OUR PHYSICAL MOTIONS. 67 



strengthening of this conclusion, for while electricity may 

 act on inorganic bodies and cause motion, independent of 

 organic structure in them, here it does not so act, but 

 operates in harmony with the organic structure only, and 

 in conformity to the aim of predetermined motive arrange- 

 ments. Applied to a dead muscle it will make that 

 muscle act, not as if it were inorganic matter and had no 

 special structure, but as a muscle should act, and in har- 

 mony and strict subordination to its organic structure and 

 purpose ; and this it can only do because the structure of 

 the muscle is such as to allow the operation by it of some 

 electric law of motion, which, if it be not specially and 

 exclusively designed to facilitate, it at all events fully and 

 perfectly coincides with. On this point we feel fully 

 entitled to say that if such perfect adaptation of muscular 

 organization to electric laws be not the result of prede- 

 termined purpose in the arrangement of nature, it is a 

 solecism unparalleled by all mere blind coincidence. But 

 let us now see whether we can detect the electric law 

 from the organization and motion of the muscle ; for its 

 anatomy has been fully ascertained. The electric law, 

 we have said, operates in strict conformity with the 

 muscular structure ; ergo, as matter of induction, the mus- 

 cular action under electricity is the electric action, or iden- 

 tical with it, and must therefore involve the operation of 

 the electric law. Now a muscle consists of a large 

 number of very fine fibres arranged together, terminating 

 at each end in a tendon, and these two terminal tendons 

 respectively form the tendinous origin and tendinous 

 insertion of the muscle ; and muscles are so constructed 

 that they contract or shorten, and extend or lengthen, as 

 may be required when under action. In contracting, the 

 belly of the muscle, or that part of it between the two 

 terminal tendons, swells out. In extending, the belly of 

 the muscle collapses. This is the mode or form of mus- 



