History tells us that Pythagoras would not allow himself to be called a sage, as his predecessors had done, but designated himself as a lover of wisdom; ardent in the pursuit of wisdom, he could not arrogate to himself the possession of wisdom. Yet, in our time, so unwilling are the searchers after wisdom to admit that there can be anything “new under the sun,” anything that they do not already know, that we find the number of men of science to be marvellously small who possess the first condition of success in scientific research, as set down by Herbert Spencer, very few who do not arrogate to themselves too much learning to permit them to admit the possibility of any new revelation of truth. In every age of our world, to meet the requirements of the age, in its step-by-step progress from barbarism to civilization and enlightenment, there have appeared extraordinary men, having knowledge far in advance of the era in which they lived. Of such, among many, were Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, Plato, and above these, Gautama the Buddha. But Moses, with all his knowledge of bacilli and bacteria, could not have met the requirements of any later age. The “eye for an eye” and “tooth for a tooth” period passed, and King David, who was so superior to other Kings of marauding tribes, that he was called “a man after God’s own heart,” satisfied his desire for punishment, to be meted out to his personal enemies, by prayer to God to “put out their eyes,” and to “let them fall from one wickedness to another.” This was a step in advance, for it gave those who had offended him a chance to escape all such summary proceedings as Moses had authorized. Still, the time was a long way off before a greater than Moses appeared to teach the world that such prayers are unavailing, that we can hate sin without hating the sinner, and that the Alpha and Omega of religion is to live in love and in the performance of duty. The Jewish prophets foretold the coming of Jesus of Nazareth; and the interpreters of Scripture are not alone now in having predicted that we are approaching a new dispensation, an age of harmony, which the twentieth century is to usher in, according to Biblical prophets. Renan has said that he envies those who shall live to see the wonders which the light of the new dawn that is breaking upon the world of science will unfold; that those who live in this coming age will know things of which we have no conception. Morley, in the spirit of prophecy, has said that in the near future a great intellectual giant will arise to bless our globe, who will surpass all other men of genius, reasoning that the representative of a larger age must be greater in genius than any predecessor. When the system is made known by which Keely dissociates the molecule and atoms by successive orders of vibration, proving two laws in physics as fallacious, we shall not hesitate to say that “the light of the new dawn” has now broken upon the world of science, and that the discoverer of the divisibility of the atom and of the absorption of energy in all molecular aggregation is the genius foretold by Morley. One quality of true genius is humility. “What a brain you must have!” said a man of science to Keely, not long since, “to have thought this all out.” This man of genius replied, “I was but the instrument of a Higher Power.” We are all instruments of a Higher Power, but the instruments chosen and set apart for any special work are always choice instruments which have been fitted or adapted to that work—the furnace perhaps seven times heated before the annealing was perfected.

It has been said that man enters upon life as a born idiot; and there are many who think that, in comparison with the possibilities which the future promises in the way of the physical evolution of the race, we are but as idiots still. Having reached our present stage of physical and mental development, the history of the civilization of our race cannot but lead reflecting men and women into the opinion that the work of evolution will become more purely psychical in future. After which, as a consequence, there can be no doubt that physical development will again take its turn; for, as Tennyson has said,—

Not the least among the many applications of Keely’s discoveries will be that which will prove, by demonstration, whether the chord of mass in a man and woman is near enough in the octaves to be beneficial, or so far apart as to be deteriorating.

The earlier processes of civilization belonged to an age of spontaneity, of unreflective productivity; an age that expressed itself in myths, created religious and organized social forms and habits of life in harmony with these spontaneous creations.

asks Barry Cornwall. But now that we have entered upon a more advanced age in thought, as in all things pertaining to discovery and practical application, or invention, a critical defining intellectual age, we must henceforth depend upon true science for our progress toward a higher enlightenment. Science, as will be seen, embraces religion, and must become, as Keely asserts, the religion of the world, when it is made known in all its glory and grandeur, sweeping away all foot-holds for scepticism, and spreading the knowledge of God, as a God of love, until this knowledge covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. As has been said, the word science, in its largest signification, includes intellectual achievement in every direction open to the mind, and the co-ordination of the results in a progressive philosophy of life. Philosophy has been defined as the science of causes or of first principles, and should be limited, almost exclusively, to the mental sciences. This is the field which Keely is exploring; the knowledge of the “hidden things” which he is bringing to the light is pure philosophical knowledge, in the widest acceptation of the term: the knowledge of effects as dependent on their causes.

