20 Process of Power Changes 



A dope fiend suffers no inconvenience when 

 taking a dose of poison great enough to kill sev- 

 eral men. He does not survive the taking of 

 such large doses because he was born with more 

 powers than other persons. He does so because 

 he began with small doses, such as any person 

 might take and survive, and then gradually in- 

 creased the size of the doses as his powers were 

 developed by the exercise of fighting such poison. 



Calmette and Fraser found that when small 

 doses of snake venom, insufficient to cause death, 

 are injected into an animal, temporary disturb- 

 ance is produced; but after a few days the ani- 

 mal recovers, and a larger dose is required to 

 produce any symptoms. By gradually increasing 

 the dose the animal becomes more and more re- 

 sistant, until a dose fifty times as great as would 

 at first have produced immediate death can be 

 injected without doing the animal any harm. 



If we take some wild plant and attempt to re- 

 produce it by cuttings, we are likely to find that 

 it can be reproduced that way only with difficulty. 

 But if we take a cutting from the first plant 

 raised that way we find the second time it grows 

 a little more readily. If we take a cutting from 



