How
was the quartz disintegrated ? —That is one of Keely's
secrets.[Page
4]
The
disintegration of rock is, however, a very small and
accidental effect of that tremendous force that lies
behind the "secret." Indeed, that particular
application of the force was a chance discovery. One
day the inventor was studying the action of currents
of ether playing over a floor upon which he had scattered
fine sand, — the ether was rolling the sand into
ropes, — when a block of granite, which was used
for fastening back a door, disintegrated under his
eyes. He took the hint, and in a few days he had made
a "vibratory disintegrator".
Who
is this man, and what is this force ? to whom, or to
which, boring a tunnel into the mountain side is mere
child's play ? Surely, were such things true, science
would long ago have filled the world with the renown
of such a man — the man who has discovered a force
in nature compared to which all known motor or mechanical
forces are like the scratch of a nail, or the breath
of a child. Surely the press, the platform, and even
the pulpit would have resounded with the glad tidings
of so great a victory over the stubborn powers of nature,
a victory which goes so far towards making man "the
master of things" in this material plane!
Those
who argue like that know but little of modern science
and its votaries. An Anglican bishop never ignored a
dissenting preacher with more dignified grace than the
professor of orthodox science ignores the heterodox genius
who has the audacity to wander beyond the limitations
which "received opinion" has placed upon the
possibilities of nature. The fact is that men of science
have persistently ignored, and know absolutely nothing
about, the great department of nature into which Keely
penetrated years ago, and in which he has now made himself
at home. Not long ago a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, Major Ricarde-Seaver, went to Philadelphia
to convince himself as to the nature of Keely's discovery.
He returned, saying that Keely was working with, and
had the apparent command over forces, the nature, or
even the very existence, of which was absolutely unknown
to him, and so far as he is aware, to modern science.
Beyond
disintegration lies dispersion, and Keely can just as
easily dissolve the atoms of matter as disintegrate its
molecules. Dissolve them into what ? Well, — into
ether, apparently; into the hypothetical substratum which
modern scientists have postulated, and about whose nature
they know absolutely nothing but what they invent themselves,
but which to Keely is not a hypothesis, but a fact as
real as his own shoes; and which ether, indeed, seems
to be "the protoplasm of all things". As to
the "law of gravity", it appears very like
a delusion, in the light of Keely's experiments, or,
at least, but one manifestation of a law of very much
wider application — a law which provides for the
reversion of the process of attraction in the shape of
a process of repulsion. One of Keely's little scientific
experiments is to put a small wire round an iron cylinder
that weighs several hundred weight, and when the "force" runs
through the wire, to lift the cylinder up on one finger
and carry it as easily as if it were a piece of cork.
Not long ago he moved, single-handed, a 500 horse-power
vibratory engine from one part of his shop to another.
There was not a scratch on the floor, and astounded engineers
declared that they could not have moved it without a
derrick, to bring which its operation would have required
the removal of the roof of the shop. Of course it is
but a step in advance of this to construct a machine
which, when polarized with a "negative attraction", will
rise from the earth and move under the influence of an etheric
current at the rate of 500 miles an hour, in any given direction". "This
is, in fact, Keely's "air ship".
Lately,
he has applied his force to optics, and by means of three
wires placed across the lens of a microscope he makes
its magnifying power equal to that of the great telescope
in the Lick observatory — the largest in the world.
Why don't all our astronomers and opticians run to look
through Keely's microscope, and to examine into the process
? Perhaps if Galileo were alive he might express an opinion! [Page
5]
"But", the
reader may naturally exclaim, "how long has this
been going on, and we to know nothing about it ? Mr.
Keely is now over 60 years of age, and he has worked
since he was a boy, at times, upon various inventions
before his discovery of ether. For the last 18 years
he has been constantly employed with experiments upon
the ether; for eighteen long years he has worked day
and night, with hand and brain, in face of discouragements
that would long ago have killed the owner of a less
heroic soul; and he has worked almost single handed.
