philosophy, that is to say,

rational research, is alone capable of solving the question of the

future of humanity, says Renan. "The really efficacious revolution,

that which will give its shape to the future, will not be a political,

it will be a religious and moral revolution. Politics has exhausted its

resources for solving this problem. The politician is the offscouring

of humanity, not its inspired teacher. The great revolution can only

come from men of thought and sentiment. It does not do to expect too

much from governments. It is not for them to reveal to humanity the

law for which it is in search. What humanity needs is a moral law and

creed; and it is from the depths of human nature that they will emerge,

and not from the well-trodden and sterile pathways of the official

world." In order to know whence will come a better understanding of

the religion which Christ taught, "the religion of the future, we must

always look in the direction of liberty, equality, and fraternity." Not

the French Commune liberty to cut one another's throats (an equality

of misery, and a fraternity of crime), but that liberty to know and to

love the truth of things which constitutes true religion, and which

when it is bestowed without money and without price, as it will be,

"humanity will accomplish the remainder, without asking anyone for

permission." No one can say from what part of the sky will appear

the star of this new redemption. The one thing certain is that the

shepherds and the Magi will be once more the first to perceive it, that

the germ of it is already formed, and that if we were able to see the

present with the eyes of the future, we should be able to distinguish,

in the complication of the hour, the imperceptible fibre which will

bear life for the future. It is amid putrefaction that the germ of

future life is developed, and no one has the right to say, "This is a

rejected stone," for that stone may be the corner-stone of the future

edifice. Human nature is without reproach, continues Renan (L'Avenir

de la Science), and proceeds toward the perfect by means of forms

successively and diversely imperfect. All the ideas which primitive

science had formed of the world appear narrow, trivial, and ridiculous

to us after that which progressive research has proven to be true. The

fact is that science has only destroyed her dreams of the past, to put

in their stead a reality a thousand times superior; but were science

to remain what it is, we should have to submit to it while cursing

it, for it has destroyed and not builded up again; it has awakened

man from a sweet sleep without smoothing the reality to him. What

science gives us is not enough, we are still hungry. True science is

that which belongs neither to the school nor the drawing-room, but

which corresponds exactly to the wants of man. Hence true science

is a religion which will solve for men the eternal problems, the

solution of which his nature imperatively demands. Herein lies the

hope of humanity; for, like a wild beast, the uneducated masses

stand at bay; ready to turn and rend those who are willing to keep

them in their present condition, in order to be able to make them

answer their own purposes.... I am firmly convinced, continues Renan,

for my own part, that unless we make haste and elevate the people,

we are upon the eve of a terrible outbreak of barbarism. For if the

people triumph in their present state, it will be worse than it was

with the Franks and Vandals. They will destroy of their own accord

the instrument which might have served to elevate them; we shall then

have to wait until civilization once more emerges spontaneously from

the profound depths of nature. Morality, like politics, is summed up,

then, in this grand saying: To elevate the people. If I were to see

humanity collapse on its own foundations, mankind again slaughter

one another in some fateful hour, I should still go on proclaiming

that perfection is human nature's final aim, and that the day must

come when reason and perfection shall reign supreme.

Sailing, sailing in the same staunch ship--

We are sailing on together;

We see the rocks and we mark the shoals,

And we watch for cyclone weather.

The perils we run for one alone

Are perils for all together,--

The harbour we make for one alone,

Makes haven for all, through the weather.

Stand by your ship: be brave, brothers mine!

Be brave, for we'll stand together!

We'll yet reach the port for which we sail

In this black and stormy weather.

Sailing, sailing the same stormy sea,

We are sailing all together!

There are rocks ahead and shoals beneath,

And 'round us hurricane weather.

I see in the West a star arise,

That will guide us all together:--

Stand firm by your helm and trust in God

Who pilots us through this weather.

The dawn of morning breaks in the skies

Which will bring mankind together;--

To havens of peace, to havens of bliss,

We'll ride through this cyclone weather.

Clara Jessup Moore.

CHAPTER XVI.

1891.

AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THE CONTINUANCE OF KEELY'S RESEARCHES.

There is a distinct advantage in having one section

of scientific men beginning their work untrammelled by

preconceived notions.--Engineering.

A knowledge of scientific theories seems to kill all knowledge

of scientific facts.--Professor Schuster.

Tizeau found that the speed of light is increased in water

which moves in the same direction as the light. This result

must be due either to the motion of matter through the medium,

or to the fact that moving matter carries the ether with

it. The whole question of matter and motion as a medium is

a vital one, and we shall hardly make any serious advance

before experiment has found a new opening.--Professor Schuster.

How Mr. Keely, in 1891, was Able To Secure the Attention Of Men of

Science To His Researching Experiments.

During the summer of 1890, Mr. Keely was harassed by threats, said to

proceed from disappointed stockholders in the Keely Motor Company,

of suits at law for "obtaining money under false pretences." After

making many unsuccessful attempts with the editors of leading

magazines in London, Boston, and New York, to bring before the

public the claims of Mr. Keely for sympathy in his colossal work,

the proposals of an editor, on the staff of the London Times (who

had the year before introduced himself to Mrs. Bloomfield Moore to

obtain information of Keely) to make known the researches of the

persecuted discoverer and his need of assistance, at that time, were

accepted. The programme, as laid out by this editor, was to use his

extended influence with the leading journals throughout Great Britain,

and to have brief notices of Keely inserted; to be followed up with

a magazine article, for which the material was furnished. Later this

arrangement was modified by the editor, who then proposed to write an

essay for some influential journal, handling the various molecular and

atomic theories; pointing out wherein Keely's views were original,

and showing their revolutionizing tendencies. This work, which was

to have been commenced in November, was delayed until all need was

over. When the editor wrote to Philadelphia in January, 1891, that he

had been unable to commence his work for want of sufficient material

(enclosing questions to be answered by Mr. Keely before he could set

about it), the answer returned was that the threatened troubles were

over, that Mr. Keely had gained the protection of men of science,

and the order for the essay was countermanded. At this very time

a subscription was in circulation to raise money from disaffected

stockholders for the purpose of bringing the threatened action at

law, in case Mr. Keely did not resume work on his engine, instead of

pursuing researches in order to gain more knowledge of the operation

of this unknown polar force in nature.

It was at this juncture that the late Professor Joseph Leidy, that

eminent man of science who had been the first to recognize the

importance of Keely's discovery to the scientific world, arranged

with the Provost of the University of Pennsylvania that an appeal

should be made to the trustees, the faculty and the professors of

that institution, to permit Keely to continue his researches for

science under their protection.

