Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/320

306 mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and an eternal energy, from which all things proceed. Macvicar foreshadowed the teachings of this new philosophy when he wrote, "All motion in the universe is rhythmical. This is seen in the forward and backward movement of the pendulum, the ebb and the flow of the tides, the succession of day and night, the systolic and diastolic action of the heart, and in the inspiration and expiration of the lungs. Our breathing is a double motion of the universal æther, an active and a reactive movement. This androgyne principle, with its dual motion, is the breath of God in man." The writings of the ancients teem with these ideas, which have been handed down to us from generation to generation, and are now flashing their light, like torches in the darkness, upon mysteries too long regarded as "lying outside the domains of physical science."

Twenty years ago Macvicar wrote his "Sketch of a Philosophy," in which he advanced the above views, with other views now maintained and demonstrated by Mr. Keely, who during these twenty years, without knowing Macvicar's views, or of his existence even, has been engaged in that "dead-work which cannot be delegated," the result of which is not learning, but knowledge; for learning, says Lessing, is only our knowledge of the experience of others; knowledge is our own. 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 conies 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. And during these twenty years of "dead-work" the discoverer of etheric force has pursued the even tenor of his way, under circumstances which show him to be a giant in intellectual greatness, insensible, to paltry, hostile criticism, patient under opposition, dead to all temptations of self-interest, calmly superior to the misjudgments of the short-sighted and the ignoble; noble means as indispensable to him as noble ends; fame and riches less important than his honor; his joys arising from the accomplishment of his work and the love and the sympathy of the few who have comprehended him! "Only the noble-hearted can understand the noble-hearted." Mr. Keely's chief ambition has been to utilize the force he discovered, not for his own aggrandizement, but to bless the lives of his fellow-men. He has scaled the rocks which barricade earth from