Slander, ridicule, open accusations of fraud, charlatanery,
insanity — everything evil that it could enter
the head of the knave or the heart of the fool to conceive,
every mean insinuation, every malicious lie that prejudice,
bigotry, ignorance, self-conceit, vested interests,
greed, injustice, dishonesty, and hypocrisy could concoct – these
have been the encouragement which, so far, the world
has bestowed upon the discoverer of the profoundest
truths and laws of nature that have ever been imparted
to the profane, or even hinted at, outside of the circle
of Initiates. And now that it has been proved in a
hundred ways, and before thousands of persons competent
to judge of the merits of his machines, that he has really
discovered previously "unknown" forces
in nature, studied them, mastered some of their laws,
invented, and almost perfected, apparatus and machinery
that will make his discoveries of practical application
in a hundred ways — now that he has actually
done all this, how does the world treat him ? Does
Congress come forward with a grant to enable him to
complete his marvellous work ? Do men of science hail
him as a great discoverer, or hold out the hand of
fellowship ? Do the people do honour to the man whose
sole entreaty to them is to receive at his hands a
gift a thousand times more precious to them than steam
engine or telegraph ? It is a literal fact that the
world today would tear Keely to pieces ,if it had
the power to do so, and if he fell exhausted in the
terrible struggle he has so long maintained, his failure
to establish his claims would be received with a shout
of malignant delight from nearly every lecture hall,
pulpit, counting-house, and newspaper office in the
so-called civilized world! The world has hardly ever
recognised its benefactors, until it has become time
to raise a statue to their memory, in order to beautify
the town". Jealousy, stupidity, the malignity
which is born of conscious inferiority, are at this
moment putting in Keely's road every impediment which
law and injustice can manufacture. Two hundred years
ago he would have been burned, a century since he would
have been probably mobbed to death, but thank God we
are too civilized, too humane now to burn or mob to
death those who make great discoveries, who wish to
benefit their fellow men, or whose ideas are in advance
of their age — we only break their hearts with
slander, ridicule, and neglect, and when that fails
to drive them to suicide, we bring to bear upon them
the ponderous pressure of the law, and heap upon them
the "peine forte et dure" of
injunctions, and orders, and suits, to crush them out
of a world they have had the impertinence to try to
improve and the folly to imagine they could save from
suffering without paying in their own persons the inevitable
penalty of crucifixion. "Had it not been for
the obligations incurred by Mr. Keely", writes
Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
of Jan 20th of this year, " in accepting the aid
of the Keely Motor Company — in other words, had
scientists, instead of speculators, furnished him with
the means necessary to carry on his ' work of Evolution,'
the secrets which he has so carefully guarded would
now have been public property, so little does he care
personally for financial results. As it is, those who
have witnessed his beautiful experiments in acoustics
and sympathetic vibration were often too ignorant to
comprehend their meaning, and consequently, even after
expressing gratification to him, went away from his
workshop to denounce him as a Cagliostro, while others,
competent to judge, have refused to witness the production
of the ether, as Sir William Thomson and Lord Raleigh
refused when they were in America a few years since".
The company here mentioned has been a thorn in the inventor's
side ever since it [Page
6] was
organized. It has been "bulled and beared" by
greedy speculators, in whose varying interests the
American newspapers for years have been worked, the
results of which the inventor has had to bear. For
many years the Company has contributed nothing towards
Mr. Keely's expenses or support, and in the opinion
of many lawyers it is virtually dead. How far it is
entitled to his gratitude may be gathered from the
fact, as stated in Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore's article
above quoted, that "when Mr. Keely abandoned
his old generator of etheric force, baffled in his
attempts to wrest from nature one of her most carefully
guarded secrets, harassed by his connection with the
Keely Motor Company, some of the officers and stockholders
of which had instituted law proceedings against him,
which threatened him with the indignity of imprisonment,
he destroyed many of his marvellous models, and determined
that, if taken to prison, it should be his dead body
and not himself".