Accordingly, on the 14th of January, 1891, a paper entitled "Keely's

Discoveries" was read at the house of Provost Pepper. The answer sent

by one of the professors, in reply to Dr. Pepper's invitation, probably

expressed the views held by all the distinguished men who assembled

to listen to the appeal, which was to the effect that the professor

would be present to hear the paper read, if the Provost wished it;

but, if he came, he should make it very unpleasant for the reader,

as he had no faith in Keely nor in his discoveries. All those who

were present listened with attention, and among the few who became

interested in the claims of Keely as a discoverer, was the professor

who had made this remark. The preamble to the appeal was read by the

Provost, Dr. Pepper.

Preamble.

Before commencing to read my paper I wish to lay before you the object

of this effort to interest men of science in the researches of a man

who, in the cause of justice alone, is entitled to have his life's

work fairly represented to you. Some of our men of science have,

unwittingly, been the medium by which great injustice has been done

to Mr. Keely; and to others also, by placing me before the world as a

woman whom the Keely Motor Company management has robbed of large sums

of money; whereas, in truth, I have never been in any way involved

by the Keely Motor Company.

In the winter of 1881-82, Mr. Keely, who was dependent upon "The

Keely Motor Company" for the means to continue his researches, as

to the nature of the unknown force he had discovered, was virtually

abandoned by the Company. Himself as ignorant as were its managers

of the source of the mysterious energy he had stumbled over, he

was driven to despair by their action; and, when I was led to his

assistance, I found his wife's roof mortgaged over her head, and that,

his honour assailed, he had resolved to take his life rather than

submit to the indignities threatening him. At this time I had taken

from my private estate ten thousand dollars, to found a small public

library to my father's memory, in the town of Westfield, Hampden Co.,

Massachusetts. After convincing myself that Mr. Keely had made a

great discovery, I felt that if this money could save his discovery,

jeopardized as it was, it was my duty to so appropriate it. At that

time, Mr. Keely thought half of the amount so appropriated would be

all that he should require; but, unfortunately, his efforts were for

years confined to the construction of an engine for the Company that

had abandoned him. Later, he commenced researches which resulted in

the discovery that he had unknowingly imprisoned the ether; greatly

increasing my interest in his work.

The plan to which I shall allude in my paper, as framed by Professor

Leidy for Mr. Keely to follow, and approved by Professor Hertz, of

Bonn, and Professor Fitzgerald, of Trinity College, Dublin, may be

summed up as one that permits Mr. Keely to pursue his researches on

his own line, without further investigation, up to the completion

of his system in a form which will enable him to give to commerce

with one hand his model for aerial navigation, and to science,

with the other, the knowledge that is necessary for extending its

researches in the field of radiant energy--which Mr. Keely has been

exploring for so many years. I ask the prestige of your sympathy,

as well as for your interest in Mr. Keely's work, on this basis;

and if in one year you are not convinced that satisfactory results

have been attained for science, I will promise to leave Mr. Keely in

the hands of the "usurers and Shylocks of commerce," who have already

forced him into renouncing seven-eighths of his interest in what the

Keely Motor Company claims as its property.

At present I do not desire from anyone endorsement of Keely's

discoveries. Until his system is completed he wishes to avoid all

discussion and all public mention of the anticipated value of his

inventions. Mr. Keely's programme of experimental research, as laid

down by himself last March, when I first proposed to furnish him with

all the funds needed to carry it out, comprises its continuance

until he has gained sufficient knowledge of the energy he is

controlling--which is derived from the disintegration of water--to

enable him to impart to others a system that will permit men of

science to produce and to handle the energy, and enable him to

instruct artisans in the work which lies in their province; viz.,

the construction of machines to apply this costless motive power

in mechanics.

The prestige of your interest in Mr. Keely's labours can alone

secure to him freedom to pursue researches on his own road; a

course pronounced by Professor Leidy, Professor Hertz, and Professor

Fitzgerald, to be "the only proper line for him to pursue."

The building of an engine is not in Mr. Keely's province. His

researches completed to that point which is necessary, for perfect

control of the force, practical application will follow. The result of

his experimental work for nine months on this line has been such as to

revive the interest of the speculative management of the Keely Motor

Company, to that extent that Mr. Keely is now offered the support

of its stockholders if he will resume construction of an engine;

and this after more than seven years of failure on the part of the

company to furnish him with one dollar to carry on "the enterprise."

The official Report put forth in January by the Keely Motor Company

managers annulled my contract with Mr. Keely; but he is willing

to abide by it, if I am able to continue to furnish him with the

necessary funds. This position of affairs has forced me to the front,

to ask whether you will place it in my power to renew the contract

with Mr. Keely; or leave him under the control of men who seem to

be oblivious of the interests of the stockholders of the company in

their "clamour" for an engine. When this system is completed, in its

application to mechanics, the present mode of running engines with

shafts and beltings will disappear, creating a revolution in all

branches of industry.

Looking at my request from another point of view, do you not think it

due to extend to Mr. Keely an opportunity to prove all that one of

your number is ready to announce as his conviction in regard to the

claims of Mr. Keely? You all know to whom I refer--Professor Joseph

Leidy. "Oh, Leidy is a biologist," said an English physicist not long

since; "get the opinion of a physicist for us." If I did not wish

for the opinion of physicists, I should not have appealed to you for

help at this most critical juncture. But I also ask that no opinion

be given by any physicist until Mr. Keely's theories are understood

and demonstrated, by experiment. Yes, Dr. Leidy is a biologist, and

what better preparation could a man have than a study of the science

of life to enable him to discern between laws of nature as invented

by physicists, and nature's operations as demonstrated by Keely?

The science of life has not been the only branch to which Dr. Leidy has

given profound attention; it is his extensive and accurate knowledge

of its methods, limits, and tendencies, which prepared the way for

that quick comprehension of possibilities, lying hidden from the sight

of those men of science whose minds have rested (rusted?) in the dead

grooves of mechanical physics. In Dr. Leidy we find entire scientific

and intellectual liberty of thought, with that love of justice and

truth which keeps its possessor from arrogance and intolerance, leading

him with humility to "prove all things and hold fast to truth." To

such men the world owes all that we have of advance since the days

when science taught that the earth is flat, arguing that were it

round the seas and oceans would fall off into space. In Dr. Leidy's

name and in justice to him, I ask your sanction to and approval of

my efforts to preserve Keely's discoveries for science;--discoveries

which explain, not only the causes of the planetary motions but the

source of the one eternal and universal force.

An Appeal in Behalf of Science.

A paper read by Mrs. Bloomfield Moore at the house of Provost Pepper

on the evening of January 14th, 1891, before members of the board of

trustees and professors of the University of Pennsylvania.

Each day he wrought, and better than he planned,

Shape breeding shape beneath his restless hand;

The soul without still helps the soul within,

And its deft magic ends what we begin.

George Eliot.

I hope that I do not seem to be too presumptuous in my effort to

awaken an interest, on your part, in the discoveries of Keely which

have aroused a marked degree of attention among some of the most

learned men in Europe.

