ON INNERVATION AND ENERVATION 23 



elaborated, and made to do duty by some writers of 

 biography and history, some purveyors of popular litera- 

 ture, and some delineators of pictorial character, and has 

 had its decaying elements quasi-resuscitated and served 

 up with many a condiment to conceal their corruption, 

 and to engender and maintain a taste for the ephemeral 

 and transitory to satisfy a human appetite worthy of being 

 appeased by better and more lasting things. 



Innervation expresses the rule of energy and intelligence 

 over matter, the redemption of the inert world from its 

 long lethargy by the circulation through it of impulse 

 and motion, the organisation of its awakened elements 

 into definite forms, and the inspiration of these by ever- 

 increasing degrees of intelligence until their condition has 

 become one in which the highest attributes of humanity 

 can be implanted, and a destiny devised for it which is 

 yet too transcendental to permit of more than a longing 

 desire on the part of humanity to anticipate its advent, 

 and to indulge in a "glimpse behind the veil" of "coming 

 events," which here so realistically and fascinatingly "cast 

 their shadows before," but which shadows are, of necessity, 

 incapable of appreciation by the obtuse, and still half 

 material, intelligences of humanity. 



Enervation on the contrary expresses a survival of the 

 ancient law of inertia, and the tendency ot matter ever to 

 resist the influence of impulse and to resume if disturbed 

 the status quo ante, thus indicating an unwillingness 

 to lend itself to the operation of assuming new forms with 

 all that follows from intelligently altered conditions, with 

 the subsequent and consequent evolution of higher and 

 better present states, and inconceivably sublime future 

 destinies. As seen in operation in the present day, 

 enervation clogs and stays the evolutionary wheels of 

 organic progress in their ordered course, paralyses the 

 efforts of labouring nature to accomplish her plans and 

 purposes, brings to naught the "best laid schemes of mice 

 and men" to meet the ends of their existence, and infests 

 with "dry and wet rot" much of the best work of civilisa- 

 tion and human advancement, thus slowing or preventing 

 the application of ameliorative laws and influence to the 

 reign of pain and sorrow. 



