XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 317 



the force of gravity which it overcomes ? Or, if 

 you go to more hidden processes, in what does the 

 process of digestion differ from those processes 

 which are carried on in the laboratory of the 

 chemist ? Even if we take the most recondite 

 and most complex operations of animal life those 

 of the nervous system, these of late years have 

 been shown to be I do not say identical in any 

 sense with the electrical processes but this has 

 been shown, that they are in some way or other 

 associated with them ; that is to say, that every 

 amount of nervous action is accompanied by a 

 certain amount of electrical disturbance in the 

 particles of the nerves in which that nervous 

 action is carried on. In this way the nervous 

 action is related to electricity in the same way 

 that heat is related to electricity ; and the same 

 sort of argument which demonstrates the two latter 

 to be related to one another shows that the nervous 

 forces are correlated to electricity ; for the experi- 

 ments of M. Dubois Reymond and others have 

 shown that whenever a nerve is in a state of 

 excitement, sending a message to the muscles or 

 conveying an impression to the brain, there is a 

 disturbance of the electrical condition of that 

 nerve which does not exist at other times ; and 

 there are a number of other facts and phenomena 

 of that sort ; so that we come to the broad con- 

 clusion that not only as to living matter itself, but 

 as to the forces that matter exerts, there is a close 



