Loading...
 

Progressive Science

Keely and His Discoveries - Chapter XX, 1892
PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE - KEELY'S PRESENT POSITION.
(A Review of the Situation.)


"This amount of repetition to some will probably appear to be tedious, but only by varied interation can alien conceptions be forced on reluctant minds." - Herbert Spencer.

"The researches of Lodge in England and of Hertz in Germany give us an almost infinite range of ethereal vibration. . . Here is unfolded to us a new and astonishing world,- one which it is hard to conceive should contain no possibilities of transmitting and receiving intelligence. Here also is revealed to us the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without wires, posts, cables, or any of our present costly appliances. 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." -Professor Wm. Crookes, M.R.A., F.R.S., &c.

Vibratory Philosophy teaches that "in the great workshop of Nature there are no lines of demarcation to be drawn between the most exalted speculation and common-place practice, and that all knowledge must lead up to one great result; that of an intelligent recognition of the creator through His works."

"Facts are the body of science; speculation is its soul."

It has been said that there is nothing more sublime in the history of mind than the lonely struggles which generate and precede success. After the admission made by Professor Rucker, M.A., at the last meeting of the British Association, that the ether may be "the material of which all matter is composed," and that "we may, perhaps, be able to use and control the ether as we now control steam," there would seem to be ground for hoping that Keely's lonely and prolonged struggles to utilize in mechanics the ether product which he obtains from his method of dissociating the elements of water, will be more universally recognized and appreciated than they have yet been. Discovery may be unsought and instantaneous, but the inventions for utilizing discoveries may be, and generally are, the work of years.

Keely first imprisoned the ether in 1872, when its existence was denied; or, if admitted by a few, it was called "the hypothetical ether." In 1888, Professor Henri Hertz discovered and announced, in the Revue des Feux Mondes, that the ether is held in a state of bondage in all electro-magnetic engines. Not until this fact had been made known, were there any scientific men, with one notable exception, who were willing to admit it was possible that Keely might also have "stumbled over" the manner of effecting its imprisonment.

The nature of Keely's researches, and the length of time in which he has been absorbed by the necessary dead-work, attendant upon research before a discovery can be utilized, may be gathered from a letter recently written by Mr. C. G. Till, of Brooklyn, New York:_

"In Keely's early struggles, somewhere about twenty years ago, I became acquainted with him, and helped him then to the best of my ability. Indeed I may say that I was godfather to his discovery; for I was with him when the idea first entered his head that he could combine steam and water to run an engine. At that time he made a crude machine, which he actually ran for some time; and this was the original model of the Pneumatic-Pulsating-Vacuo-Engine, in the operation of which he discovered his present force. From that day to this he has been in pursuit of some method as a medium to use what he calls his etheric force with. That he has actually discovered a new force there is not a shadow of doubt. In those days I have known him to sell and pawn everything of value in his house to obtain means to continue his investigation with the money thus acquired; and I am sure that he will eventually give to the world the greatest boon that has been received by it since the advent of Christianity," etc., etc.

It has been very generally thought that Keely is pursuing the ignis fatuus of perpetual motion. No greater mistake could have been made. The genuineness of his claims as a discoverer rests upon a correct answer to the question, "Is hydrogen gas an element or a compound?"

Science, as Herodotus said, is to know things truly; but science tells us that hydrogen is a simple, that the atom is not divisible, and that latent energy is not locked in the interstitial spaces of all forms of matter from their birth or aggregation. Keely's system of Vibratory Physics refutes these canons of science. How absurd must seem the idea to many that the schools can be wrong, and that Keely, who has been branded by some of these schools as an impostor, should be right: but time will show whether Keely's discoveries have "come to stay." The history of the past shows us that science has never been infallible; that like Christianisty she unfolds her truths progressively. Keely teaches that unknown potency is held in the atom's tenacious grasp, until released by an introductory impulse given by a certain order of vibration, depending upon the mass chord of the aggregation; which impulse so increases the oscillation of the atoms as to rupture their etheric capsules. All great truths hold germs potential of ever-increasing growth. It took half a century for the "Principia" of Newton to overcome the contempt that was showered upon it; and now progressive science is overshadowing Newton's vast attainments. In his giant mind was born the hypothesis that the ether is the cause of light and gravity. Keely has been teaching for years, that ether is the medium of all force. For every effect science requires an efficient cause. Hence, when Faraday found no definite knowledge in exact science to satisfy him on certain points he was led into speculative science, or the preliminary reaching after truths which we feel must exist by reason of certain effects that come under our observation, analogous to already known laws:- "reduced facts lie behind us; speculative ones lie before us;" and without these latter science could make no progress. Faraday was only speculating when he said: "Thus either present elements are the true elements; or else there is the probability before us of obtaining some more high and general power of nature even than electricity; and which, at the same time, might reveal to us an entirely new grade of elements of matter, now hidden from our view and almost from our suspicion."

