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 the professors present. Keely answered, I have discovered so little, in comparison with what remains to be discovered, that I cannot call myself a discoverer. Another of the professors present took Keely by the hand and said, You are a great discoverer.
Had the discoverer of this unknown force not been dependent upon a company, "a ring," for funds to pursue his investigations, scientists would have better understood the nature of this work at an earlier stage of his experimental research; but following close upon Keely's production of the latent force carried in all forms of aggregated matter, he became entangled in the meshes of an organization that cared nothing for science, and a great deal for the wealth which, it was seen by practical business men, must sooner or later accrue as the result of a costless motive power. In other words, those who interested themselves in Keely's discoveries were interested solely in their marketable value; or if there chanced to be one who was not so interested, that one was not of sufficient influence in the scientific world to be able to induce capitalists to come forward and contribute towards saving the discovery to this age, by protecting the discoverer from the persecution that he was subjected to from those who had the management of the commercial affairs of the company.
Aratus, the poet of Cilicia, the author of "Phenomena," wrote, "We are the offspring of God;" and St. Paul, quoting Aratus, continued, "In Him we live and move and have our being." From that hour, down the blood-stained path of the age to the present, there have been men, spiritually endowed, who have taught that He who created, commands and governs, the universe, sustains it by the power of His will; and that were it not for the celestial streams of radiation, this superhuman influence, constantly flowing into all created forms, the universe would pass out of existence, would perish in a moment. So well did Macvicar, the great Scotch divine, understand this conception of Deity, that he wrote, "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 inertiæ' is alone admitted."