—— SS 
CONCLUSION. 187 
_ tricity or a modification of it; but if I am 
wrong, it is an error which I participate with 
Newton, Gaubius, Hunter, Wollaston, Aber- 
nethy, and Philip; and who need be ashamed 
to err with such authorities, even if the opinion 
itself were unsupported either by analytic or 
synthetic analogy? It would be satisfactory to 
have an incontestible proof that the Vital Force 
is Electric ; but, if a power of regulating it can 
be acquired, the most important point is achieved. 
Every author who has considered the Animal 
Economy with any degree of profundity, has 
admitted the existence of the Vital Force, though 
under different appellations : Hippocrates calls it 
Nature; Van Helmont, Archeus, and Stahl, the 
Soul; Hunter, Materia Vite; and Cullen, the 
Nervous Power and Vis Medicatrix Nature. 
I have shown that the Vital Force does not pro- 
ceed exclusively from the blood, or from the 
nerves, but results from their mutual operation 
on each other; and is, to a certain extent, under 
the Physiologist’s control. It is not an munis 
fatuus, it is a substance perceptible by the senses ; 
it is tangible by the thermometer; it manifests 
itself in decomposition, and in the motions of 
all the soft fibres. I do not pretend to compre- 
hend the operation by which the blood and nerves 
produce the Vital Force; but its phenomena are 
as capable of arrangement and investigation as 
