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" [3] 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.