Faraday's keen perception and acute practical judgment, were never better exemplified than in Keely's discovery of Negative Attraction; the laws governing which he is still researching; theorizing that it is the energy which controls the planetary masses in their advance toward each other, and in their recession from each other,- the energy which lifts the seas and the oceans out of their beds, and replaces them once in twenty-four hours; in other words, explaining the mystery of the action of gravity.

Had Faraday lived longer he might have anticipated Keely in one of the discoveries; for he certainly was on the road to it, in the views of force and matter which he held that were not in accordance with the accepted views of his time; and which were then set aside as "wild speculations," by the physicists who complained of his "want of mathematical accuracy," of his "entertaining notions altogether distinct from the views generally held by men of science," who continued their experimental researches on their own lines.

In 1885, before Keely's scientific explorations had taught him that no engine can ever be constructed by which the ether can be used and controlled, as we now use and control steam, he wrote, in a letter to a friend, "I shall not forestall an unproved conclusion, but fight step by step the dark paths I am exploring, knowing that, should I succeed in proving one single fact in science heretofore unknown, I shall in so doing be rewarded in the highest degree. In whatever direction the human mind travels it comes quickly to a boundary line which it cannot pass. There is a knowable field of research, bordered by an unknown tract. My experience teaches me how narrow in the strip of territory which belongs to the knowable, how very small the portion that has been traversed and taken possession of. The further we traverse this unknown territory, the stronger will become our faith in the immovable order of the world; for, at each advancing step, we find fresh fruits of the immutable laws that reign over all things,- from the falling apple, up to the thoughts, the words, the deeds, the will of man: and we find these laws irreversible and eternal, order and method reigning throughout the universe. Some details of this universal method have been worked up, and we know them by the names of 'gravitation,' 'chemical affinity,' 'nerve-power,' etc. These material certainties are as sacred as moral certainties. . . . The nearest approaches to a certainty is made through harmony with nature's laws. The surest media are those which nature has laid out in her wonderful workings. The man who deviates from these paths will suffer the penalty of a defeat, as is seen in the record of 'perpetual motion' seekers. I have been classed with such dreamers; but I find consolation in the thought that it is only by those men who are utterly ignorant of the great and marvelous truths which I have devoted my life to demonstrate and to bring within reach of all. I believe the time is near at hand when the principles of etheric evolution will be established, and when the world will be eager to recognize and accept a system that will certainly create a revolution for the highest benefits of mankind, inaugurating an era undreamed of by those who are now ignorant of the existence of this etheric force." These views which have guided Keely in all his researches cannot be made known to any just, discerning mind without an accompanying perception of the gross way in which he has been misrepresented by his defamers; as well as some appreciation of the scientifically cautious manner in which he has pursued his investigations, since he abandoned his efforts to construct an engine that would hold the ether in rotation.

At the present time Keely is concentrating his efforts on the perfecting of his mechanical conditions to that point where, according to his theories, he will be able to establish, on the ninths, a sympathetic affinity with pure, polar, negative attraction, minus magnetism. In his own opinion he has so nearly gained the summit, or completion of his "graduation," as to feel that he holds the key to the control of the infinitely tenuous conditions which lie before him to be conquered, before he gains mastery of the group of depolar disks that he is now working upon. Twenty-six groups are completed, and when the twenty-seventh and last group is under equal control, Keely expects to establish a circuit of vibratory force, for running machinery: both for aerial navigation and for terrestrial use. If this result be obtained, Keely will then be in a position to give his system to science; and to demonstrate the ever-operative immanence of the Infinite builder of all things of whom our Lord said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

In commercial use Keely expects that when the motion has been once set up, in any of his machines, it will continue until the material is worn out. It is this claim which has caused Keely to be classed with perpetual motion seekers.

