Those who occupy themselves with the mysteries of molecular vibration bear the victorious wreaths of successful discovery, and show that every atom teems with wonders not less incomprehensible than those of the vast and bright far-off suns. - Reynolds.
"The famous Keely motor, which has been hovering the horizon of success for a decade, is but an attempt to repeat in an engine of metal the play of forces which goes on at the inmost focus of life, the human will, or in the cosmic spaces occupied only by the ultimate atoms. The engineer with his mallet shooting the cannon-ball by means of a few light taps on a receiver of depolarized atoms of water is only re-enacting the role of the will when with subtle blows it sets the nerve aura in vibration, and this goes on multiplying in force and sweep of muscle until the ball is thrown from the hand with a power proportionate to the one-man machinery. The inventor Keely seeks a more effective machinery; a combination of thousands of will-forces in a single arm, as it were. But he keeps the same vibrating principle, and the power in both cases is psychical. That is, in its last analysis." - [George Perry]
"One eternal and immutable law embraces all things and all times." - [Cicero see 14.32 - Law of Assimilation]
When the truth is made known, it will unwarp the complications of man's manufacture; and show everything in nature to be very simple. - [David Sinclair, author of A New Creed. - Digby, Long & Co.]
A GRADUAL change seems to be taking place in the minds of the well-informed in reference to the discoverer of, and experimenter with, etheric force - John Worrell Keely. - which will in time remove the burden of accusations from him to those who are responsible for the load which he has had to carry.
Those who know the most of Mr. Keely's philosophy, and of his invention to apply this new force to mechanics, are the most sanguine as to his ultimate success. They say he is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind, and sublime enough in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at last before the world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the world:- that the hour demanded his coming - that was not born for his great work before his appointed time. They predict that he will, with the hammer of science, demolish the idols of science; that the demonstration of the truth of his system will humble the pride of those scientists who are materialists, by revealing some of the mysteries which lie behind the world of matter; proving that physical disintegration affects only the mode, and not the existence, of individual consciousness.
The discovery of vibratory etheric force, even though never utilized in mechanics, brings us upon the bridge which divides physical science from spiritual science, and opens up domains the grandeur and glory of which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the mind of man to conceive. The few who understand the nature and the extent of Keely's vast researches say that he is about to give a new philosophy to the world, which will upset all other systems; they say that he knows what force is; and that he seeks to know what impels and fixes the neutral centre, which attracts to itself countless correlations of matter, until it becomes a world; that he is approaching the origin of life, of memory, and of death; and more, that he knows how ignorant he still is: possessing the humility of a little child who knows nothing of science. Such a philosopher deserves the appreciation and the encouragement of all who hold Truth as the one thing most worth living for - and dieing for, if need be.
What is etheric force? the inquirer asks. It is the soul of nature. It is the primal force from which all the forces of nature spring.
Fichte writes: "The will is the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. I stand between two opposite worlds; the one visible, in which the act alone avails; the other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. I am an effective in both these worlds."
Newton said that this subtle ether penetrates through all, even the hardest bodies, and is concealed in their substance. Through the strength and activity of this spirit, bodies attract each other, and adhere together when brought into contact. In it, and by it, distance is annihilated, and all objects touch each other. Through this "life spirit" light also flows, and is refracted and reflected, and warms bodies. Through it we are connected in sympathy with all other souls, and all the objects of nature, even to all the heavenly bodies. The word ether is from "aiqw." to light up or kindle. According to Pythagoras and all the oldest philosophers, it was viewed as a divine luminous principle or substance, which permeates all things, and, at the same time, contains all things. They called it the astral light. The Germans call it the "Weltgeist," the breath of the Father, the Holy Ghost, the life-principle.
The sheet-anchor of Keely's philosophy is, in the words of Hooker, one power, ever present, ever ruling, neglecting not the least, not quailing before the greatest: the lowest not excluded from its care, nor the highest exempted from its dominion. A power that presents itself to us as a force: the one force in nature thrilling to its deepest heart, and flowing forth responsive to every call. A power which does all things, and assumes all forms; which has been called electricity in the storm, heat in the fire, magnetism in the iron bar, light in the taper, but ever one grand reality, one all-embracing law. Cosmical law at the fountain-head, suggesting that, as the Creator Himself is only one in substance, so also, primarily, will the creation be, to which He awards existence. The extreme simplicity of this deduction, made as it is in the face of all the variety and multiplicity of individualized objects that there are in the universe, seems to involve many difficulties. But, as Macvicar writes, different beings, whether classes or individuals, are known to us, not by any difference in their substance, but only by differences in their attributes. And since being or substance, and power or potentiality, differ from each other only in conception, only as the statical differs from the dynamical, it is reasonable, nay, in the circumstances it is alone legitimate, to suppose that it is not in virtue of some absolute difference in substance (for none appears), but only from differences in the quantity or intensity of substance or power in the individual, and from the variety of their build, that different individuals display such different potentialities or endowments as they do display; and come to be justly classified as they are into various orders of being. Inasmuch as the Author of all is Himself a Spiritual Being, cosmical law leads us to expect that the type of created being shall be spirit also. Nor can Being in any object be so attenuated or so far removed from Him who filleth all in all but it must surely retain an aura of the spiritual nature. This, then, is the corner-stone of Keely's philosophy-one power; one law; order and method reigning throughout creation; spirit controlling matter; as the divine order and law of creation, that the spiritual should govern the material, - that the whole realm of matter should be under the dominion of the world of spirit.