When
the history of his discoveries and inventions come to
be written there will be no more pathetic story in the
annals of genius than that of John Worrell Keely. The
world hereafter will find it hard to believe that in
the last quarter of the 19th century a man with an insight
into the secret workings of nature, and a knowledge of
her subtler forces, which, whenever it is utilized, will
relieve mankind from much of the grinding toil that now
makes bitter the existence of the vast majority of mortals,
that such a man should have been left to starve, because
in all the ranks of Science there was not found one man
capable of understanding his colossal work — because
in all the ranks of religion there was not found one man
able to realize the enlarged conception of Deity immanent
in Keely's great thoughts — because in all the ranks
of commerce, of speculation, of literature, of art, there
was not found one man large enough, generous enough,
unselfish enough, to furnish money for a purpose that
did not promise an immediate dividend.
It
is to a woman, not to a man, that the eternal honour
is due of having come to Keely's rescue, and saved humanity
from once more disgracing itself by doing genius to death
with broken-hearted want and neglect. That woman's name
will go down the centuries inseparably connected with
Keely's discoveries. Probably no more romantic incident
ever happened in the history of invention than the connection
between this wealthy and large-minded woman and this
slandered and persecuted genius, and no stranger one
than the way in which she was led, by a series of most
unfortuitous events, to offer her aid. From that day
this lady has been not only his benefactor, but also
his co-worker, trusted friend, and courageous defender.
With the exception of this friend, those who have occupied
themselves with Keely's discoveries have confined their
attention to its commercial value. This was to be expected,
for Science now is the hand-maid of trade, and Religion
has become the fawning follower of Science. There is,
however, a higher aspect to Keely's discoveries, and
that is their value as contributions to man's knowledge
of Nature and natural laws. So far as that is concerned,
Keely's "success" is an accomplished fact.
His work, explaining his whole system, is now in the
Press, and were he to die tomorrow he will be just as
great a figure in the world's history as he would be
were a thousand speculators to "clear" ten
million dollars apiece by his inventions. Fancy honouring
Copernicus or Galileo because the yelping jackals of
speculation, who were their contemporaries, grew fat
by feeding on their brains !
Whether
Keely's inventions will be a commercial success at present is
another matter. The force, or, rather forces, which Keely
handles, are the same as those known under other names
in Occultism, and it is the belief of Occultists that
these forces cannot be introduced into the practical
life of men, or fully understood by the uninitiated,
until the world is fit to receive them with benefit to
itself — until the balance of the good and the evil
they would work is decidedly on the side of the good.
Keely himself is persuaded that the world will derive
almost unmixed benefit from his discoveries; but an Occultist [Page
7] would
prefer to say that inventions and discoveries are disclosed
to man, rather than to credit genius with the independent
elaboration of ideas — disclosed, that is to say,
through the brain of the ostensible inventor by one of
the higher powers that guide the destinies of humanity.
The discoveries of Keely have an occult side, which perhaps
he himself may not fully perceive, but it is upon that
side that it depends whether those discoveries themselves
are fitted, by reason of "sympathetic vibration" of
a still more inner ether than Keely has publicly spoken
of, to harmonize with the "mass chord" of
our present civilization, and manifest in the material
life of man. Occultists believe that there are intelligent
powers behind the visible things and events of life,
which powers alone can say " So far shalt thou go,
and no farther "; but they do not believe that these
powers act as a deus ex machina,
for in themselves they are part of the natural order
of things, and act in and through material and immaterial
nature. We at present in our normal state of consciousness
know these powers only as forces and "laws",
and when we become conscious of them as intelligent entities,
we perceive at the same time that they themselves are
governed by higher wills and intelligences, which act
through them, as they act through us, and are to them
their "forces" and their "laws". [Franck,
in Die Kabbala says “We learn,
by the last three Sephiroth that the Universal Providence,
that the Supreme Artist, is also Absolute Force, the
all-powerful Cause; and that, at the same time, this
cause is the generative element of all that is. It
is these last Sephiroth that constitute the natural world,
or nature in its essence and in its Active principle.
