GENERAL PAPERS 115 
There are many people who are very greatly interested in 
the modern wonders in electrical development, who do not 
see anything wonderful in the conception of thought by a 
conscious being, or in the expression of a thought in words. 
All physical quantities can be measured in terms of the fund- 
amental units of mass length and time. We are unable to find 
any relation between a thought and any of these fundamental 
units. The same can be said of the conscious beings who con- 
ceive thoughts and present them to others. 
The particular conscious being who is to act as a sending 
station can be located in space by the external appearance of 
that mass of living tissue which he inhabits. He responds to a 
name. We may call him John Doe. We cannot account for 
the fact that he presents himself in London, in that particular 
mass of matter, rather than in some other mass of living tissue 
in Calcutta. We may be fully informed of the chemical changes 
within that mass of living tissue which he inhabits, which are 
involved when he approaches and passes through a period of 
unconsciousness. We do not know what changes have in the 
meantime been impressed upon him. How is the conscious 
being connected with the nervous tissue through which external 
surroundings convey to him by wireless methods, messages 
which contain new information, and which enable him to con- 
ceive a new thought. 
The falling apple is said to have suggested to Newton the 
thought that the moon was a falling body upon which tangen- 
tial motion had been impressed, this giving it an orbital motion 
around the earth. He had given attention to circular and ellip- 
tical motion. He had probably learned that if a bullet were 
fired horizontally at the earth’s surface with a velocity of 4.91 
miles per second, it would continually fall towards the earth as 
all bullets do, but neglecting air resistance, it would revolve 
around the earth in a circle in one hour and twenty-four min- 
utes. What must be the velocity at the moon’s distance, if at- 
traction varies inversely as the square of the distance? This 
thought having been conceived by Newton, there doubtless fol- 
lowed, unknown to him, a more rapid pulsation of his heart. 
Nonliving tissue will respond to mechanical impulses, exactly 
as living tissue will do. Thus far, however, it has not been 