I should hardly have ventured to ask the prestige of your support to

be given to Mr. Keely, in his further scientific researches, were it

not that one of your number fully realizes, I think, the important

nature of these researches. You all know to whom I refer--Professor

Joseph Leidy. In his book, "Fresh Water Rhizopods of North America,"

he says, in his concluding remarks: "I may perhaps continue in the same

field of research and give to the reader further results, but I cannot

promise to do so, for though the subject has proved to me an unceasing

source of pleasure I see before me so many wonderful things in other

fields, that a strong impulse disposes me to leap the hedges to examine

them." I have reason to know that, had Dr. Leidy not followed this

impulse, our age might have been robbed of its birthright.

It was not until I appealed to Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox, to

convince themselves whether I was right or wrong in extending aid to

Mr. Keely, that their decision enabled me to continue to assist him

until he has once more made such advances, in experimental research,

as to cause the managers of the Keely Motor Company to believe that

his engine is near completion, and that they can dispense with outside

assistance hereafter.

But I know as it has been in the past so will it be again, and that,

as the months glide away, if no engine is completed, the company will

once more desert the discoverer; while, if he is allowed to pursue his

researches, up to the completion of his system under your protection,

his discoveries will be guarded for science, and the interests of

the stockholders will not be sacrificed to the greed of speculators,

as has so often been done in the past.

As I have had occasion to say, elsewhere, after the warning given

in the history of Huxley's Bathybius, Professor Leidy would not have

risked his world-wide reputation by the endorsement of Keely's claims,

as the discoverer of hidden energy in inter-molecular and atomic

spaces, had he not tested the demonstrations until fully convinced of

the discovery of a force previously unknown to science, and of the

honesty of Mr. Keely in his explanations. Therefore, following the

advice of Professor G. Fr. Fitzgerald, of Dublin, I do not ask for

further investigations. Until Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox came to

the front, in May, 1891, Mr. Keely had no influential supporters, and

was under such a cloud, from his connection with speculators, that to

advocate his integrity of purpose and to uphold the importance of his

work, was enough to awaken doubts as to the sanity of his upholders.

We are told by Herodotus that science is to know things truly; yet

past experience shows us that what has been called knowledge at one

period of time is proved to be but folly in another age. Science is

to know things truly, and the laws of nature are the same yesterday,

to-day, and forever. Throughout the universe the same laws are at work

and regulate all things. Men interpret these laws to suit their own

ideas. The system which Keely is unfolding shows us that there is not

one grain of sand, nor one invisible corpuscule of floating matter,

that does not come under the same law that governs the most mighty

planet, and that all forms of matter are aggregated under one law. "The

designs of the Creator as expounded by our latest teachers," writes

Gilman, "have required millions of ages to carry out. They are so vast

and complex that they can only be realized in the sweep of ages. One

design is subordinated by another without ever being lost sight of,

until the time has arrived for its complete fulfilment. These designs

involve an infinitude of effort, ending often in what, to our view,

looks like failure, to be crowned after a series of ages with complete

success at last."

In this long chain of physical causes, says Dr. Willcox, seemingly

endless, but really commencing with that one link that touches the

hand of Him who made all matter, and all potencies that dwell within

matter, this cosmical activity has been ceaseless, these cosmical

effects numerous past conception, by which universal nature has slowly

unfolded and become the universe of to-day.

In this way both Christianity and science unfold their truths

progressively. Truth, like the laws of nature, never changes; yet truth

as an absolute thing, existing in and by itself, is relatively capable

of change; for as the atoms hold in their tenacious grasp undreamed-of

potencies, so truths hold germs potential of all growth. Each new

truth disclosed to the world, when its hour of need comes, unfolds and

reveals undreamed-of means of growth. As the Rev. George Boardman has

said of Christianity, so may it be said of science: Being a perennial

vine, it is ever yielding new wine.

A philosopher has said that if ever a human being needed divine

pity it is the pseudo-scientist who believes in nothing but what he

can prove by his own methods. In the light of Keely's discoveries,

science will have to admit that when she concentrates her attention

upon matter, to the exclusion of mind, she is as the hunter who has

no string in reserve for his bow. When she recognizes that a full

and adequate science of matter is impossible to man, and that the

science of mind is destined ultimately to attain to a much higher

degree of perfection than the science of matter--that it will give

the typical ideas and laws to which all the laws of physics must be

referred--then science will be better supplied with strings than she

now is, to bring her quarry down.

It is Professor Leidy's and Dr. Willcox's second strings, to their

bows, which will enable you to secure to science the richest quarry

that has ever been within its reach. I know that the experience of

Professor Rowland, as related by him, must have had the effect to

prejudice you against Mr. Keely. Professor Fitzgerald writes to me on

this subject: "I am sorry that Mr. Keely did not cut the wire, wherever

Professor Rowland asked to have it cut, because it will undoubtedly be

said that he had some sinister reason for not doing so, whatever his

real reasons were; but, of course, when one cuts a bit off a valuable

string one prefers naturally to cut the bit off the end, as Keely did,

rather than out of the middle." This very wire which Mr. Keely did cut

at one end, twice, for Professor Rowland, one of the pieces falling

into my hand, is now in Professor Fitzgerald's possession. It was

the offensive manner of Professor Rowland when he seized the shears,

telling Keely it was his guilty conscience which made him refuse to cut

the wire, and that it must be cut in the middle, which put Keely on the

defensive, causing him to refuse to allow Professor Rowland to cut it.

It would seem that the professor in the Johns Hopkins University,

from his remarks on that occasion, thought, instead of an experiment

in negative attraction, that Keely was imposing upon the ignorant

by giving a simple experiment in pneumatics, familiar to all

schoolboys. Professor Rowland did not realize how low he was rating the

powers of discernment of a professor in the University of Pennsylvania

who had witnessed Keely's experiments again and again, when his

instruments or devices were in perfect working order. Mr. Keely,

who was ambitious to show Professor Rowland that his disintegrator

had no connection with any concealed apparatus, had suspended it

from the ceiling by a staple. The hook had given way, and the jar

to the instrument in falling to the floor disarranged its interior

construction on that day. To those who have not witnessed any of

Keely's experiments, under favourable conditions, his theories

naturally seem vague speculations; but not one theory has Keely

put forward, as a theory, which he has not demonstrated as having a

solid foundation in fact. Some of our men of science once settled

the problem of the origin of life to their own satisfaction, only

to learn in the end that speculation is not science; but this very

problem is one the solution of which Keely now seems to be approaching.

It would become a matter of easy analysis, writes Keely, if the

properties governing the different orders of matter could be understood

in their different evolutions. The force of the mind on matter is an

illustration of the power of the finer over the crude, but the law

making the crude forms of matter subservient to the finer or higher

forms, is an unknown law to finite minds.

