Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

“ These are the advanced views of Ernest Renan, who still sees nothing before us but a fresh cataclysm, a general upheaval and chaos, terrible disturbances when human intelligence will be checkmated, thrown off the rails so to speak, by events as yet unparalleled. We have not yet suffered sufficiently, he says, to see the kingdom of heaven. When a few millions of men have died of hunger, when thousands have devoured one another, when the brains of the others, carried off their balance by these darksome scenes, have plunged into extravagancies of one kind and another, then life will begin anew. ”

“ Do men of science hail him as a great [132] discoverer, or hold out the hand of fellowship? Do people do honour to the man whose sole entreaty to them will be to receive from his hands a gift a thousand times more precious to them than steam engine or dynamo? It is a literal fact that if Keely fell exhausted to-day, 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. ”

“ It is the sole edifice of true philosophy, the corner-stone of which was laid at Creation, when God said, “Let there be light; and there was light.” The scaffolding which our modern Prometheus has built is not the airy fabric of delusion, nor the baser fabric of a fraud, as has been so often asserted. It has been built plank by plank, upon firm ground, and every plank is of pure gold, as will be seen in due time.
It has been justly said that we have no ground for assuming that we have approached a limit in the field of discovery, or for claiming finality in our interpretations of Nature. ”

“ We are all, in various degrees, centres and distributors of the ethereal force, so far as we are in touch with its waves of vibration. We can all make our thoughts, if they are one with the thought of humanity, and our desires, if they are one with the heart of humanity, felt by our fellows in extending circles of effluence till finally the very clods of human kind know the stirrings of a new life and wake to the higher reality as from a dream. ”

“ But though the anchor of ancient faiths has been swept away by materialism, the sheet-anchor of faith by science has been let down from heaven, as it were in our hour of peril, for the saving of the peoples: teaching as often before that the world lies in the bosom of God, like a child in its mother’s arms, who with watchful solicitude ministers to its wants as they arise. ”

“ It required rare courage for a physicist to step from the serried ranks that have always been ready to point their javelins at psychologists, and to show, with the torch of science, the hand on the signpost at the cross roads pointing in the right direction. It is the great high road of knowledge; but those who would explore it must do so with cautious tread, until the system of sympathetic association is completed which Keely is bringing to birth, for the road is bordered with pitfalls and quicksands and the mists of ignorance envelop it. ”

“ This burden of dead-work, writes Lesley, every great discoverer has had to carry for years and years, unknown to the world at large, before the world was electrified by his appearance as its genius. Without it, there can be no discovery of what is rightly called a scientific truth. Every advancement in science comes from this “dead-work,” and creates, of its own nature, an improvement in the condition of the race; putting, as it does, the multitudes of human society on a fairer and friendlier footing with one another. ”

“ Many things which were, for a long time, treated as fabulous and incredible have been proved, in our age, to be authentic facts, as soon as the evidence in support of them was duly subjected to the crucible of scientific investigation. Take, for example, Professor Dewar’s researches in the cause, or origin, of meteoric stones. Fortunately for his branches of research and experiment, he is possessed of that philosophical spirit and energy which enables him to divest himself of all prejudice, and, in constructing his theories, to welcome the evidence of truth from whatever quarter it approaches. ”

“ What now shall I say of this new-grown perception of Law, which finds the infinite in a speck of dust, and the act of eternity in every second of time? Shall I say that it kills our sense of the beautiful, and takes all the romance out of nature? And, moreover, that it is nothing more than a combining and reorganizing of our old experiences; that it never can give us anything really new; that we must progress in the same monotonous way for ever. ”

“ 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 he 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 ”

“ There are some who contend that this revelation of an unknown force will, in the hands of anarchists, put back the progress of civilization and enlightenment for centuries; there are others who proclaim that it will take the bread from the mouths of the hungry and swell the sums amassed by capitalists. But history shows that discovery heralds progress, and walks with it hand in hand. With the costless and unlimited power which will be made available, in every direction where power is required, all works of improvement will be carried out on a far grander scale than has ever been anticipated. ”

“ As for us, we have shifted the field of the science of man. We want to know what his life is, and life means both the body and the soul; not placed facing one another like clocks that tick in time, not soldered together like two different metals, but united into one two-fronted phenomenon which cannot be divided, without destroying it. It is time to proclaim the fact that one sole Cause has wrought everything in the domain of intellect, operating according to identical laws, but among different surroundings. ”

