Conditions and Effects of Discharge 205 
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 