Is it not a marvel of inspiration to have been able to cast line and plummet in such a sea of knowledge, to be able to demonstrate the power of that “sympathetic outreach” which, acting from our satellite upon the waters of our oceans and seas, through the vast space that separates it from our earth, lifts these waters, once in every twenty-four hours, from their beds; and, as gently as a mother would lay her infant on its couch, places them again where they rest?

God hath chosen, as Paul said, the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught things which are; that no flesh should glory in His presence. Christ said, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”

Truth never changes; but as new truths are revealed to us, to meet the necessities of progress (in our development from ignorance into the wisdom of angels), our point of view is ever changing, like the landscape which we look out upon from the swiftly gliding railway-carriage that bears us to our destination. As yet, “Earth has shown us only the title-page of a book” that we may, if we will, read its first pages here, and continue reading throughout eternity.

When Bulwer wrote of “a power that can replenish or invigorate life, heal and preserve, cure disease: enabling the physical organism to re-establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, thereby curing itself,” he foreshadowed one of Keely’s discoveries. “Once admit the possibility that the secrets of nature conceal forces yet undeveloped,” says the author of “Masollam,” “which may contain a cure for the evils by which it is now afflicted, and it is culpable timidity to shrink from risking all to discover that cure.” This author teaches that humanity at large has a claim higher than the claims of the blood-tie; that a love based upon no higher sentiment, makes us blind to the claims of duty; and this is why, when men or women are chosen to do a great work, for the human family, the ligaments which have bound them too exclusively to their own families, are cut and torn apart.

No greater work has ever been committed to a man to do than that which Keely’s discoveries are preparing the way for. Science was rocking the world into the sleep of death—for materialism is death—its votaries declaring atoms to be eternally active, and the intellect which had discovered the existence of these atoms to end with the life of the molecular body. On this subject Simmons has written:—

“Shall impalpable light speed so swiftly and safely through infinite space—and the mind that measures its speed, and makes it tell its secrets in the spectroscope, be buried with the body? Shall mere breath send its pulsations through the wire and, after fifty miles of silence, sound again in speech or music in a far-off city, or stamp itself in the phonograph to sound again in far-off centuries—and the soul that has wrought these wonders pass to eternal silence? Shall physical force persist for ever—and this love, which is the strongest force in nature, perish? It would seem wiser to trust that the infinite law, which is everywhere else so true, will take care of this human longing which it has made, and fulfil it in eternal safety. We make no argument, but we cannot ignore all the intimations of immortality. Cyrus Field tells us of the night when, after his weary search for that long-lost cable two miles deep in mid-ocean, the grapnel caught it and, trembling with suspense, they drew it to the deck, hardly trusting their eyes, but creeping to feel it and make sure it was there. And when, as they watched, a spark soon came from a finger in England, showing that the line was sound, strong men wept and rockets rent the midnight darkness. We and our world float like a ship on the mysterious sea of being, in whose abysses the grapnel of science touches no solid line of logic connecting us to another land. But now and then there come from convictions, stronger than cables, flashes of light bidding us trust that our dead share in divine immortality, and are safe in the arms of Infinite Law and Eternal Love.”

Keely’s demonstrations suggest “the missing link” between matter and mind, the solid line of logic which may yet be laid in “the widening dominion of the human mind over the forces of nature.” In “Keely’s Secrets,” No. 9, Vol. I. of the T.P.S., some of the elements of the possibilities resulting to the world from Keely’s discoveries were set down. War will become an impossibility; and, as Browning’s poem of “Childe Roland” forecasts, “The Dark Tower” of unbelief will crumble at the bugle-blast which levels its walls to their foundation, revealing such a boundless region of research as the mind of man could never conceive were he not the offspring of the Creator. 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 them present; whom he answered, “I have discovered so little, in comparison with what remains to be discovered, that I cannot call myself a discoverer.” One of the professors present took Keely by the hand and said, “You are a great discoverer.”