Buckle has asserted that the highest of our so called laws of

nature are as yet purely empirical; and that, until some law is

discovered which is connected with the laws of the mind that made it,

our knowledge has no sure basis. So saturated has Mr. Keely's mind

been with his discovery of this law that he has contented himself

to remain ignorant in physics, as taught by the schools; and also

with simpler matters it would seem; while testing and building up

his hypotheses into a system which no one but himself can complete,

and which without completion must be lost to the world. I should form

a very poor opinion of the mind that would accept an hypothesis as

anything more than the signpost at cross roads, which points to the

direction that may be taken. In physics the very first fact to which

the learner is introduced is already sophisticated by hypotheses. Every

experiment in chemistry is but a member of a series, all based upon

some one or other of many hypotheses; which are as necessary to

the construction of a system as is the scaffolding which is used in

building an edifice. If the scaffolding proves unsound it does not

affect the edifice, as it can be at once replaced with material more

solid. So an hypothesis, which is merely a conjecture or a suggestion,

cannot affect the solidity of a philosophy or a system. It must be

tested and found to support all the facts which bear upon it, and

capable of accounting for them, before it can be accepted as a theory.

It is my wish to have the professors of the University of Pennsylvania

meet at my house the founder of a system which, in my opinion, embraces

a pure philosophy: to listen to his theories, and to elicit from him

such information as to the nature of his researches, in what is called

electro-magnetic radiation, as I trust will convince them that I have

not been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp during the years that my mind

has been concentrated on the work in which Mr. Keely is engaged. The

bearings of this work are so various that I shall not have time to

touch upon more than the one which interests me beyond any or all of

the others; namely, its connection with the medical art. Appreciating

as I do the life of self-denial which physicians who are devoted to

their profession must lead, and having in their ranks relatives and

many warm friends on both sides of the ocean (one of them, my nephew,

Dr. Jessup, is here to-night) I trust that what I say of the medical

art will not be misconstrued.

The great sorrows of my life have come upon me through the ignorance of

medical men, who, I know, followed their best judgment in the course of

treatment that they pursued in the illnesses of those dear to me. When

my children were in their infancy I had reason to embrace the opinions

of Professor Magendie, as set forth in one of his lectures before the

students of his class in the Allopathic College of Paris. These are

his words: "I know medicine is called a science. It is nothing like a

science. It is a great humbug. Doctors are mere empirics when they are

not charlatans. We are as ignorant as men can be. Who knows anything

about medicine? I do not, nor do I know anyone who does know anything

about it. Nature does a great deal; imagination does a great deal,

doctors do d----h little when they do no harm."

Later in life, in 1871, I was sent, while suffering with neurasthenia,

from Paris to Schwalbach Baths by Dr. Beylard, who recommended me to

the care of Dr. Adolph Genth; to whom, in my first interview, I said:

"I wish for your opinion, and for your advice, if you can give it to

me without prescribing any medicine." He replied: "With all my heart,

Madam, and I wish to God there were more women like you; but we should

soon lose our patients, if we did not dose them." A terrible excuse for

the use of those agencies which Dr. John Good has said have sent more

human beings to their graves than war, pestilence and famine combined.

One of Mr. Keely's discoveries shapes his theory that all nervous and

brain disorders may be cured by equating the differentiation that

exists in the disordered structure. When his system is completed,

medical men will have a new domain opened to them for experiment. Gross

material agencies, such as drugs, will be replaced by the finer forces

of nature: light, as taught by the late Dr. Pancoast of our city, and

magnetism, as experimented with by the late Professor Keil of Jena,

showing the efficacy of the ordinary magnet in the cure of certain

infirmities,--these experiments were communicated by him more than

fifty years since to the Royal Society of London.

Paracelsus taught that man is nourished and sustained by magnetic

power, which he called the universal motor of nature. In Switzerland,

in Italy and in France, the light-treatment is now being tested;

red light used in cases of melancholia; blue light in cases of great

nervous excitement, operating like magic in some instances. Dr. Oscar

Jennings, the electrician at St. Anne's Hospital for the Insane

in Paris, tells me that students, versed in Biblical lore, declare

that the esoteric teachings of the Book of Job enunciate a system

of light-cure. Ostensibly because of my faith in the importance of

Keely's discoveries, as opening up new fields of research to medical

men, an invalid daughter (suffering from puerperal mania after the

birth of her third child) was taken from me, in conformance with

orders of the Swedish guardian of her monied interests in Sweden, and

I was summoned before the Police Direction, in Vienna, and required to

bind myself not to experiment upon my child. It is well known to the

London experts in mental disorders, the most distinguished of whom

I have consulted, that my daughter's treatment, while she was under

my care, had been confined to giving no medicine, forcing no food,

and such changes from time to time in her surroundings as she needed,

with a few electric baths.

The orthodox practice of medicine is nothing more and nothing less than

"a system of blind experiment," as it has been called.

At the opening of a clinical society in London, Sir Thomas Watson said:

"We try this and not succeeding we try that, and baffled again we try

something else." Other eminent medical men have given utterance to

these aphorisms: "The science of medicine is founded on conjecture

and improved by murder;" "Mercury has made more cripples than war;"

"Ninety-nine medical facts are medical lies;" "Every dose of medicine

is a blind experiment;" "The older physicians grow the more sceptical

they become of the virtues of their own medicines." Dr. Ridge said:

"Everything in nature is acknowledged to be governed by law. It is

singular, however, that while science endeavours to reduce this to

actual fact in all other studies, those of health and disease have

not hitherto been arranged under any law whatever."

Keely's system, should he live to complete it, will show that

nature works under one law in everything; that discord is disease,

that harmony is health. He believes that nervous and brain disorders

are curable; but he will never have the leisure to enter this field

of research himself, and it will be left for physicians to pursue

their experiments to that point where they shall be able to decide

whether he is right or wrong. This is why I seek to interest medical

men in Keely's belief; his theories of latent energy he is able to

handle without help, and to demonstrate a solid foundation for them on

facts. "Nothing can lie like a fact," said Velpeau. But nature's laws

are infallible facts, and the facts referred to by Velpeau are of the

order of the fallible ones enunciated by science, such as "The atom is

indivisible." "The atom is infinitely divisible," says Keely, repeating

Schopenhauer's words, whose writings I dare say he has never read.

