226 Natural Salvation. 



be deathless. It started and developed to that end. The 

 impulse to this comes from the sentience of the cells — 

 the sentient side of matter. It is a self-sentient mech- 

 anism which feels its hurts and possesses the resource 

 of self repair. From perception of injury, issues energy 

 for restoration, as, for example, v?hen a muscle is 

 wounded, or a bone broken. Even the blood circula- 

 tory tubes grow again, and are repaired and reopened, 

 round and about, as the wants of the tissues make ur- 

 gency. Wherever a sense of loss, damage and danger 

 is felt, this current of vis viva stimulates the phagocytes to 

 act and sets the cells of the injured organ in extraordinary 

 activity to produce new tissue. Something more and in 

 addition to chemical action is displayed here ; it is chemi- 

 cal action, prompted and initiated by sentience, by a swift 

 current of minute corpuscles, out-flowing at the command 

 of self-consciousness, bearing its will to the cells. 



It is the nature of this current, this stimulus from 

 the neurons, that we have great need to study and con- 

 trol ; to learn how it may be generated, artificially 

 perhaps, and how it may be used to stimulate repaii-s 

 throughout the organism. 



We have a working hypothesis as to how currents 

 of negative-electric corpuscles are derived in the cells to 

 issue forth as the vehicle of their will. Apparently it 

 comes from decomposition of the atoms in the protoplas- 

 mic molecule ; a decomposition initiated by the cell's self- 