All thoughtful men who have witnessed the latest developments of the force displayed by Keely, in his researching experiments for aerial navigation, are made to realize that more through his discoveries, than by the progressive development of the altruistic element in humanity (dreamed of by speculative optimists), our race will be brought into that dispensation of peace and harmony, anticipated by “seers” and foretold by prophets as the millennial age. It requires no great measure of foresight to discern, as a natural consequence of the control and application of this force in art and commerce, that ameliorated condition of the masses which will end the mighty conflict now so blindly being waged between capital and labour.1 And to the eye of faith, it is not difficult to look beyond the intervening Æons of centuries, to the literal fulfilment of the promise of that millennial period when men shall live in brotherly love together; making heaven of earth as even now it is in our power to do if we live up to Christ’s command: “Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, that do ye also unto them.” Had some of the dogmatic scientists of this age followed this command, Keely’s discovery might have been sooner known in all its importance, protecting him, as their acknowledgment would have done, from the persecutions that have operated so detrimentally against the completion of researches which should have been finished before any attempt was made to apply the discovery to commercial ends. No scientist who witnessed the production of the force, displayed by Keely, in a proper spirit, but would have been welcomed by him to further experiments in its operations, as were Professor Leidy and Dr. Wilcox in 1889. So, in truth, those who printed their edicts against Keely about ten years since are, in part, responsible for the loss to the world which this long delay has occasioned. Still, in view of the acknowledged fact that not one of the great laws which science now accepts as incontrovertible truths, but was vehemently denied by the scientists of its time, declared to be a priori impossible; its discoverers and supporters denounced as fools or charlatans, and even investigation refused as being a waste of time and thought; it would be too much to expect from the thinkers of this age any greater degree of readiness to investigate claims, that threatened to demolish their cherished notions, than characterized their predecessors.

But the time was not ripe for the disclosure: “God never hurries.” He counts the centuries as we count the seconds, and the nearer that we approach to the least comprehension of His “underlying purpose,” the better fitted are we to do the work He assigns us, while waiting patiently for our path of duty to be made clear to us; like the labourer, in Tolstoi’s Confession, who completed the work that had been laid out for him, without understanding what the result would be, and unable to judge whether his master had planned well. If the prophecies of Scripture are fulfilled, the twentieth century will usher in the commencement of that age in which men and women will become aware of the great powers which they inherit, and of which Oliphant has said that we are so ignorant that we wholly fail to see them, though they sweep like mighty seas throughout all human nature.

What is the character of these powers which Oliphant has written so eloquently concerning? Can we not form an inference from St. Paul’s most precious and deeply scientific context, in which he introduced the quotation from the Greek poet Aratus, who was well known in Athens, having studied there?

If we are the offspring of God, how rich must be our inheritance! If we are the children of God, why do we not trust our Father? But this is not science! A philosopher has said that if ever a human being needed divine pity, it is the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods. Scientists will have to admit, in the light of Keely’s discoveries, that the sensibility and intelligence, which confer upon us our self-directive power, do not have their origin in our molecular structures. That they take their first beginning in matter is one of the most inadequate conceptions that was ever proposed for scientific belief. If it were so, we could not claim to be the offspring of God, who is the Fountain of all life, the ever living, from whom, as “His very kind,” we inherit this self-directive power; not the molecular bodies which are our clothing. God is our Father. The material structure is the mother and nurse. The hypothesis that there are no beings in the universe but those which possess molecular bodies, is the conjecture of a mind that has no conception of the illimitable power of the Almighty. The link, which connects mind with matter, gives us a higher conception of the Deity. Keely places it in the mind flow, the result of the sixth subdivision. When we are done with “the things of Time,” and not before, we are ready to rise out of our molecular bondage into the freedom we inherit as heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ of sonship with the Father.

The problem of the origin of life 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. Disturbance of equilibrium is the prime mover, aggregator and disperser of all forces that exist in nature. The force of the mind on matter is a grand illustration of the power of the finer over the crude, of the etheric over the molecular. If the differential forces of the brain could become equated, eternal perpetuity would be the result. Under such a condition the physical would remain free of disintegration or decomposition. But the law, laid out by the Great Master, which governs the disturbance of equilibrium, making the crude forms of matter subservient to the finer or higher forms, forbidding anything molecular or terrestrial to assimilate with the high etheric, the law that has fixed the planets in their places, is an unknown law to the finite mind, comprehended only by the Infinite One ….

Some of our men of science once settled the problem of the origin of life to their own satisfaction, only to learn that “speculation is not science;” for a substance which, when dissolved, crystallizes as gypsum, cannot produce vital force; and it is like groping among the bones of a graveyard to look for spontaneous generation in a shining heap of jelly on the floor of the sea.

