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force ? This realm has not escaped the searching in- 

 vestigation of modern science ; and although in it in- 

 vestigations are vastly more difficult than in any of the 

 regions thus far considered, yet some results of great 

 value have been obtained, which .may help us to a solu- 

 tion of our problem. It is to be observed at the outset 

 that every external manifestation of thought-force is a 

 muscular one, as a word spoken or written, a gesture, or 

 an expression of the face ; and hence this force must 

 be intimately correlated with nerve-force. These mani- 

 festations, reaching the mind through the avenues of 

 sense, awaken accordant trains of thought only when 

 this muscular evidence is understood. A blank sheet 

 of paper excites no emotion ; even covered with Assyr- 

 ian cuneiform characters, its alternations of black and 

 white awaken no response in the ordinary brain. It is 

 only when, by a frequent repetition of these impressions, 

 the brain-cell has been educated, that these before 

 meaningless characters awaken thought. Is thought, 

 then, simply a cell action which may or may not result 

 in muscular expression an action which originates new 

 combinations of truth only, precisely as a calculating 

 machine evolves new combinations of figures ? What- 

 ever we define thought to be, this fact appears certain, 

 that it is capable of external manifestation by conver- 

 sion into the actual energy of motion, and only by this 

 conversion. But here tr^e question arises, Can it be 

 manifested inwardly without such a transformation of 

 energy ? Or is the evolution of thought entirely inde- 

 pendent of the matter of the brain ? Experiments, in- 

 genious and reliable, have answered this question. The 

 importance of the results will, I trust, warrant me in 