For years Keely has been trying to utilize his discoveries for the material and moral advantage of humanity: and yet he feels, as Buckle has said of the present acquirements of science, that the ground only is broken, that the crust only is touched. The loftiest pinnacle which has been reached by the men who are foremost in their constructions of the method by which the one source of all energy works in the material world, is too insignificant a position to obtain even an outlook towards the vast realm that Keely figuratively describes as the infinite brain; or the source from which all "sympathetic-leads" emanate, that connect mind with matter. Realizing that all conditions of matter are but as vain illusions, he never falters in his determination to reach after the hidden things of God, if haply he may find them. Even the goal which he seeks to attain lies, in his own estimation, on the outermost border of this crust; and well he knows that it never can be reached in any other way than by principles of exact science and by pursuing a path that is at all times lighted by reason.

Believing that "the horizon of the world of matter, which has been thought to rest over hydrogen, extends to infinite reaches, including substances which have never been revealed to the senses," he knows how unfathomable is the ocean that lies beyond, and like Newton compares himself to one who is gathering pebbles on its shore.

Science, which has ever been interested both in the infinitely small and infinitely great, has in our age dropped the only clue that can guide through the obscure labyrinth which leads into depths of nature lying beyond the knowledge of our unaided senses.

The evolution of the human race, says Nesbit, has passed from the physiological into the psychological field; and it is in the latter alone that progress may be looked for. see Mind

This is the realm into which Keely's efforts, to give to the world a costless motive power, have slowly conducted him through the black darkness of the region in which he has been fighting his way, for a score of years, in behalf of true science and humanity.

Lorde Derby has said that modern science, on its popular side, is really a great factory of popular fallacies; that its expounders in one decade are kept busy refuting the errors to which the preceding decade has given currency. There is hardly a branch of science, he says, susceptible of general and wide-reaching conclusions, which might not be revolutionized by some discovery to-morrow.

If Keely is able to establish his theories, physical science will have to abandon the positions to which she clings, and forced to admit that there exists a purity of conditions in Vibratory Physics unknown in mechanical physics, undreamed of even in philosophy; for he will then be in a position to demonstrate the outflow of the Infinite mind as sympathetically associated with matter visible and invisible.

Of this philosophy Professor Daniel G. Brinton has said, "It is so simple, beautiful and comprehensive in its vibratory theory that I hope it will be found experimentally to be true. To me all commercial and practical results, motors, air-ships, engines are of no importance by the side of the theoretical truth of the demonstrations of this cosmic force. As soon as Dr. Koenig is prepared to report on the purely technical and physical character of the experiments, I shall be, in fact I am, 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 able to say that the force handled by Keely is not gravity, electricity, magnetism, compressed air, nor other of the well-known forces. Let him say that, and I will undertake to say what the force is." Tests were made last year by Dr. Koenig and Dr. Tuttle, a Baltimore physicist, in the presence of other men of science with the most sensitive galvanometer belonging to the University of Pennsylvania, all of whom were satisfied that no known force had been detected.

The abstract of Keely's philosophy, written by Dr. Brinton, has made Keely's intelligible for the first time. Each new discovery necessitates a new vocabulary; and Keely's writings are obscure because of his new nomenclature. When Faraday's ideas differed from those held by the authorities of his time, they were pronounced to be "untranslatable into scientific language;" and as was then said of Faraday, so can it now be said of Keely, with equal truth, that, working at the very boundaries of our knowledge, his mind habitually dwells "in the boundless contiguity of space" by which that knowledge is surrounded.

The brain of an Aristotle was needed to discern and grasp Keely's meaning to interpret and define it. Dr. Brinton never touches a subject without throwing light upon it, and his penetrating mind perceived the ideas to be defined in all their relations. His keen logical acumen separated and classified them in their order, in a true, sound, and scientific manner. In the words of Sir James Crichton Browne, who heard Professor Brinton read this abstract in London, "Professor Brinton's synopsis is an able, lucid and logical paper."