When our learned men are forced to admit that “all motion is thought,” that “all nature is the language of One in whom we live, and are moved, and have our being,” the attempts to evolve life out of chemical elements will cease; the Mosaic records will no longer be denied, which tell us that the Creator’s law for living organisms is that each plant seeds, and each animal bears, after its kind; not that each seeds and bears after another kind. The doctrine of evolution, as made known to us in Geology, is a fundamental truth; proving that “there has been a plan, glorious in its scheme, perfect in system, progressing through unmeasured ages, and looking ever toward man and a spiritual end.”

The Rev. John Andrew, in his “Thoughts on the Evolution Theory of Creation,” mentions that Haeckel gives the pedigree of man from primeval moneron in twenty-two stages. Stage twenty is the man-like ape; stage twenty-one is the ape-like man; stage twenty-two is the man; but he confesses that the twenty-first stage—the ape-like man—is entirely wanting in all the records.

There is no missing link in the evolution theory, as laid down in Keely’s pure philosophy. Inasmuch as the Father of all is Himself a Spiritual Being, cosmical law leads us to expect that the type of created being, His offspring, 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 His spiritual nature. The corner-stone of this philosophy is 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. Nor is this a new truth. According to Diogenes LaËrtius, Thales taught that souls are the motive forces of the universe. Empedocles affirms that spiritual forces move the visible world. Virgil asserted that mind animates and moves the world; that the spiritual realm is the soul of the universe. The universe is not a mass of dead matter, says Gilbert (in his work, “De Magnate”), but is pervaded with this soul, this living principle, this unseen cause of all visible phenomena, underlying all movements in the earth beneath and in the heavens above. 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: and that God was not transiently present in nature—that is in a mere creative moment; nor has He 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 and Aratus and Spinoza declared. As certainly as the unborn infant’s life is that of the mother, so is it divinely true that somehow God’s life includes ours; and we shall understand the nature of that relationship when, in due time, we have been “born again” into the life of the spirit. “The economy of creation is not regarded in this philosophy as a theory of development all in one direction; 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—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 altogether denied.” Science admits that nature works with dual force, though at rest she is a unit. “Nature is one eternal circle.” Keely’s discoveries prove that the doctrine of the Trinity should be set down as an established canon of science—the Trinity of force. All nature’s sympathetic streams—cerebellic, gravital, electric and magnetic—are made up of triple currents. The ancients understood this dogma in a far deeper sense than modern theology has construed it. The great and universal Trinity of cause, motion and matter—or of will, thought and manifestation—was known to the Rosicrucians as prima materia. Paracelsus states that each of these three is also the other two; for, as nothing can possibly exist without cause, matter and energy—that is, spirit, matter and soul (the ultimate cause of existence being that it exists), we may therefore look upon all forms of activity as being the action of the universal or Divine will operating upon and through the ether, as the skilled artificer uses his tools to accomplish his designs; making the comparison in all reverence.

“The existence of an intelligent Creator, a personal God, can to my mind, almost be proved from chemistry,” writes Edison; and George Parsons Lathrop, in commenting upon Edison’s belief, says:—“Surely it is a circumstance calculated to excite reflection, and to cause a good deal of satisfaction, that this keen and penetrating mind, so vigorously representing the practical side of American intelligence—the mind of a remarkable exponent of applied science, and of a brilliant and prolific inventor who has spent his life in dealing with the material part of the world—should so confidently arrive at belief in God through a study of those media that often obscure the perception of spiritual things.” Edison, it seems, like Keely, has never been discouraged by the obstacles which he meets with, in his researches, nor even inclined to be hopeless of ultimate success.

Unlike Keely, Edison through all his years of experimental research has never once made a discovery. All the work of this great and successful inventor has been deductive, and the results achieved by him have been simply those of pure invention. Like Keely he constructs a theory, and works on its lines until he finds it untenable; then, he at once discards it and forms another theory. In connection with the electric light, he evolved or constructed three thousand successive theories; each one reasonable and apparently likely to be true; yet, only in two cases was he able to prove by experiment that his theories were correct. Of such a nature is the “dead-work” which all researchers on scientific principles must toil through to attain success.

They must keep their minds open to every suggestion or idea, no matter how fanciful it may seem to others, and they must never let go their hold of it until it has been tested in all its possibilities. The same words which Lathrop uses, in describing Edison’s characteristics, are equally applicable to Keely, who, in addition to his native endowment of a genius for science and mechanics, brings to bear vast patience in logical deduction, careful calculation, unlimited experiment, a ceaseless industry, and a persistence which refuses to be discouraged.

