The Dogmatism of Science Page 2

prejudice has declared to be shut and bolted is even now ajar, and gleams of light are struggling over the threshold from Keely's discoveries."

Of course, new hypotheses should not meet with too ready an acceptance, and the professor, with admirable caution, takes the text of his review of "Keely and His Discoveries," from the Syracuse philosopher - Epicharnus - "The very nerves and sinews of knowledge consist in believing nothing rashly." But with such evidence as he sets before his readers (in the October number of The News Science Review), the determined blindness of dogmatic science should not be permitted to delay, to another century, the general promulgation of truths which have been already established by the testimony of some of the most distinguished American men of science of this age. The fact that there are, as yet, no commercial profits from Keely's discoveries is all that retards the promulgation of these truths; but the law allows no patents on new truths nor on a principle of nature. Until the vibratory circuit, operated by this costless current of force drawn direct from space, is connected with some patentable device, Keely's discovery has no more commercial value than Newton's discovery of gravity. Therefore, as science still denies the fundamental doctrines on which this new system of physics is based, the only hope lies in the prolongation of Keely's life until commerce, instead of science, is able to make the announcement; unless the press, with its gigantic power, lends itself to the efforts now being made to bring before the public the present position of Keely in his great work of evolution. Of another discoverer of unknown truths the poet Cowley wrote:

"Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last;
The barren wilderness he passed;
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest, promised land;
And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and showed us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds and conquer too."