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Discovery is not invention.—Edison.

Science has been compared to a stately and wide-spreading tree, stretching outward and upward its ever-growing boughs. As yet mankind has reached only to its lowermost branches, too often satisfied with the dead calyxes which have fallen from it to the ground, after serving their uses for the protection of the vital germs of truth. The seed of the next advance in science can only germinate as the dry husk decays, within which its potentiality was secretly developed.

For upwards of ten centuries false portions of the philosophy of Aristotle enslaved the minds of civilized Europe, only, at last, to perish and pass away like withered leaves.

The most perfect system of philosophy must always be that which can reconcile and bring together the greatest number of facts that can come within the sphere of the subject. In this consists the sole glory of Newton, whose discovery rests upon no higher order of proof. In the words of Dr. Chalmers, “Authority scowled upon this discovery, taste was disgusted by it, and fashion was ashamed of it. All the beauteous speculation of former days was cruelly broken up by this new announcement of the better philosophy, and scattered like the fragments of an aerial vision, over which the past generations of the world had been slumbering in profound and pleasing reverie.”

Thus we see that time is no sure test of a doctrine, nor ages of ignorance any standard by which to measure a system. Facts can have a value only when properly represented and demonstrated by proof. Velpeau said nothing can lie like a fact. Sir Humphry Davy asserted that no one thing had so much checked the progress of philosophy as the confidence of teachers in delivering dogmas as facts, which it would be presumptuous to question. This reveals the spirit which made the crude physics of Aristotle the natural philosophy of Europe.

The philosophy of vibratory rotation, which is yet to be propounded to the world, reveals the identity of facts which seem dissimilar, binding together into a system the most unconnected and unlike results of experience, apparently. John Worrell Keely, the discoverer of an unknown force and the propounder of a pure philosophy, learned at an early stage of his researches not to accept dogmas as truths, finding it safer to trust to that “inner light” which has guided him than to wander after the ignis fatuus of a false system. He has been like a traveller exploring an unknown zone in the shade of night, losing his way at times, but ever keeping before him the gleam of breaking day which dawned upon him at the start. Scientists have kept aloof from him, or, after superficial examinations, have branded him as “a modern Cagliostro,” “a wizard,” “a magician,” and “a fraud.” Calumnies he never stoops to answer, for he knows that when his last problem is solved to his own satisfaction his discovery and his inventions will defend him in trumpet tones around our globe. Buchanan says, “Who would expect a society of learned men, the special cultivators and guardians of science, as they claim to be, to know as much of the wonderful philosophy now developing as those who have no artificial reputation to risk in expressing an opinion, no false and inflated conceptions of dignity and stability to hold them back, and who stand ready to march on from truth to truth as fast and far as experimental demonstration can lead them?”

Johnson tells us that the first care of the builder of a new system is to demolish the fabrics that are standing. But the cobwebs of age cannot be disturbed without rousing the bats, to whom daylight is death.

When has Nature ever whispered her secrets but for the advancement of our race on that royal road which leads to the subjugation of the power she reveals? But not until the inspiration of thought has done its work in applying the power to mechanics, can the tyrant thus encountered be transformed into the slave.

So was it with steam, so has it been with electricity, and so will it be with vibratory force. All experience shows that the steady progress of the patient study of what are termed Nature’s laws does not attract public attention until there are some practical results. Professor Tyndall has said that the men who go close to the mouth of Nature and listen to her communications leave the discoveries they make for the benefit of posterity to be developed by practical men. The invention of vibratory machinery for the liberation and the operation in mechanics of sympathetic force is an instance where practical application of the discovery may be made by the discoverer. After years of experiments with this force, what does the public know of its nature? Nothing; for as yet no practical results have been obtained. Here is a power sustaining the same relations to electricity that the trunk of a tree does to its branches—the discovery of which heralds to the scientific world possibilities affecting motive industries, such as should command the attention of all men; and yet it is known only as a theme for jest and ridicule and reproach! And why is this? Partly from the mismanagement of a prematurely-organized Keely Motor Company, and partly because men competent to judge for themselves have preferred to take the opinion of others not competent, instead of investigating each for himself.