“ Proclus wrote of the power of mind or will to set up certain vibrations—not in the grosser atmospheric particles whose undulations beget light, sound, heat, electricity—but in the latent immaterial principle of force, of which modern science knows scarcely anything.
What is beyond their own power, men cannot comprehend to be in the power of others. Said Sextus: “If by magic you mean a perpetual research among all that is most latent and obscure in nature, I profess that magic, and he who does so comes nearer to the fountain of all knowledge.” ”

“ To quote, at length, from Renan:—“It is the law of science, as of every human undertaking, to draw its plans on a large scale, and with a great deal that is superfluous around them. Mankind finally assimilates only a small number of the elements of food. But the portions that have been eliminated played their part in the act of nutrition. So the countless generations that have appeared and disappeared like a dream, have served to build the great Babel of humanity which uprises toward the sky, each layer of which means a people. ”

“ Let anyone imagine the years on years of research that would have been necessary before Gilbert (who, after Thales, discovered electricity) could have perfected a system which would have enabled men to accomplish all that is accomplished in our age, with electricity as a motive power. Keely’s labours would be better understood by those who accuse him of “always promising, and never performing,” under such a conception. The inventor must be sanguine of success; he must day by day think that he is on the eve of perfecting his invention, in order to keep up his courage to persevere to the end ”

“ Sir Isaac Newton said: “It is well known that bodies act upon one another by the attractions of gravity, magnetism and electricity; and these instances show the tenour and course of nature, and make it not improbable that there may be more powers of attraction than these. For nature is very consonant and conformable to herself.”
With such intimations of the hidden force that is ever in operation, “behind the framework of nature,” shall we, because it is hidden from science, refuse to listen to the explanations which Mr. Keely is now prepared to give? ”

“ Hence true science is a religion which will solve for men the eternal problems, the solution of which his nature imperatively demands. Herein lies the hope of humanity; for, like a wild beast, the uneducated masses stand at bay; ready to turn and rend those who are willing to keep them in their present condition, in order to be able to make them answer their own purposes .... I am firmly convinced, continues Renan, for my own part, that unless we make haste and elevate the people, we are upon the eve of a terrible outbreak of barbarism. ”

“ Do we not say at times that a certain thought is in the air, revealing itself contemporaneously to many widely separated minds without any recognizable means of communication? And do we not sometimes find a noble, or it may be an ignoble, impulse breaking out in a community with a suddenness and universality that would seem to transcend all the ordinary forms of the contact of mind with mind? Perhaps, too, this theory of vibratory communication through an ethereal medium may explain, in part at least, that ‘Welt-Geist,’ that ‘Spirit of the Age,’ of which the philosophers discourse so bravely. ”

“ There are moments in which I feel that I can measure the very stars, which shine like Edens in planetary space; fit abodes for beings who have made it the study of their lives on earth to create peace and happiness for all around them. Is nature a mystery? ”

“ 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 ”

“ The same fault is found with Keely for coining new words which no one understands.
“Every branch of science, every doctrine of extensive application, has had its alphabet, its rudiments, its grammar: at each fresh step in the path of discovery the researcher has had to work out by experiment the unknown laws which govern his discovery.” To attempt to introduce “the world”—even scientists—to any new system without previous preparation would be like giving a Persian book to a man to read who knew nothing of the language. ”

“ For more than a score of years has Keely been fighting a hand-to-hand fight with this Genii; often beaten back by it, paralyzed at times, even, by its monstrous blows; and only now so approaching its subjugation as to make it safe to harness it for the work that is calling for a power mightier than steam, safer and more uniform in operation than electricity; a power which, by its might and beneficence, will ameliorate the condition of the masses, and reconcile and solve all that now menaces our race: as it was never menaced before, as has been said. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order to comprehend in all its magnitude the problem of our age, the birth of Christianity must be the great point of survey to which we must recur; in order to examine clearly what has remained incomplete, what has not yet been attained. For, unquestionably, all that has been neglected, in the earlier periods and stages of Christian civilization, must be made good in this true, consummate regeneration of society. If truth is to obtain a complete victory—if Christianity is really to triumph on the earth, then must the state become Christian and science become Christian. ”

“ 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?” ”