Professor George Fr. Fitzgerald, of Trinity College, Dublin, in closing

a lecture delivered before the British Association last March, on

"Electro-magnetic Radiation," enunciates a possible theory of ether and

matter. This hypothesis, he says, explains the differences in nature

as differences of motion. If it be true, ether and matter--gold, air,

wood, brains--are but different motions. You will be able to judge of

the marvellous mechanism invented by Keely, for his researches, when I

tell you that by his demonstrations with these instruments, he is able

to place this hypothesis in the rank of theories, boldly announcing

that all motion is thought, and that all force is mind force. With a

clearness that characterizes his great brain he has plunged through the

deep and broad questions surrounding the mechanism of the universe,

and he claims, on behalf of science, as did the late Provost Jellett

of the British Association, "the right to prosecute its investigations

until it attains to a mechanical explanation of all things."

In this lecture Professor Fitzgerald, commenting upon Professor Hertz's

experiments in the vibration of ether waves, says: "If there is reason

to think that any greater oscillation might disintegrate the atom,

we are still a long way from it." Does not this statement border on

an admission that the atom may be divisible? Those who are pursuing

their researches in this field are farther off than they know from the

great central truth which Faraday did not live long enough to reach,

although conjectured by him.

We have not only Faraday's discoveries, but those of Scheele,

the Swedish chemist, as an example of exact observations leading

to erroneous conclusions. The investigations of Scheele led up to

the rich harvest which has since been reaped from a knowledge of

the nature of the compounds of organic chemistry. Scheele was one

of the founders of quantitative analysis, but the phlogistic theory

advanced by him was overthrown--the fate of all theories which are

not based on solid foundations. Faraday admitted that his own ideas on

gravitating force, and of the ether, were but vague impressions of his

mind thrown out as matter for speculation. He left no theory on these

lines, for he had nothing to offer as the result of demonstration,

nor even of sufficient consideration to broach a theory: merely

impressions, which are allowable for a time as guides to thought

and farther research. Yet more than once did these speculations

of his giant intellect touch upon one of nature's hidden laws, the

greatest one yet made known to man. Had Faraday lived long enough

to pursue his researches, from his starting point of conjecture,

he would have been, without doubt, instead of Keely, the discoverer

of the latent or hidden potencies existing in all forms of matter,

visible and invisible. But the physicists of his time looked upon

his speculations as contrary to the received dogmas of science, and

preferred their own errors to his speculations. They saw the signpost,

but took the road directly opposite to the one Faraday had pointed out.

It is admitted that even a false theory, when rightly constructed, has

its uses, and that, instead of hindering, it hastens the advance of

knowledge. Every one, possessing the slightest acquaintance with the

history of astronomy, knows that the doctrines of cycles, epicycles

and ellipses, were begotten naturally and necessarily out of each

other; and that if Kepler had not propounded speculative errors

Newton would not have hit upon speculative truth. It has been said

that when men of science disclaim hypotheses, or speculation, they

are either unfit for their vocation or, like Newton, they are better

than their creed. Hypotheses are at once the effect and the cause of

progress. One might as well attempt to preserve and employ an army

without organization as to preserve and employ phenomena without a

theory to weld them into one. But the theory must be provisionally,

if not positively, true; it must be intelligible and consistent;

it must explain a greater number of facts and reconcile a greater

variety of apparent contradictions than any which has preceded it;

and it must have become developed not by the addition merely, but by

the addition and solution, of subsidiary explanations. I ask of you

an examination of Keely's theories before giving an opinion of them.

Time only can decide whether Keely's hypotheses and theories

will outlive these tests. If not, his system must be overthrown,

as past systems have been, to make room for a better one. All that

I ask is that he may have the opportunity to develop it under your

encouragement. There are scientists in Europe ready to assist him with

pecuniary assistance. They know enough--those who are interested in

his discoveries--to know that they can help him in no other way.

Professor Hertz of Bonn, said to me: "Keely must work out his system

himself to that point where he can instruct physicists to repeat

his experiments." Picking up a photograph of Keely's instruments of

research, grouped together, he added: "No man is likely to be a fraud

who is working on these lines."

Science is alert, on tiptoe as it were, waiting for the one mighty

explanation of the force, "behind the framework of nature," which

has hitherto "eluded its skill;" and which the system of Keely makes

clear to the understanding, demonstrating that one power, one law,

reigns throughout creation; the immaterial controlling the material,

after the divine order and law of creation that the immaterial

should govern the material--that the whole realm of matter is under

the dominion of the immaterial. But "the known always excludes the

unknown" when in opposition to it. As in past generations, so now in

ours, physicists have said: "We will not waste our time in looking

at facts and phenomena which cannot be accepted in opposition to

established principles of science and to known laws of nature; and

which, even if we beheld we should not believe."

The recognition and practical application of new truths are, as has

been said, notoriously slow processes. Harvey's beneficent discovery

excited vehement opposition from his contemporaries. Professor Riolan

combated this discovery with as much obstinacy as violence; even

denying the existence and the functions of lymphatic vessels. Harvey

himself united with Riolan in opposing the discoveries of Aselli and

Pacquet respecting the lymphatic system. Jenner's discovery met with

the same opposition, and more than forty years elapsed before the

suggestion of Sir Humphrey Davy became of practical use. Mr. Wills was

so affected by the ridicule which he encountered in his experiments

with nitrous oxide in destroying physical pain, that he abandoned

them. Nearly half a century later Dr. Morton was assailed by several of

our journals in America for the use of ether in producing anæsthesia;

as also was Sir James Simpson for his use of ether and chloroform.

The scientists excommunicated Dr. Wigan, who had proved by anatomical

examination that each brain-hemisphere is a perfect brain; that

we have, in fact, two brains, as we have two eyes and two ears. His

experiences as a physician were declared to be impostures or delusions;

his deductions fallacious. They could not be true, because they were

inconsistent with the established principles of physiology and mental

science. And with such experiences in the past, we should keep in

mind that the powers of nature are so mysterious and inscrutable

that men must be cautious in limiting them to the ordinary laws of

experience. Proclus wrote of the power of mind or will to set up

certain vibrations--not in the grosser atmospheric particles whose

undulations beget light, sound, heat, electricity--but in the latent

immaterial principle of force, of which modern science knows scarcely

anything.

What is beyond their own power, men cannot comprehend to be in the

power of others. Said Sextus: "If by magic you mean a perpetual

research among all that is most latent and obscure in nature, I

profess that magic, and he who does so comes nearer to the fountain

of all knowledge."

Sir Isaac Newton said: "It is well known that bodies act upon one

another by the attractions of gravity, magnetism and electricity;

and these instances show the tenour and course of nature, and make

it not improbable that there may be more powers of attraction than

these. For nature is very consonant and conformable to herself."

