108 Dr. A. P. W. Philip on the 
and spinal nerves. There is nothing in the muscular fibres to 
solicit this influence. - They are passive till it is applied to them. 
RECAPITULATION. 
It appears from all that has now been laid before the reader that 
there are three distinct powers in the animal system which have 
no direct dependence on each other, for we have seen the mus- 
cular surviving both the sensorial and nervous power, and the 
nervous the sensorial and muscular power; and nobody has sup- 
posed that the sensorial power has any dependence on either of 
the others, except as far as they are necessary for the maintenance 
of its organs, in which respect the nervous and muscular in the 
more perfect animal are equally, though not so immediately, 
dependent on the sensorial power. 
The nervous and muscular powers are, on the one hand, the 
direct means of maintaining the life of the animal, and on the 
other, of connecting it with the external world; the former re- 
ceiving impressions from that world, the latter communicating 
impressions toit. All the functions of both powers bear a strong 
analogy to the properties of the world with which they are thus 
associated; we therefore have reason, according to principles 
above stated, to believe that all these functions, as is evidently 
the case with many of them, are the results of inanimate agents 
acting on vital parts*. There is none of them, as appears 
from the experiments which have been referred to, which may 
not be excited by artificial means as long as its organs retain 
the vital principle; and it is a remarkable fact, that they are all 
capable of being excited: by one agent, and that an agent uni- 
versally diffused, which we know from other facts to be inti- 
mately connected with the animal economy, and which in some 
* The nervous power, by which the impressions on the organs of sense 
are conveyed to tle sensorium, receives those impressions from inanimate 
matter. Even the heart is excited by inanimate agents, for although the 
blood be alive, it is by its chemical properties and bulk that it excites the 
heart and vessels, as appears from rendering the blood more or less stimu- 
lating, and greater or less in quantity. 