Natura naturans.” This passage is quoted
in Isis
Unveiled (Vol 1, p 40), the authoress adding: “This
Kabalistic conception is thus proved identical with that
of the Hindu philosophy. Whoever reads Plato and his Dialogue Timaeus,
will find these ideas as faithfully re-echoed by the
great philosopher”. They are all in fact, echoes
of the archaic “Secret Doctrine” of the Occultists;
and it is somewhat singular (pour le dire en passant)
that the newspaper so persistently refers to Theosophy
as a new, or “newfangled” religion or philosophy,
whereas the ideas now called “theosophical” are
the oldest in the world, and may be found, more or less
disguised or mutilated, and under many different forms
and names, in all the great philosophical and religious
systems of antiquity. One is forced to conclude that
the complaint, so often heard, that competition now compels
young people to earn their bread while they ought still
to be at school, applies with a good deal of force to
a certain class of writers for the press,] Occultists
see in everything the (to us) eternal action of two opposing
powers or principles, which are ever seeking equilibrium,
and never find it, for behind them there is a definite
tendency towards that which we call "progress",
which tendency gives the preponderance to one of these
powers, and thus prevents the establishment of equilibrium,
in other words of stagnation and death. Now all great
discoveries are manifestations of one of these powers
or forces only, and, however good in themselves, tend
to disturb the equilibrium of terrestrial life more than
is required for the normal rate of universal progress;
and therefore they produce a disproportion of parts,
and the opposite power or force gathers strength to resist
and check the exaggeration. Already, in the estimation
of an ever-growing number of thinking men, the inventions
and discoveries of the present century have proved themselves
a curse rather than a blessing. They have raised the
world's standard of comfort, and at the same time they
have lowered the power of purchasing these very comforts,
a desire for which they have generated. The advantages
that accrue from steam and from machinery have not been
distributed, but have become the property of a small
minority. Year by year competition is becoming fiercer,
and labour more arduous and continual, and men are growing
more and more like living machines, and the helpless
slaves of machinery and of "institutions".
An operative, in these days of steam power, has less
liberty than a slave ever had, except in one particular — he
has full liberty to starve, or to work himself to death,
neither of which privileges an owner would allow him.
Keely, however, thinks his discoveries will restore this "disturbed
equilibrium".
The
direct effect of modern discoveries and inventions has
been the rise of the commercial or economic system; and
the inevitable consequence of that system has been to [Page
8] deepen
the gulf between the poor and the rich. The natural effect
of this is an antagonism between the two poles of society,
which has its root deep down in human nature and human
passions, and this antagonism is becoming better recognised,
and growing in intensity, year by year, in so much that
it is almost universally felt that the only possible
outcome from it is a social overturning, the date of
the actual occurrence of which will depend chiefly upon
the activity of the school-boards, and the thoroughness
of their work. Hardly a thinking man at the present day
but foresees, sooner or later, a great social cataclysm,
in which all mere political and financial considerations
will be as straws in a whirlwind. Now, it would seem
that Keely's discoveries tend to develop power over material
nature in the same direction in which that power has
been growing during the last hundred years. If it be
a power into the exercise of which there enter no moral
considerations whatever, then it is applicable alike
for good purposes and for evil; and it will be as ready
to the hand of the bad man as to that of the good. Were
such inventions given to the world in their completeness,
the whole of the enormous power they gave over human
life and destines would, it would seem, fall into the
possession of the same small minority who at present
control the power conferred by our present inventions
and discoveries — the capitalists. If so, that
section of the community would then, under our present
institutions, obtain almost absolute power over the great
majority — those
who depend upon their labour for their support. The capitalists
who owned the tremendous powers implied in a monopoly
of Keely's inventions would be practically the absolute
masters of the people; and obedience to their will would
be far more really, than even now, the condition upon
which those who were not capitalists also would be allowed
the means of continued existence.
Occultists,
as a rule, believe that the world is not yet ready for
the appearance of such tremendous forces on the stage
of human life. Mankind is too selfish, too cruel, too
stupid, too pitiless, too animal, to be entrusted with
what, in sober reality, are minor "divine powers".
Such powers could not at present be employed for the benefit
of mankind and for the advancement of the race; on the
contrary, they would tend to the further brutalization
and virtual enslavement of the poor, and also to the
further materialization and moral degradation of the
rich. In a word, the human qualities of justice, mercy,
love, generosity, unselfishness, have not yet grown strong
enough in the race, and the animal qualities of revenge,
anger, jealousy, tyranny, hatred, selfishness, are still
too powerful in man to make the acquisition of almost
absolute power over nature, and over one another, anything
but a curse to mankind. It would be less disastrous to
give dynamite cartridges to monkeys for playthings.