Now that such distinguished men are interesting themselves in Keely's discoveries, there is no longer any danger of their being lost to science; nor to commerce, if his life is spared. The action of Dr. Pepper (Professor of the University of Pennsylvania) in January, 1891, gave Keely all the protection that he then needed in order to continue his researches up to the completion of his system.

Professor Dewar of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, whose Cambridge duties prevented him from keeping the engagement made for him to visit Mr. Keely's workshop in December, 1891, is now compelled to wait, until notified that Keely is in a position to demonstrate his theories, as it is desirable that he should not be interrupted in the critical work that is at present engrossing him, at times eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. But although Keely has not instructed anyone in his method of disintegrating water, to obtain the ether, which he uses as the medium of the polar force, he does not withhold the principle by which he obtains it. Sir John Herschell said, "There is a principle in the science of music that has yet to be discovered." Pythagoras taught that the principle which underlies the harmonies of music, underlies the motion of the heavenly bodies. It is this principle which Keely has discovered; but until he has utilized it in mechanics, he has nothing more to sell than Sir Isaac Newton had when he discovered gravity, as Professor Fitzgerald has said.

Discovery and invention are walking side by side in our age, the glorious scientific age of the world. Never before have they so linked themselves together, working for humanity; and it is but natural that those savants who have seen no demonstrations of the force Keely is handling should regard with apathy claims, which, if established, would sweep away like chaff before a whirlwind, some of the canons of their schools. In fact, this apathy is a great improvement upon the active persecution of the learned men who hurried Copernicus and Galileo to prison, and established the Inquisition to deal with heretics in science as well as heretics in religion. Commerce rushed Keely into a dungeon; science looking on in approval; notwithstanding that conjecture of the most celebrated modern member of its school supported Keely's teachings. Galileo was brought before the Inquisition; the tribunal pronounced him a deluded teacher and a lying heretic. They intended to subject him to the severest torture and death. Galileo was old, and felt that he could not endure such a terrible death. He knelt on the crucifix, with one hand on the Bible, and renounced all. When he arose, however, it is reported that he whispered to one of the attendants, "The earth does move for all that." Sir Isaac Newton has written of the possibility of discovering unknown forms of energy, in Nature, in these strong words: "For it is well known that bodies act upon one another by the attractions of gravity, magnetism and electricity, and these instances show the tenor and course of nature and make it not improbable that there may be more powers of attraction than these. For Nature very consonant and conformable to herself."

All progress of whatever kind would be put back, if it were in the power of bigots to arrest its triumphal march, as they have done in the past, but the evolution of the human race remains in the hands of the Infinite One, who never fails to open up new paths when the farther development of humanity requires it. All systems may be said to have descended from previous ones. "The ideas of one generation are the mysterious progenitors of those in the next. Each age is the dawn of its successor; and in the eternal advance of truth,

'There always is a rising sun,
The day is ever but begun.' "

Religious and scientific reformation have always gone hand in hand says Dr. Lowber. In fact, religious science is superior to any other science. As Christianity is the pure religion which contains the truth of all the rest, so it is the highest of the sciences, for it represents the development of the highest faculty of the human nature. Religion develops manhood as nothing else will, and Christianity represents the highest culture to which it is possible for man to attain. . . .

The system, now being evolved and worked out to demonstration by Keely, restores, by religious science, the faith of which materialistic science has been robbing the world, thus confirming Dr. Lowber's assertions that materialists will never be able to reduce all natural and spiritual forces to mere vibratory action of matter; and that the reformatory movement in philosophy, which characterizes our age, will continue until all the sciences point to God and immortality.

A writer in Galignani's Messenger, March 2, 1892, says: "When the nineteenth century closes, the most marvellous period ever known to man will be stored away in Time's granary. Can the twentieth century by any possibility be more productive, more fertile, more prolific of wonders than its predecessor? The face of the world has been changed; space has been annihilated; science puts 'a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.' We may be almost excused if we are tempted to believe that the serpent's promise is fulfilled in our persons, and we are as gods. Alas for human complacency! Perhaps our descendants a thousand years hence will look upon us as pigmies. Be that as it may, the past and the present are ours, with their achievement, and we believe we shall hand down to posterity a goodly heritage."