With such intimations of the hidden force that is ever in operation,

"behind the framework of nature," shall we, because it is hidden

from science, refuse to listen to the explanations which Mr. Keely

is now prepared to give? All nature is a compound of conflicting,

and therefore of counter-balancing and equilibrating, forces. Without

this there could be no such thing as stability. In nature nothing

is great and nothing is little, writes Figuier. Sir Henry Roscoe

says: "The structure of the smallest particle, invisible even to

our most searching vision, may be as complicated as that of any of

the heavenly bodies which circle around our sun." If you admit this,

as stated by one of your own orthodox scientists, why refuse to admit

the possibility of the subdivision of all corpuscles of matter, which

Keely declares can be done by certain orders of vibration, thus showing

up new elements? I do not ask endorsement of Keely's theories; but if

physicists did not think it possible to rupture the atom, would they be

calculating the chances of doing so, as Professor Fitzgerald has done?

Why not admit that certain tenets of science may prove to be nothing

more than hypotheses, too hastily adopted as theories, and that

Keely has succeeded, as he claims, to have discovered the order of

vibration, which by increasing the oscillation of the atom, causes it

to rupture itself? This introductory impulse is given at forty-two

thousand eight hundred vibrations, instead of one hundred millions;

which, having been reached by Professor Hertz, failed to tear apart

the atom, and convinced Professor Fitzgerald of the "long way off"

that they still are from rupturing it. But even this conclusion

was arrived at under an erroneous hypothesis; for the atomic charge

does not oscillate across the diameter of the atom, and its possible

radiating power was calculated on this hypothesis.

Again, as to the canons of science, which are proved by Mr. Keely's

researches to be erroneous: take the one which teaches that molecular

aggregation is ever attended with dissipation of energy. From

whence, then, comes the immense force which is liberated from the

constituents of gunpowder by its exciter, fire?--which is a certain

order of vibration. Concussion, another order of vibration, releases

the hidden energy stored in the molecules of dynamite, which tears

the rocks asunder as if they were egg-shells. Still another order

of vibration, which Keely has discovered, dissociates the supposed

elements of water, releasing from its corpuscular embrace almost

immeasurable volumes of force.

The discoverer of this law of nature has long been harassed and made

to feel like a galley-slave chained to a rock, while with Prometheus

aspirations he is seeking to bring down fire and light from heaven

for his fellow-men.

When Professor Leidy followed his impulse to leap the hedge which

divided his special field of research from the domain that Keely

was exploring, his was the first effort made by a man of science

to save to the world "the hidden knowledge" bestowed upon one who,

in my opinion, is alone capable of completing his system in a form to

transmit this knowledge to others. I doubt not that this will seem to

you as the language of fanaticism; but my convictions do not come from

things hoped for. They are the result of the evidence of things seen,

year after year, for nearly a decade of years.

As a school-girl, fifty years ago, I had the privilege of attending

courses of lectures at Yale College, where experiments were given in

natural philosophy and in chemistry; which kept up the interest that

was awakened in earlier years; when, with my mineral hammer and basket,

my father took me in his walks, laying the foundation of that love of

true science which has made the discoveries of Keely of such intense

interest to me.

Superficial as was and still is my knowledge of science, in its various

branches, my interest has never abated; and thus, by my course of

reading, I have kept myself abreast of the most advanced writers of

modern thought, preparing the way for the help that I have been able

to give Mr. Keely by putting books into his hands which, after more

than twelve years of blind struggles to grapple with the force he had

stumbled over, helped him to comprehend its nature, sooner than he

would have done had he been left to work out his conjectures unaided,

he tells me.

Marvellous as is the extent of Keely's knowledge of vibratory physics,

I doubt very much whether he knows enough of mechanical physics

to perform the trickery which Professor Rowland accused him of

attempting. "Of course every one is looking for a trick where Keely

is concerned," writes a Baltimore man; and, so long as speculations

in the stock of the Keely Motor Company are authorized by the managers

of that company, or efforts made to dispose of it before any practical

result is attained, so long will Keely be unjustly suspected of being

in league with them to obtain money under false pretences.

It was after six or seven years of failure on the part of the

stockholders of the company to furnish Keely with one dollar, even,

that I made a contract with him in April, 1890, to supply all that he

needed for the completion of his system; having first received the

assurance of Mr. Keely's lawyer that he would carry out the united

wishes of Mr. Keely and myself. At that time this announcement was

made in the public journals:--

"There has been placed in the hands of Professor Leidy a fund for

the use of inventor John W. Keely. The stipulation attached is that

no use shall be made of the financial assistance for speculative

purposes. This provision, which is made in the interests of the Keely

Motor Company as well as for science, will end with the first attempt

to speculate on the stock by exhibitions given of the operations

of unpatentable engines. Professor Leidy holds the fund at his

disposition, and will pay all bills for instruments constructed for

researching purposes."

The report issued last month by the directors of the Keely Motor

Company annulled this contract; and it now remains for your board

to decide whether I shall, in behalf of science, continue to supply

Mr. Keely with the means of continuing his researches, under the

protecting auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, or leave him

in the hands of those who are so blind to their own interests, as

holders of stock in the Keely Motor Company, they cannot be made to

see that their only hope of commercial success lies in the completion

of the system that Keely is developing; and that the course proposed

by Professor Leidy, and commended by Professor Hertz and Professor

Fitzgerald, for Keely to follow, is the only one that will ever enable

him to complete it.

This system is as much a work of evolution as is any one of the slow

operations of nature. "Truth can afford to wait:" she knows that the

Creator of all things never hurries. In these twenty years of toil

Keely's patient perseverance has been godlike. It is the sharpest

rebuke that could be uttered to those whose impatient "hue and cry"

has been, "Give us a commercial engine and we will immortalize

you;"--grinding from him, meantime, seven-eighths of his interests

in his inventions.

But in his labours Keely finds a recompense that, as yet, "the world

knows not of;" for day by day he sees the once, to him, obscure

domain lit up with ever-increasing glory; a domain the boundaries

of which are the boundaries of the universe: the entrance into which

promises the fulfilment of the hopes of those who look forward to "a

time when we shall no longer go to the blind to lead the blind in our

search to make life worth living; but, instead, be able to promote,

in accordance with scientific method and in harmony with law, the

physical, intellectual and moral evolution of our race."

As of Newton, with the change of one word only, so one day will it

be said of Keely:--

All intellectual eye--our solar round

First gazing through, he by the blended power

Of laws etheric, universal, saw

The whole in silent harmony revolve.

What were his raptures then! How pure! How strong!

And what the triumphs of old Greece and Rome

With his compared? When Nature and her laws

Stood all disclosed to him, and open laid

Their every hidden glory to his view.

On the 23rd of March, following the reading of this address, Professor

Koenig, who had become deeply interested in Mr. Keely's researches,

wrote:--

"With regard to the experiments, which I saw at Mr. Keely's, I

venture upon the following suggestion, as a test of the nature of the

force Mr. Keely is dealing with. The revolution of the compass as

a result of negative polar attraction. It is stated in Mr. Keely's

paper that he finds gold, silver, platinum, to be excellent media

for the transmission of these triple currents. Now it is well known

that these same metals are most diamagnetic, that is, unaffected by

magnetic influences. If, therefore, a needle be made of one of these

metals and suspended in place of the steel needle, in the compass, and

put under the influence of Mr. Keely's force, it ought to revolve the

same as the steel needle will under magnetic and polar and anti-polar

influence. If Mr. Keely could make such a needle revolve, it would

convince me that he is dealing with a force unknown to physicists."

