THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS 373 



The dual nature, and functions, of the systemic nervous 

 system, we must, therefore, regard, as embodying principles 

 of the deepest physiological and psychological importance. 

 That a human being can live physiologically, and be dead 

 physiologically at the same time, is a matter of everyday 

 observation, and experience, in fact, it is the daily ex- 

 perience of all, during the condition known as sleep, and 

 the experience of many, in certain pathological states, and 

 is the outcome of the existence, in the sympathetico- 

 systemic nervous system, of a dual control, and combined 

 functional role, whereby the continuance of organic, and 

 conscious, life, is made possible, secure, and lasting. The 

 continuance of the dual control characterises the life of 

 the healthy individual, while its lapse, in whole, or in part, 

 indicates that disease, or disablement, exists, and unless 

 removed, that the death of the part, or the whole, will 

 inevitably follow. Moreover, we think that all living, or 

 organised, matter, whether vegetable, or animal, lives, in 

 consequence of being innervated, or vitalised, by what 

 is equivalent to sympathetic nerve energy, which, in 

 consequence, is equivalent to vital energy, or life. This 

 principle of life, regulating and inspiring, so to speak, deter- 

 mines, and directs, the arrangement of inorganic matter, 

 into the manifold forms of, living, or organic, matter, 

 animal, and vegetable, and dominates, and maintains, a 

 large proportion of the lower life forms of the globe, 

 joining with, and merging in, the higher, or systemic 

 nerve energy, in dominating, and maintaining, the highly 

 organised remainder. 



Nerve energy has many characteristics in common with 

 electric, and other, forms of energy, but is endowed with 

 many, other, and higher, characteristics, in virtue of which 

 we are bound to recognise it as the highest form of 

 energy observable by science, and a type, to which all the 

 others point, and can be made to minister, in fact, until 

 consciousness, and mental operations, are at last displayed 

 by it, and where it seems to enter on a process of still 

 higher evolution, with relationships, which lose themselves 

 in apparent actuality, and non-exhaustion, amid the realms 

 of imagination, the regions of the unrevealed, and the 

 absolutely mysterious ; but where, from its character, or 