The New York Home Journal, of the week before Christmas, 1892, points out in its leader, the road on which this advance in the cause of humanity may be made. The writer, Mr. Howard Hinton, says: "The spirit of the salutation, 'A Merry Christmas,' lies in the desire that peace and goodwill shall reign among men, nor, if we may trust the intimations of the latest science, will this universality of good wishing be without avail in effecting its own accomplishment. For, as we are told by the wise men of science, every thought, every mental impulse of ours, sets in motion, in that realm of ether which it is said interfuses all coarser forms of matter, certain vibrations, corresponding in force to their cause, which have power to communicate themselves to other minds favourably conditioned to receive them, and so excite in them the like thoughts and impulses.

"And are not common observation and individual experience in accord with this suggestion of science? Do we not say at times that a certain thought is in the air, revealing itself contemporaneously to many widely separated minds without any recognizable means of communication? And do we not sometimes find a noble, or it may be an ignoble, impulse breaking out in a community with a suddenness and universality that would seem to transcend all the ordinary forms of the contact of mind with mind? Perhaps, too, this theory of vibratory communication through an ethereal medium may explain, in part at least, that 'Welt-Geist,' that 'Spirit of the Age,' of which the philosophers discourse so bravely.

"Again, there are times - if the experiences and observations of sensitive minds have any worth - when a general spirit of expectancy seems to be awakened, as if the world were on the eve of some new and epoch-making revelation of science, or some new enthusiasm of regenerative impulse. Are we not now, at this hour, in this mood of silent expectancy, thrilled with an indefinable awe of what the brooding life of the world is maturing for the sons of men? - sensitive, perhaps, to ethereal vibrations that have not yet accumulated force for expression in conscious thought or for the definite determination of our hearts' desires?

"This may be fanciful. It may be simply that we are beginning to perceive that physical science has reached a stage of development when some new and more central truth, some profounder generalization, is needed to give further impulse to its essential progress. It may be that we are becoming aware that the conditions of society are such that some new unifying motive, some new enthusiasm of humanity is needed for its salvation; and that therefore we wait in expectancy for what - knowing that there can be no let nor hindrance in the onward movement of life - we feel in our hearts must come.

"And yet does not this sense of expectancy seem to communicate itself from mind to mind by some other means than that of oral or written expression, and to touch with more or less force even minds that are free from these intellectual anticipations? Are there not certain intellects at the fore-front of the world's progress, and certain hearts filled above the ordinary measure with the love of mankind, who are thus centres of power, from whom spread ever widening circles of vibratory emanations that gradually involve all minds in a common thought and all hearts in a common purpose? 'Many men of many minds.' Yes, truly; but there is the one mind of humanity that thinks and thinks, and alone has the power to externalize its thought as part of the world's history, while all purely individual thought is blown finally into the abyss of the Absolute Nothing.

"But it is not only the great souls that thus move and shape the world. We are all, in various degrees, centres and distributors of the ethereal force, so far as we are in touch with its waves of vibration. We can all make our thoughts, if they are one with the thought of humanity, and our desires, if they are one with the heart of humanity, felt by our fellows in extending circles of effluence till finally the very clods of human kind know the stirrings of a new life and wake to the higher reality as from a dream.

"And if individually we can thus set in movement this ethereal medium, how must not this movement be quickened and extended when collectively we give utterance to some great thought and heart's desire, announcing it in song and prayer and merry-making. Hence the use and potency of the great festivals, the best and sweetest of which is the Christmas festival that we are now about to celebrate - the Evening Star of the year that is passing, the Morning Star of the new."

See Also


Alchemy - Most Sacred Science
Chronology
Dogmatism of Science
Keely and His Discoveries
Keely Supported by Eminent Men of Science
More Science
New Science
Occult Science
Part 25 - Keelys Wonderful Charts of Vibratory Etheric Science
Part 26 - Science of Sound Vibration Acoustics and Music
Progressive Evolution
Science
Vibratory Physics - True Science
08 - The Brain as applied to Vibratory Etheric Science
15.15 - Progressive Dissociation
15.15.05 - Progressive Association

Created by Dale Pond. Last Modification: Thursday November 24, 2022 03:31:53 MST by Dale Pond.