Edison has said that he does not philosophize. Like General Grant, he is a man of action. When asked what theory he held upon a subject under discussion, General Grant replied, “I never theorize: when there is anything to be done, I do it.”2 Edison is always doing something which the public can see and appreciate, but, unlike Keely, he has no system to work out and transmute into the pure philosophy which is now revealing to the world “the further link in the chain of causation,” “the cause of the cause,” which hitherto has rather been assumed than demonstrated.

“If we believe,” says Professor Sir G. G. Stokes, “that what are called the natural sciences spring from the same supreme source as those which are concerned with morals and Natural Theology in general, we may expect to find broad lines of analogy between the two; and thus it may conceivably happen that the investigations, which belong to natural science, may here and there afford us hints with respect even to the moral sciences, with which at first sight they might appear to have no connection. And if such are to be found, perhaps they are more likely to be indicated by one whose studies have lain mainly in the direction of those natural sciences than by one whose primary attention has been devoted to moral subjects.”

Mr. Keely’s first discovery of an unknown force and the releasing of an unknown energy seemed to be by accident; and most certainly no one could then have foreseen that his researches in physical science would lead him on step by step, and very slow steps they have been, to such important findings. In the pursuit of physical science he encountered paradoxes and anomalies, the study of which led him on to fresh discoveries whereby he has been able to extend the boundary of ascertained truth and separate the wheat of science from the chaff.

The late Dr. Macvicar said when he considered how difficult he had found it to believe that such insight into nature as his views imply is possible to be attained, he was not so unreasonable as to expect that others would, in his time, regard them even as probable, much less as proved. He expressed himself as content with the private enjoyment which these views imparted to himself, “especially as that enjoyment is not merely the gratification of a chemical curiosity, but attaches to a much larger field of thought.” One of the points to which he refers, as possessing great value to his own mind, is the place which his investigation assigns to material nature in the universe of being. He says that it is much the fashion in the present day to regard matter and force, more shortly matter, as all in all. But, according to the view of things which has presented itself to both of these men, “matter comes out rather as a precipitate in the universal ether, determined by a mathematical necessity; a grand and beautiful cloud-work in the realm of light, bounded on both sides by a world of spirits; on the upper and anterior side, by the great Creator Himself, and the hierarchy of spirits to which He awarded immediate existence; and on the lower and posterior side, by that world of spirits of which the material body is the mother and nurse.” Macvicar says the hypothesis that there are no beings in the universe but those which possess a molecular structure, and that sensibility and intelligence take their first beginnings in such structures, is one of the most inadequate conceptions that was ever proposed for scientific belief. Science is not only very blind, but glories in her blindness. She gropes among the dead seeking the origin of life, instead of going to the Fountain of all life, the Ever Living, as Dr. Macvicar and Keely have done.

In theorizing on the philosophy of planetary suspension Mr. Keely writes: “As regards planetary volume, we would ask in a scientific point of view—How can the immense difference of volume in the planets exist without disorganizing the harmonious action that has always characterized them? I can only answer this question properly by entering into a progressive synthesis, starting on the rotating etheric centres that were fixed by the Creator with their attractive or accumulative power. If you ask what power it is that gives to each etheric atom its inconceivable velocity of rotation, or introductory impulse, I must answer that no finite mind will ever be able to conceive what it is. The philosophy of accumulation,” assimilation, Macvicar calls it, “is the only proof that such a power has been given. The area, if we can so speak of such an atom, presents to the attractive or magnetic, the elective or propulsive, all the receptive force and all the antagonistic force that characterizes a planet of the largest magnitude; consequently, as the accumulation goes on, the perfect equation remains the same. When this minute centre has once been fixed, the power to rend it from its position would necessarily have to be as great as to displace the most immense planet that exists. When this atomic neutral centre is displaced, the planet must go with it. The neutral centre carries the full load of any accumulation from the start, and remains the same, for ever balanced in the eternal space.”

Mr. Keely illustrates his idea of “a neutral centre” in this way:—We will imagine that, after an accumulation of a planet of any diameter—say, 20,000 miles more or less, for the size has nothing to do with the problem—there should be a displacement of all the material, with the exception of a crust 5000 miles thick, leaving an intervening void between this crust and a centre of the size of an ordinary billiard ball, it would then require a force as great to move this small central mass as it would to move the shell of 5000 miles thickness. Moreover, this small central mass would carry the load of this crust for ever, keeping it equi-distant; and there could be no opposing power, however great, that could bring them together. The imagination staggers in contemplating the immense load which bears upon this point of centre, where weight ceases. This is what we understand by a neutral centre.

