BIOPLASTS OF GRA Y MA TTER. 3 z 9 



destructible living matter situated in and limited to a par- 

 ticular part of man's nervous system. This power impels 

 man alone, of all created beings, to try over and over again 

 to find out the causes of the phenomena he observes. Man 

 alone is enabled to devise new arrangements of material 

 substances for his own definite purposes. He may arrange 

 these substances as they have never been arranged before, 

 and in a manner in which it is not conceivable they could 

 be arranged without man's design and agency. The power 

 supposed, totally distinct from any forces or properties of 

 which we are cognizant, and not in any way correlated with 

 any known forms or modes of force of which we have any 

 experience, exerts its sway upon any one definite portion 

 of matter, during varying, but usually only very brief periods 

 of time, often momentarily, and is then transferred to new 

 particles, which, in their turn, are placed under its in- 

 fluence. It is in relation with the delicate living matter, 

 seated near the surface of the gray matter of the convolutions 

 of man's brain, which is alone concerned in mental action, 

 that I conceive vital power attains its most exalted form. 

 This vital power is, in fact, the ego. Since all forms of 

 vital power are transferable, is it not going farther than is 

 warranted by reason to affirm, that no vital power can under 

 any circumstances, be freed from the material, and yet be ? 

 I will now refer very briefly to the arrangement of the 

 nerve tissue in that particular part of the gray matter of the 

 convolutions, which I believe to be the seat of the operation 

 of the mental influence. At the surface of the gray matter 

 of the convolutions a most intricate interlacement of the 

 finest nerve fibres is observed. I have traced fibres to the 

 surface, a short distance beneath the pia mater, and have 