To this requirement Mr. Keely replied: "To run a needle, composed of

non-magnetic material, by polar and depolar action is a matter of as

infinite impossibility as would be the raising of a heavy weight from

the bottom of a well by sucking a vacuum in it, or the inhalation of

water into the lungs instead of air, to sustain life."

However, at Dr. Brinton's suggestion, Mr. Keely took up a line of

research that was new to him, and succeeded in making a needle of

the three metals, gold, silver and platinum, rotate by differential

molecular action; induced by negative attractive outreach, which is

as free of magnetic force as a cork.

Professor Brinton had so mastered Keely's working hypotheses as to say,

early in April, that he was sure he could make them understood by any

intelligent person--writing of them: "All that is needed now is to

show that Keely's experiments sustain the principles that underlie

these hypotheses. As soon as Professor Koenig is prepared to report

on the purely technical and physical character of the experiments,

I shall be ready to go into full details as to their significance

in reference to both matter and mind. It will be enough for me if

Dr. Koenig is enabled simply to say that the force handled by Keely

is not any one of the already well-known forces. Let him say that,

and I will undertake to say what it is."

On the evening of the 13th of April, the Provost of the University of

Pennsylvania, with others who were invited, met at Mrs. Moore's house

to hear the report of the "observation" of Mr. Keely's researching

experiments. The result was not made public; as it was desired,

by all concerned, that nothing should be made known which could in

any way influence the price of the stock of the company, to which

Mr. Keely is under obligations; and which, as far as marketable value

is concerned, is quite worthless until his system is completed to that

point where some one device or machine can be patented. But, after

Professor Koenig had made his report to those assembled, and Professor

Brinton had read his abstract, all that had been asked for Mr. Keely,

in behalf of the interests of science, was conceded to him. Mr. Keely

has been able to continue his researches, up to the present time,

without the delays which actions-at-law would have occasioned.

Professor Brinton, before making public his "Abstract of Keely's

Philosophy," wishes to add two parts, one on the difficulties in the

way of physicists in understanding Keely's theories; the other on

the relations of the conditions of the inter-etheric order to the

laws of mind.

The address of Mrs. Moore, type-copied, was sent to various editors

and men of science in Philadelphia, as well as to leading capitalists;

and, in this crisis of Keely's connection with the stockholders of The

Keely Motor Company, some of these editors rendered substantial aid in

making known his critical position; most notably the Inquirer, owned

by Mr. Elverson, and the Evening Telegraph, owned by Mr. Warburton,

with the result that a decided change in public opinion took place,

after these journals announced, in April, that Professor Koenig

had tested the energy, employed by Keely, with the most sensitive

galvanometer of the university, in the presence of Professor Leidy,

Professor Brinton, Doctor Tuttle (a Baltimore physicist) and others,

finding no trace of electricity; and by other tests no magnetism. The

two professors who thoroughly investigated Keely's theories, and

observed his demonstrations, were chosen because they possessed

the qualities of mind which Herbert Spencer said constitute the

first condition of success in scientific research, viz. "an honest

receptivity and a willingness to abandon all preconceived notions,

however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth."

Professor Leidy and Dr. Willcox, during their observations of Keely's

progressive experimental researches, had expressed no opinion of

Keely's theories, other than that they did not correspond with

their own ideas; but Professor Koenig boldly said, "I not only

think Mr. Keely's theories possible, but I consider them quite

probable." Professor Brinton, who made a study of Keely's theories, so

mastered them as to be able to suggest to Keely a new line of research,

required by Dr. Koenig in the tests proposed; and the synopsis of

Keely's philosophy, prepared by Doctor Brinton, has made Keely's

hitherto unintelligible language intelligible to men of science.

Notwithstanding this favourable result, a New York journalist, under

a fictitious name, pretended to have discovered that Keely is a fraud,

using well-known forces; which statements were published (with woodcuts

of instruments discarded by Keely two years before) in the New York

Herald and The Press, in Philadelphia. It is amusing to see how

"history repeats itself;" for, in the year 1724, in a letter to the

Royal Society, Hatzfeldt attacked Sir Isaac Newton in much the same

spirit. One would suppose in reading what Hatzfeldt has written of

an invention of his time, that it had been written, word for word, of

this ignorant investigator of Keely's experiments in researching. After

commenting upon the corruption of human nature as shown, in his day,

by want of veracity, and the tendency to vicious misrepresentation,

he says: "If the said machine was contrived according to the weak

sense and understanding of those who pretend it to be moved in other

ways than that declared, it would have been discerned before this.

"And those who pretend it to be moved by water, or air, or magnetism,

one of which (meaning water) even our most famous author did in the

beginning affirm it to be moved by, is so very weak that I don't at

all think it deserving to be considered.

"And what is still worse, to pretend it to be a cheat is a manner

of proceeding which is neither consistent with equity nor common

sense. As long as arts and sciences have the misfortune of depending

on the direction of such like persons, no progress toward truth can

be made, but I shall make it sufficiently appear that there is yet

more truth behind the hill than ever has been brought to light. There

be persons who, when disappointed of gain, turn their shafts against

those who have circumvented them.

"All those who know anything of philosophy know that gravity is

generally (and chiefly by Sir Isaac Newton and his followers) denied

to be essential to matter, which I shall not only prove the contrary

of, but I shall likewise show the properties in matter, on which

the principle depends, to be the most glorious means to prove the

existence of God, and to establish natural religion."

Is it not rather remarkable that, after a sleep of nearly two

centuries, it is again claimed that gravity is inherent in all matter?

It has been very generally supposed that Keely is working at haphazard,

as it were; in other words, that he has no theory to go upon. Professor

Brinton writes of Keely's theories: "Mr. Keely has a coherent and

intelligent theory of things, or philosophy, on which he lays out his

work and proceeds in his experiments." March 6th, the same professor

writes: "Keely's paper on Latent Force in intermolecular spaces is

clear enough and instructive, but the average reader will find the

perusal up-hill work, from lack of preliminary teaching. Naturally,

Mr. Keely, whose mind has been busy with this topic for years, and

who is more familiar with it than with any other, does not appreciate

how blankly ignorant of it is the average reader. Also naturally he

writes above the heads of his audience."

