ELECTRICITY, LIFE, AND MATTER. 



of complete separation, demonstrating the fact that there 

 are conditions in which matter may not be possessed either 

 of cohesion or concentric attraction a circumstance which 

 no known law of chemistry or other science can explain ; 

 and yet we are compelled to recognize this fact, on the 

 authority of astronomy, as being quite as authentic as any 

 with which that great science, or any other science, has 

 made us acquainted; and other facts might be cited. 

 All that we can venture, on the basis of human expe- 

 rience, therefore, to say is, that man cannot destroy matter, 

 but that we are not sufficiently acquainted with its laws 

 to assert that it absolutely cannot be destroyed. 



But another and a nearer fact which we must equally 

 believe, though we cannot explain it, is that Life, and Mind, 

 and Feeling are introduced into, contained within, or with- 

 drawn from Matter, such as our material bodies, without 

 changing, increasing, or diminishing the physical character 

 or amount, or adding to or deducting from the bulk or 

 weight of their Matter. How electricity is contained or 

 operates on and within bodies we may acquire some know- 

 ledge of, but electricity is a material element, capable by its 

 application of expanding and contracting bodies, as electro- 

 lysis has shown, while Mind, Life, and Feeling thrill and 

 float along our nerves and tissues, or flush into the wide 

 region of imaginary existence and action by a mysterious 

 power and range of volition to which we have no key a 

 fact before which logic is dumb. Electricity is not Life, 

 however fondly some have sought, in eager haste, to call it 

 so. True, it has wondrous powers. Dead men have been 

 made to move by it their eyes have opened, and the cold 

 and rigid features have changed and varied with a ghastly 

 counterfeit of 'the expressions of life. Nay, the stomach 

 has, under its influence, been made after death in some 

 degree to perform the function of digestion. But no ap- 

 plication of this great agent has ever, even in one instance, 



