222 MODIFIED FORMS OF FORCE. 



spinal chord, are endowed during life with an electro- 

 motive power, which acts according to a definite law. 



The electromotive power lasts after death, or in dis- 

 sected nerves and muscles after separation from the 

 body of the animal, as long as the excitability of the 

 nervous and muscular fibre ; whether these fibres are 

 permitted to die gradually from the cessation of the 

 conditions necessary to the support of life, or whether 

 they are suddenly deprived of their vital properties by 

 heat or chemical action. 



Let us not suppose for a moment that these con- 

 clusions indicate in the remotest degree that electricity 

 is life, that vital power is due to electricity. 



During life, with every motion, and, indeed, with 

 every emotion, whether we move a muscle or exert the 

 mind, there is a change of state. The result of this is 

 chemical phenomena, heat and electricity; but these are 

 not life. We excite them equally by giving motion to 

 a dead mass. 



Notwithstanding the assertions of those who have 

 zealously followed the path of Mesmer, and examined, 

 or they have thought so, the psychological effects de- 

 pendent upon some strange physiological conditions, 

 there is not an experiment on record, there is not an 

 observation worthy of credit, which shows that elec- 

 tricity has any connection with their results. All around 

 their subject is uncertainty : doubt involves every 

 experiment, and deception clouds a large number. 

 Some few grains of truth, and these are sufficiently 

 strange, are mixed up in an enormous mass of error. 



All the phenomena of life, of the vis vitae or vitality, 

 are beyond human search. All the physical forces, or 

 elements, we may examine by the test of experiment : 

 but the principle on which sensation depends, the prin- 

 ciple even upon which vegetable life depends, cannot 

 be tested. Life is infinitely superior to every physical 

 force; it holds them all in control, but is not itself 