Again, Mr. Keely, in explanation of the working of his engine, writes:—In the conception of any machine heretofore constructed, the medium for inducing a neutral centre has never been found. If it had, the difficulties of perpetual-motion seekers would have ended, and this problem would have become an established and operating fact. It would only require an introductory impulse of a few pounds, on such a device, to cause it to run for centuries. In the conception of my vibratory engine, I did not seek to attain perpetual motion; but a circuit is formed that actually has a neutral centre, which is in a condition to be vivified by my vibratory ether, and while under operation, by said substance, is really a machine that is virtually independent of the mass (or globe), and it is the wonderful velocity of the vibratory circuit which makes it so. Still, with all its perfection, it requires to be fed with the vibratory ether to make it an independent motor ….

Alluding to his illustration of a neutral centre, Mr. Keely says:—The man who can, even in a simple way, appreciate this vast problem has been endowed by the Creator with one of the greatest gifts which He can bestow upon a mortal. It is well known that all structures require a foundation in strength according to the weight of the mass they have to carry, but the foundations of the universe rest on a vacuous point far more minute than a molecule; in fact, to express this truth properly, on an inter-etheric point, which requires an infinite mind to understand. To look down into the depths of an etheric centre is precisely the same as it would be to search into the broad space of heaven’s ether to find the end; with this difference, that one is the positive field, while the other is the negative field ….

Again, Mr. Keely gives some suggestive thoughts as follows:—In seeking to solve the great problems which have baffled me, from time to time, in my progressive researches, I have often been struck by the fact that I have, to all seeming, accidentally tripped over their solution. The mind of man is not infinite, and it requires an infinite brain to evolve infinite positions. My highest power of concentration failed to attain the results which, at last, seeming accident revealed. God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; and if He has chosen me as the tool to carve out certain positions, what credit have I? None; and, though it is an exalting thought that He has singled me out for a specific work, I know that the finest tool is of no value without a manipulator. It is the artist who handles it that makes it what it is. Indifference to the marvels which surround us is a deep reproach. If we have neither leisure nor inclination to strive to unravel some of the mysteries of nature, which task to the utmost the highest order of human intelligence, we can at least exercise and improve our intellectual faculties by making ourselves acquainted with the operation of agencies already revealed to man; learning, by the experience of the past, to be tolerant of all truth; remembering that one of Nature’s agencies, known once as of use only in awakening men’s minds to an awful sense of the Creator’s power, has now become a patient slave of man’s will, rushing upon his errands with the speed of light around the inhabited globe ….

In comparing the tenuity of the atmosphere with that of the etheric flows, obtained by Mr. Keely from his invention for dissociating the molecules of air by vibration, he says, It is as platina to hydrogen gas. Molecular separation of air brings us to the first subdivision only; inter-molecular, to the second; atomic, to the third; inter-atomic, to the fourth; etheric, to the fifth; and inter-etheric, to the sixth subdivision, or positive association with luminiferous ether. In my introductory argument I have contended that this is the vibratory envelope of all atoms. In my definition of atom I do not confine myself to the sixth subdivision, where this luminiferous ether is developed in its crude form, as far as my researches prove. I think this idea will be pronounced, by the physicists of the present day, a wild freak of the imagination. Possibly, in time, a light may fall upon this theory that will bring its simplicity forward for scientific research. At present I can only compare it to some planet in a dark space, where the light of the sun of science has not yet reached it ….

I assume that sound, like odour, is a real substance of unknown and wonderful tenuity, emanating from a body where it has been induced by percussion, and throwing out absolute corpuscles of matter—inter-atomic particles—with a velocity of 1120 feet per second, in vacuo 20,000. The substance which is thus disseminated is a part and parcel of the mass agitated, and if kept under this agitation continuously would, in the course of a certain cycle of time, become thoroughly absorbed by the atmosphere; or, more truly, would pass through the atmosphere to an elevated point of tenuity corresponding to the condition of subdivision that governs its liberation from its parent body. The sounds from vibratory forks, set so as to produce etheric chords, while disseminating their compound tones permeate most thoroughly all substances that come under the range of their atomic bombardment. The clapping of a bell in vacuo liberates these atoms with the same velocity and volume as one in the open air; and were the agitation of the bell kept up continuously for a few millions of centuries, it would thoroughly return to its primitive element. If the chamber were hermetically sealed, and strong enough, the vacuous volume surrounding the bell would be brought to a pressure of many thousands of pounds to the square inch, by the tenuous substance evolved. In my estimation, sound truly defined is the disturbance of atomic equilibrium, rupturing actual atomic corpuscles; and the substance thus liberated must certainly be a certain order of etheric flow. Under these conditions is it unreasonable to suppose that, if this flow were kept up, and the body thus robbed of its element, it would in time disappear entirely? All bodies are formed primitively from this high tenuous ether, animal, vegetable and mineral, and they only return to their high gaseous condition when brought under a state of differential equilibrium.