A correspondent in Invention, London, writes December 12, 1891: We

have at various times in these columns alluded to the investigations

of the Philadelphia scientist, J. W. Keely, and this researcher--who

is now stated to be engaged in finding a method whereby the power [18]

which he professes to have discovered can be employed as a motor in

the place of steam--is just now the object of considerable attention

in the press of the United States. To summarize the present state

of the criticism to which this man is subjected, we may mention that

for some time past The New York Herald, among other papers, has been

printing a series of articles that have been recently prepared by an

American inventor named Browne, professing to show how Keely has,

for nearly twenty years, been deceiving expert engineers, shrewd

men of the world, some few university professors and others, by

the use of compressed air, obtaining testimonials of his discovery

of an unknown force in nature. In reading his articles any one who

has seen the photographs--as the writer has done--of the researching

instruments discarded by Keely, in past years, and those that he is

now employing in their place, cannot fail to detect the misstatements

and misrepresentations made.

Mr. Browne (?) even overrides the testimony of the late Professor

Leidy, Dr. Willcox, Dr. Koenig, Dr. Brinton--the Baltimore

physicist--Dr. Tuttle, and the engineers Linville and Le Van, all

of whom have tested the force used by Keely, and admitted that no

electricity, no magnetism, no compressed air is used. Without endorsing

in the slightest anything that Keely has discovered, or claims to have

discovered, we think that, with the English love of fair play, both

sides should always fairly be heard before either is condemned, and as

Mr. Keely has consented to instruct a well-known English physicist in

his method of producing the force handled, there is every chance of

the truth being known, and the correct state of the matter divulged

to the scientific world at large, when, mayhap, this rival inventor

may have to retract his assertions or stand a suit for libel. We do

not say it will be so--we only assert it may be. Professor Brinton,

who has made a study of Keely's methods, writes this month to a

friend in London:--"The exposé of Keely's alleged methods continues

each week. Some of the proposed explanations are plausible, others

are plainly absurd. They only serve to attract renewed attention to

Keely. I have written to the editor to ask him to arrange a meeting

for me with the writer, but I have not yet been able to discover the

Mr. Browne, [19] of Brooklyn, who is the supposititious author."

Mr. Keely has chosen the successor [20] of Professor Tyndall, at the

Royal Institution of Great Britain, as the physicist to whom he will

communicate his method. This will be welcome news indeed to scientists

on both sides of the Atlantic, and the result will be awaited with

anxiety alike by both the friends and foes of Keely. We shall watch

for the result, as will our American confrères.--Wm. Norman Brown.

CHAPTER XVII.

1891.

MORE OF KEELY'S THEORIES.--HIS TRADUCERS EXPOSED.

It was in India that man first recognized the fact that

force is indestructible and eternal. This implies ideas more

or less distinct of that which we now term its correlation

and conservation. The changes which we witness are in its

distribution.--Professor Draper.

"For all things that be not true, be lies."

There is a principle in music which has yet to be

discovered.--Sir John Herschel.

From the Chicago Tribune.

That was a happy inspiration which led the Quintet Club, of

Philadelphia, to pay a visit to the workshop of Keely a few weeks

ago. Its members had been told that the illustrious inventor had

employed the power of music to develop the wonderful forces of nature,

and evolve by a law of sympathetic vibrations a mighty energy through

the disintegration of a few drops of water. Naturally they were

anxious to go. They were familiar with the claim made by Paganini

that he could throw down a building if he knew the chord of the mass

of masonry, and wanted to know if it were possible that the dream of

the great violinist is realized at last.

So nearly as can be made out from the mysterious language of the

man of many promises, there is a harmony of the universe that is

controllable by the strains of music. Each of the molecules composing

a mass of matter is in a state of incessant oscillation, and these

movements can be so much changed by means of musical vibration that

the matter will be disintegrated, its constituent molecules fly

apart, and a propulsive force be generated similar to that which is

evolved by the touching of a match to a single grain of powder stored

in a magazine. He holds that matter is nothing but forces held in

equilibrium, and that if the equilibrium be once destroyed the most

tremendous consequences will ensue.

According to the report, he proved to the satisfaction of more than one

member of the club that he has already discovered the means of calling

out this force, and is able to partially control it. In their presence

he caused a heavy sphere to rotate rapidly or slowly, according to

the notes given by the instrument on which he played. The sphere was

so isolated as to prove that it could not be acted on by electricity

or in any other way than by the sound waves. He disintegrated water

into what he calls "etheric vapour" by means of a tuning fork and

a zither. The disintegration of only four drops of water produced a

pressure of 27,000 pounds to the square inch, and three drops of the

harmless liquid fired off a cannon "with a tremendous roar."

All this is wonderful--if true. And it is strangely parallel to the

most advanced lines of modern thought in a scientific direction, if not

coincident with them. There is the point. Is there a "thin partition"

dividing the wisdom of the schools from the insanity of Keely, or will

he yet prove his right to take rank among the greatest of earth's

inventors? If he can do what is at present claimed for him, doing

it honestly and without any hocus-pocus to beguile the fools, he has

already earned a title higher than that worn by any man of the age. If

he is simply cheating those to whom he exhibits his mechanism, he is

one of the biggest charlatans that ever drew breath, and ought to be

scouted accordingly. And here is the difficulty. The visit alluded to

is claimed to have been made on May 9th, or fully six weeks ago. Surely

if such results were achieved then, as reported by the Philadelphia

Inquirer, many others would ere this have been asked and permitted to

witness a repetition of the experiments, and the scientific world would

now be in a blaze of excited admiration of the man and his methods. But

nothing further is said about it. Keely is still plodding away in his

workshop, and the world is still rolling round in happy ignorance of

what he has done towards revolutionizing existing lines of thought and

modes of action. Surely something is radically wrong. The scientists

owe it to themselves as well as to the inventor to see to it that

this condition is not allowed to continue. They should appoint a

commission to investigate, and find out whether Keely is a genius

worthy of the highest honours and rewards that can be bestowed,

an arrant impostor, whose fittest place would be the penitentiary,

or a crank that ought to be put in a lunatic asylum. It is hard to

resist the conclusion that he is one or the other of these, and in

either case he is not getting his deserts. Let Keely be scientifically

investigated. He has been permitted to remain in obscurity too long

already. He should be reported on, no matter whether the result be

to raise a mortal to the skies or send an alleged angel down to the

depths of infamy as a life-long deceiver of his species."

[The Tribune is informed that the report was correct in every

particular, and that Professor D. G. Brinton, of the University of

Pennsylvania, has prepared a paper on the subject, and will publish it

when Mr. Keely is ready to have his system made known.--Ed. Inquirer.]

The writer of this article in the Chicago Tribune has expressed

the prevailing sentiment of our time, in regard to Keely, as far

as those are concerned who are in ignorance of the fact that Keely

has discovered an unknown energy, and is working out a system which

he must himself first learn, by researches into the laws of nature

governing it, before he can apply it to mechanics, or make it even

so much as understood by others.