74 THE SIGNS OF LIFE [LECT. 



resemblance is the discharge of an electrical organ, and we shall 

 not infrequently find the term " discharge " a convenient indica- 

 tive word. But as a distinctive and specific name, the word 

 " discharge " is insufficient, all the more so from the inconvenience 

 that would arise when we have to refer to the blaze-currents 

 aroused by the condenser discharge. 



I have had another reason in my mind that has helped to 

 make me use the expression blaze-current. The great mass of 

 living things, whatever else they may give and take from their 

 surroundings, take oxygen and give carbonic acid ; they may live 

 slowly or they may live quickly sluggishly smoulder or suddenly 

 blaze. A muscle at rest is smouldering, a muscle in its contrac- 

 tion is blazing ; the consumption of carbohydrate and the produc- 

 tion of C(X, never absolutely in abeyance, even in the most pro- 

 found state of rest, are sharply intensified when the living machine 

 puts forth its full power ; and there is then a sudden burst of 

 heat, and an electrical discharge, by reason of an electro-positive 

 state of the active muscle giving birth to a current of action 

 which in effect you may, without great stretch of thought, regard 

 as of the family of blaze-currents. So that in last resort we find 

 that these striking electrical effects in living matter that we had 

 hardly considered as electro-motive at all in the eyeball, in its 

 crystalline lens, in a bean or pea or leaf or flower are, after all, 

 intense local changes, significant of intense local action, that may 

 be imagined and characterised as a blaze amid the smouldering 

 state of living matter. 



There is a certain similarity between a blaze-current and 

 the discharge of an electrical organ no very close and detailed 

 resemblance indeed, yet one that cannot be ignored, and that 

 may be of service to us towards a further comprehension of the 

 electrical signs of life. But it will not be an easy matter to 

 appreciate the connection, and in preparation for the attempt, 

 I should advise you to read two papers by du Bois-Reymond, 

 the first on " Secondary Electromotive Phenomena in Nerve, 

 Muscle, and Electrical Organ," the second on " The Polarisation 

 Phenomena caused by Constant Currents in the Electrical Organ 

 of Torpedo." 



And let me say in conclusion that I have not named these 