As regards odour, continues Mr. Keely, we can only get some definite idea of its extreme and wondrous tenuity by taking into consideration that a large area of atmosphere can be impregnated for a long series of years from a single grain of musk; which, if weighed after that long interval, will be found to be not appreciably diminished. The great paradox attending the flow of odorous particles is that they can be held under confinement in a glass vessel! Here is a substance of much higher tenuity than the glass that holds it, and yet it cannot escape. It is as a sieve with its meshes large enough to pass marbles, and yet holding fine sand which cannot pass through; in fact, a molecular vessel holding an atomic substance. This is a problem that would confound those who stop to recognize it. But infinitely tenuous as odour is, it holds a very crude relation to the substance of subdivision that governs a magnetic flow (a flow of sympathy, if you please to call it so). This subdivision comes next to sound, but is above sound. The action of the flow of a magnet coincides somewhat to the receiving and distributing portion of the human brain, giving off at all times a depreciating ratio of the amount received. It is a grand illustration of the control of mind over matter, which gradually depreciates the physical till dissolution takes place. The magnet on the same ratio gradually loses its power and becomes inert. If the relations that exist between mind and matter could be equated, and so held, we would live on in our physical state eternally, as there would be no physical depreciation. But this physical depreciation leads, at its terminus, to the source of a much higher development—viz., the liberation of the pure ether from the crude molecular; which in my estimation is to be much desired. Thus God moves in a simple way His wonders to perform ….”

When my theoretical exposÉ is finished and brought out, I shall be ready for the attacks that will be made upon it, and able to demonstrate what I assert. One would think that modern physicists, knowing the lesson taught by the disastrous overthrow of the primitive system of astronomy, would be somewhat cautious in reference to jeering at any announcement of scientific research, however preposterous, without first carefully weighing its claims. It is my belief that there are many to-day who occupy positions as professors in our colleges and in universities abroad, who for bigotry and ignorance can discount the opinion of the religionists of the dark ages; but those to whom has been given mental force to boldly investigate new truths in science may congratulate themselves upon the fact that there are investigators of truth who are not afraid to acknowledge its claims, in whatever garb it may appear, welcoming whatever new message it may have to deliver ….

Professor RÜcker, in closing his address read at the meeting of the British Association in 1891, said:—

“In studies such as these we are passing from the investigation of the properties of ordinary matter to those of the ether, which may perhaps be the material of which matter is composed. We may some day be able to control and use it, as we now control and use steam.”

For nearly fifteen years, Keely constructed engines of various models, with this end in view, before he discovered that it is impossible to use the ether in any other way than as a medium for the energy that he is now experimenting with; and which he defines, in its present operation, as a condition of sympathetic vibration associated with the polar stream positively and negatively.

Should Keely succeed in controlling and directing this subtle energy, we shall then be able to “hook our machinery on to the machinery of nature.” A writer in the Nineteenth Century says,—“Whether the molecules or particles of what we know as matter are independent matter, or whether they are ether-whirlpools; we know that they keep up an incessant hammering one on another, and thus on everything in space. Professor Crookes has shown that the forces contained in this bombardment are immensely greater than any forces we have yet handled …. It has also been found that the vibrations keep time in some unknown way with the vibrations of solid matter.”

Thus it is seen that Keely is not the only man of science who is trying to effect a passage over the untrodden wild lying between acoustics and music: “that Siberian bog where whole armies of scientific musicians and musical men of science have sunk, without filling it up.” Helmholtz, it is said, has, by a series of daring strides, made a passage for himself; while Keely stands alone in seeking to build a solid causeway; over which all the nations of the earth may pass in safety, to the “new order of things,” that lies in this “land of promise.”