Attempts to interest scientists in the marvellous mechanism by which etheric force is evolved from the atmosphere have failed, even as Galileo failed at Padua to persuade the principal professor of philosophy there to look at the moon and planets through his glasses. The professor pertinaciously refused, as wrote Galileo to his friend Kepler. Mankind hate truth, said Lady Mary Montague: she should have said, mankind hate new truths. The most simple and rational advances in medical science have been received with scorn and derision, or with stupid censure. Harvey was nicknamed “the circulator”1 after his discovery of the circulation of the blood—which discovery was ridiculed by his colleagues and compeers. The same reception awaited Jenner’s introduction of vaccination.

The revelation of new truths is compared to the upheaval of rocks which reveal deeply-hidden strata. Stolid conservatism dislikes and avoids such facts, because they involve new thinking and disturb old theories. The leaden weight of scepticism drags down the minds of many, paralyzing their power of reasoning upon facts which reveal truth, from another standpoint than their own, with new simplicity and grandeur in the divine laws of the universe. Others there are, embracing the majority of mankind, according to Hazlitt, who stick to an opinion that they have long supported, and that supports them. But whenever a discovery or invention has made its way so well by itself as to achieve reputation, most people assert that they always believed in it from the first; and so will it be with Keely’s inventions, in time.

In our day so rapidly are anticipations realized and sanguine hopes converted into existing facts, one wonderful discovery followed by another, that it is strange to find men possessing any breadth of intellect rejecting truths from hearsay, instead of examining all things and holding fast to the truth. The laws of sympathetic association need only to be demonstrated and understood to carry conviction of their truth with them. They control our world and everything in it, from matter to spirit. They control all the systems of worlds in the universe; for they are the laws which Kepler predicted would in this century he revealed to man. The divine element is shown by these laws to be like the sun behind the clouds—the source of all light, though itself unseen.

Already the existence of this unknown force is as well established as was the expansive power of steam in the days when the world looked on and laughed at Rumsey and Fitch and Fulton while they were constructing their steamboats. Even when they were used for inland navigation, men of science declared ocean navigation by steam impracticable, up to the very hour of its consummation. In like manner with electricity, scientists declared an ocean telegraph impossible, asserting that the current strong enough to bear messages would melt the wires. Nothing could be more unpopular than railways were at their start. In England, Stephenson’s were called “nuisances,” and false prophets arose then (as now with Keely’s inventions) to foretell their failure. It was predicted that they would soon be abandoned, and, if not given up, that they would starve the poor, destroy canal interests, crush thousands in fearful accidents, and cover the land with horror.

When I say that the existence of this force is established, I do not mean that it is established by a favourable verdict from public opinion—which, as Douglas Jerrold said, is but the average stupidity of mankind, and which is always steadily and persistently opposed to great and revolutionary discoveries. Establishment consists in convincing men competent to judge that the effects produced by etheric force could not be caused by any known force. And it is now years since such a verdict was first given, substantiated repeatedly since, by the testimony of men as incapable of fraud or collusion as is the discoverer himself.

Newton, in discovering the existence of a force which we call gravity, did not pursue his investigations sufficiently far to proclaim a power which neutralizes or overcomes gravity, the existence of which Keely demonstrates in his vibratory-lift experiments.

But it is one thing to discover a force in nature, and quite another thing to control it. It is one thing to lasso a wild horse, and quite another thing to subdue the animal, harness it, bridle it, and get the curb-bit in the mouth.

Keely has lassoed his wild horse; he has harnessed it and bridled it; and when he has the bit in its place, this force will take its stand with steam and electricity, asking nothing, and giving more than science ever before conferred on the human race.

The Home Journal of October 20th, 1886, contained a paper which possesses some interest as having been written at the time Mr. Keely was using what he called a “Liberator,” which enabled him to dispense with the use of water; but he was obliged to return to his former method soon after.