EXTRACT V. 



ON INNERVATION AND ENERVATION. 



THESE are words the history of whose evolution, from the 

 nebulous and faintly intelligible, into two of the most 

 profoundly expressive terms in literature and science, it 

 would be both interesting and educative to follow, 

 inasmuch as the work would involve a study of the 

 universe in its progress from chaos to order, and its 

 conversion from dead, to living, form, with all the " re- 

 versions " to be observed in nature from the living to 

 the dead, and from the high-water mark, or acme of 

 fitness, to the " slough " of complete failure and ineptitude 

 in men and animals, nations and individuals, genera and 

 species. 



Originally they took their origin in the expression of 

 truths of the most primitive and elementary order, but 

 by daily usage they have come to express the ultimate 

 conditions of organic and human life and death, the 

 long sequences of evolutionary and involutionary events 

 characterising the vital experience and destiny of every 

 organic unit since the dawn of creation. Moreover, they 

 individually and respectively stand for life, action, con- 

 sciousness, thought, and responsibility, with all that 

 hinges upon, and flows from, these things, and devital- 

 isation, inaction, soporism, " blank intelligence," and 

 irresolute nothingness, with their concomitants and con- 

 sequences. 



Innervation has assumed a scientific form from its long 

 use in the service of physical research, while enervation 

 has been taken possession of, painfully tended and 



