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Ramsay - Ramsay's interest in Keely's researches

musical vibrations in both acute and grave harmonics, generate a concentration of mighty action, an ever-outgoing of Nature's own power, so that she, by her own laws of vibratory motion, can reproduce and perpetually maintain outgoing power of action; and, again, play in perfect harmony her grand fuguewith these tremendous all-resolving forces in that high and hidden and silent region in which Mr. Keely is experimenting.
     The sympathy of one thing with another, and of one part of a thing with another part of it, arises from the principle of unity. For example, a string requires to be uniform and homogenous to have harmonics producing a fine quality of tone by the sweet blendings of sympathy; if it be not so, the tone may be miserable ... You say you wish I were in touch with Mr. Keely; so do I myself ... I look upon numbers very much as being the language which tells out the doings of Nature. Mr. Keely begins with sounds, whose vibrations can be known and registered. I presume that the laws of ratio, position, duality, and continuity, all the laws which go to mould the plastic air by elastic bodies into the sweetness of music, as we find them operative in the low silence of oscillating pendulums, will also be found ruling and determining all in the high silence of interior vibrations which hold together or shake asunder the combinations which we call atoms and ultimate elements, but which may really be buildings of wondrous complexity occupying different ranges of place and purpose between the visible cosmos and Him who built and evermore buildeth all things. The same laws, though operating in different spheres, make the likenesses of things in motion greater than the differences.

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     MacVicar and Keely agree in the cosmical law being that of sympathetic association, or, under MacVicar's select name for it, assimilation, the watch-word and the law of Creation.

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     It is a remarkable fact that the numbers for the lengths of strings producing the major scale are the number of the vibration of the notes of the minor scale; for example, string-length as 26 2/3 will give the vibrations for

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Created by Dale Pond. Last Modification: Friday December 4, 2020 06:33:23 MST by Dale Pond.