Accumulators of Specific Nervous Energy 291 
and by which it had itself been deposited, namely the 
continuous electric current. The most important differ- 
ence consists in this, that an electric accumulator is 
capable of restoring always only one and the same kind 
of energy, but not solely such or such intensity of current. 
It constitutes, for that reason, only a generic potential 
element; but such accumulators would attain the com- 
pleteness of specific potential elements—receiving and 
restoring instruments of the greatest delicacy—if one 
could make it possible that each one of them should re- 
ceive and restore only a single definite intensity of current. 
The similarities and differences which nerve currents 
present, in comparison with electric currents, quite war- 
rant us in assuming in nerve currents some of the 
properties of electric currents, and in attributing at the 
same time to the first other properties which the electric 
do not possess, provided these qualities are not incom- 
patible with the others. 
It is known that, if we designate by E the electro- 
motor force of an accumulator or of any electro-chemical 
generator, it can furnish currents of any intensity i 
whatever, according to the resistance R of the circuit, 
according to the equation i=E/R. Thus,—even though 
the terms of motor force, of resistance, of intensity, or 
more generally of specificity, transferred from electric to 
nervous currents are very indefinite—we may very well 
venture, nevertheless, as a preliminary trial hypothesis, 
to attribute to nervous currents as among the properties 
which they might have analogous to electric currents 
precisely those contained in this equation. 
As it involves nothing incompatible with the prop- 
erties expressed by this equation, we may imagine a 
nervous accumulator, constituted by a given substance 