For
this reason Occultists, in general, do not regard Keely's
discoveries as likely to "succeed" in the
commercial sense. And at present things have certainly
a look that is in accordance with that opinion. The powers
that might be expected to intervene in order to prevent
Keely's inventions from becoming factors in human life,
act, as has been said, through human means, and the stolid
stupidity of the scientists in regard to Keeley's discoveries,
the bovine indifference of theologians, the silly ridicule
of the press, the hostility of vested interests, the
suicidal greed of some of his largest shareholders, and
the paralysing influence of the law, which apparently
lends itself in this case to those whose object is simple
robbery. All these things seem very like the operation
of the higher controlling powers, acting with a consciousness
other than our consciousness for the attainment of ends
that transcend our narrow calculations.
Be
this as it may, Keely's discoveries, and Keely's personality
also, have a peculiar interest for Theosophists, for
the force with which he is working is without doubt the
ether of the ancient philosophers, which is one aspect
of the Akâsa, the one underlying great force in
nature, according to the Secret Doctrine, a force whose
existence has been recognized from time immemorial under
various fanciful names, and whose property is [Page
9] sound,
whether audible or inaudible to us; or, in more modern
language, whose characteristics are vibration and rhythm.
It corresponds to the seven-fold Vach of Hindu Philosophy,
and is the raison d'être of spells
and Mantrams. It is the basis of harmony and melody throughout
Nature. This force is alluded to many times in Madame
Blavatsky's "Isis Unveiled". On page 139,
vol. I., we read: "The Akâsa is a Sanscrit
word which means sky, but it also designates the
imponderable and intangible life principles, the astral
and celestial lights combined together, and which two
form the anima mundi, and constitute the
soul and spirit of man; the celestial light forming
his nous, pneuma, or divine spirit, and
the other his psyche, soul, or astral spirit.
The grosser particles of the latter enter into the fabrication
of his outward form, the body". The Akâsa
is connected on the one hand with physical matter and
on the other with WILL, "that intelligent, intangible,
and powerful something which reigns supreme over all
inert matter". Of the Akâsa in this aspect
we read on page 144, vol. I., of "Isis Unveiled": "The
mysterious effects of attraction and repulsion are the unconscious agents
of that will; fascination, such as we see exercised by
some animals, by serpents over birds, for instance, is
a conscious action of it, and the result of thought.
Sealing-wax, glass, and amber, when rubbed, i.e.,
when the latent heat which exists in every substance
is awakened, attract light bodies; they exercise unconsciously Will;
for inorganic as well as organic matter, however infinitesimally
small it may be, possesses a particle of the divine essence
in itself. . . . What is, then, this inexplicable power
of attraction but an atomical portion of that essence
that Scientists and Kabalists equally recognise as the
'principle of life' — the Akâsa? Granted
that the attraction exercised by such bodies may be blind;
but as we ascend higher the scale of organic beings in
nature, we find this principle of life developing attributes
and faculties which become more determined and marked
with every rung of the endless ladder. Man, the most
perfect of organized beings on earth, in whom matter
and spirit — i.e., Will — are
the most developed and powerful, is alone allowed to
give a conscious impulse to that principle which emanates
from him and only he can impart to the magnetic fluid
opposite and various impulses without limit as to the
direction."Isis Unveiled" was
published nearly eleven years ago; and in her forthcoming
work, The Secret Doctrine, the authoress enters
more fully into this and other matters only sketched
or hinted at in her former volumes.
It
is the fact that Keely is working with some of the mysterious
forces included under the name "Akâsa'' that
makes his discoveries interesting to Theosophists. It
is the fact that he has shown magnificent courage and
fixity of purpose under every kind of opposition, and
the fact also that he has been supported all through
by the generous belief that his discoveries will be of
inestimable benefit to mankind that make his personality
of interest. If he can succeed in making his marvellous
discoveries pay dividends, science may
begin to give attention to them; for men of science,
like other men, require a "sign" before they
can accept as truth the things that are beyond their
comprehension, and the " value " of a scientific
discovery is now determined by its market price.