When Keely's discovery has been made known to scientists, a new field of research will be opened up in the realm of Philosophy, where all eternal, physical, and metaphysical truths are correlated; for Philosophy has been well defined by Willcox as the science of that human thought which contains all human knowledges. He who possesses the structure of philosophic wisdom built up of all knowledges - grand and sublime - has a mental abode wherein to dwell which other men have not. Dr. Macvicar says:- "The nearer we ascend to the fountain-head of being and of action, the more magical must everything inevitably become, for that fountain-head is pure volition. And pure volition, as a cause, is precisely what is meant by magic; for by magic is merely meant a mode of producing a phenomenon without mechanical appliances - that is, without that seeming continuity of resisting parts and that leverage which satisfy our muscular sense and our imagination, and bring the phenomenon into the category of what we call 'the natural' - that is, the sphere of the elastic, the gravitating, the sphere into which the vis inertiae is alone admitted." In Keely's philosophy, as in Dr. Macvicar's "Sketch of a Philosophy," the economy of creation is not regarded as a theory of development all in one direction, which is the popular supposition, but as a cycle in which, after development and as its fruit, the last term gives again the first. Herein is found the link by which the law of continuity is maintained throughout, and the cycle of things is made to be complete: - the link which is missing in the popular science of the day, with this very serious consequence, that, to keep the break out of sight, the entire doctrine of spirit and the spiritual world is ignored or denied altogether.
Joseph Cook affirms that, "as science progresses, it draws nearer in all its forms to the proof of the spiritual origin of force-that is, of the divine immanence in natural law. God was not transiently present in nature-that is, in a mere creative moment; nor has He now left the world in a state of orphanage, bereft of a deific influence and care, but He is immanent in nature, as the Apostle Paul affirmed: In Him we live, and are moved, and have our being; as certainly as the unborn infant's life is that of the mother, so it is divinely true that somehow God's life includes ours."
The philosophy of Keely sets forth the universal ether (denied by scientists in the last century to suit their views of the celestial spaces, which they declared to be a vacuum) as the medium by which our lives are included in God's life; demonstrating how it is that we live because He lives, and shall live as long as He exists; how our being is comprised in His, so that if we could suppose the divine life to come to an end, ours would terminate with it as surely-to compare great things with small-as a stream would cease to flow when its fountain is dried up; teaching that our existence may be distinct, but never separate from His, and that in the hidden depth of the soul there is somewhere a point where our individual being comes in contact with God, and is identified with the infinite life.
"If extreme vicissitudes of belief on the part of men of science are evidence of uncertainly, it may be affirmed that, of all kinds of knowledge, none is more uncertain than science." The existence of the universal ether is now affirmed again, and must be affirmed, as one of the most elementary facts in physical science. Sir J. F. Herschel asserts that, supposing the other to be analogous to other elastic media, an amount of it equal in quantity of matter to that which is contained in a cubic inch of air (which weighs about one-third of a grain), if enclosed in a cube of one inch in the side, would exert a bursting power of upwards of seventeen billions of pounds on each side of the cube, while common air exerts only fifteen pounds. It should not, therefore, be surprising to those who have witnessed the manifestations of etheric force, as exhibited by Keely in producing a pressure ranging from 8000 to 30,000 pounds to the square inch, when modern scientists support Herschel's views, as they do, unhesitatingly; rather should they be surprised at the marvelous perseverance which has kept Keely, in the face of every discouragement, true to his inspired mission; conquering every difficulty, surmounting every obstacle, and turning his mistakes into stepping-stones which have helped him to attain the goal he has, from the start, aimed at reaching-viz. the utilizing in mechanics of the power he discovered many years ago. Before the grandeur and glory of such an attainment, all things had to give way. Like a General who sees the fortress looming up in the distance which he must take to complete his victory, his horse's hoofs trampling the dead and dieing in his path, so has this discoverer and inventor been unmindful of all that lay between him and his goal. Taking for his key-note of his experiments, in applying inter-molecular vapour to the running of an engine, that all the movements of elastic elements are rhythmical, he has had problems to solve which needed the full measure of inspiration he has received before he could attain that degree of success which he has now reached.
Mr. Keely realizes the full extent of the difficulties which he yet has to contend with in obtaining continuity of action, though, with his sanguine temperament, anticipating near and complete success. To quote from his writings:- "The mathematics of vibratory etheric science, both pure and applied, require long and arduous research. It seems to me that no man's life is sufficient, with the most intense application, to cover more than the introductory branch. The theory of elliptic functions, the calculus of probabilities, are but as pigmies in comparison to a science which requires the utmost tension of the human mind to grasp. But let us wait patiently for the light that will come - that is even now dawning."
All we can dream of loveliness within,
All ever hoped for by a will intense,
This shall one day be palpable to sense,
And earth at last become to heaven akin.
These four lines, from Robert Browning's sonnet on Keely's discoveries, read like an inspired insight into that "Age of Harmony," which interpreters of scripture prophecies anticipate the twentieth century will usher into our world; recalling Shakespeare's seeming knowledge, before Harvey's discovery even, of the circulation of the blood. "All truth is inspired."
See Also
Chronology
fountain-head
God
Keely and His Discoveries
Latent
One Force
scalar
Source