Conditions and Effects of Discharge 295 



more easily are the conditions to be obtained which are 

 able to permit its discharge. 



Let us suppose further that as a result of external in- 

 influences there are induced at the same moment at a few 

 points of the system a corresponding number of new 

 nerve currents, specifically different from the preceding, 

 so that the system is thereby caused to pass over to an- 

 other dynamic equilibrium. It is clear that there will 

 then be -deposited in each point of the system, and not 

 merely in those which external influences have directly 

 modified, a new specific potential element, in mass more 

 or less large according to the time during which the new 

 state of dynamic equilibrium persists. At the same time, 

 however, all these same points of the system will preserve, 

 in a potential state not in activation ,all the specific ele- 

 ments which were desposited during the preceding state 

 of dymanic equilibrium. 



If, such being the state of things, it now happen that 

 even any single point whatever of the system is brought 

 back again, by any external influence, to the specificity 

 which it had already possessed in the preceding stage, 

 that will make it possible for the respective specific ele- 

 ments corresponding to that stage to come again into 

 activity, at first in the point nearest, and then from next 

 to next until in the most distant; for then each of these 

 elements will find its immediate environs in approximately 

 the same conditions as when its corresponding specific 

 current was in activity, by which it has been deposited. It 

 will suffice then that even a single point of a system re- 

 turn, through the action of external influences, to its 

 preceding state, in order that the whole system, through 

 the discharge of the different specific potential elements 

 corresponding to that former stage, should resume 



