Present and Prospective 2 1 



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thing, but a spot of positive electrification within 

 which swarms of negative electrons whirl their 

 mazy rounds with inconceivable rapidity. Thus 

 the chemical elements, each with its individual 

 properties, originate in differences of the number 

 of electrons and the figures which these take as 

 they whirl, and all matter is resolved at last into 

 moving electric charges — material nature simpli- 

 fied into electricity and ether. Remote as such 

 speculation appears to be from the realities of 

 life, the story of applied science furnishes many 

 striking instances of theories so abstract as to 

 seem of no conceivable use, which have, never- 

 theless, in ways quite unexpected, effected extraor- 

 dinarily useful revolutions in practice ; and it is 

 not therefore unlikely that full and exact know- 

 ledge of radial energy and of its mode of action 

 on the vital processes may instruct and guide to 

 yet undreamed success the radial treatment of 

 disease, some fruits of which have already been 

 empirically gathered. 



Here, then, thought again reaches a point where 

 the domains of the living and the non-living are 

 no longer separated by a chasm ; where, indeed, 

 one might think (if one did not suffer thought to 

 be governed by words) that the domains of matter 

 and life, even of life and spirit, meet, the material 

 being sublimed into the vital and the vital into 

 the spiritual. That all divisions of science shall 

 gradually be effaced, even that which metaphysics 

 has fixed between bodily and mental life, the 



