358 
DR. PHILIP ON THE POWERS OF LIFE. 
divided longitudinally, the fish has continued to give shocks ; when the brain has 
been entirely extracted, the fish instantly lost this power, though the muscles gene- 
rally continued to act powerfully from which it appears that the electric power is 
not like the muscular independent of the brain, but on the contrary immediately de- 
pending on it ; proving that in this, as in all the other nervous functions, as appears 
from the facts stated in a paper which the Royal Society did me the honour to 
publish in 1829, and which was republished in my Inquiry into the Nature of Sleep 
and Death , the nerves are merely the passive, the brain, one of the active parts of the 
nervous system. 
In the foregoing positions we here find, as in other similar instances, that when truth 
is once arrived at, other facts, beside those which led to it, arise to give it their aid. 
Dr. Davy made no experiments to determine how far the spinal marrow, the only 
other part of the nervous system concerned in the formation of the nervous influence, 
partakes of the function in question. Were we to reason from the analogy afforded 
by all the other nervous functions properly so called, we should expect to find the 
spinal marrow sharing it equally with the brain. It is not unlikely that the re- 
moval either of the brain or spinal marrow would destroy this function, as is found 
to be the case with respect to the more complicated functions properly termed nervous; 
a point which can only be determined by an appeal to direct experiment ; or, like the 
excitement of the muscles, it may belong to either organ separately, or, which is less 
probable, it may, being a function of volition, belong to the brain alone. 
In addition to the foregoing statements I may refer to the success which has at- 
tended the employment of voltaic electricity in those diseases which depend on a 
deficient supply of nervous influence*. 
That we may have a clear view of the line of distinction between the sensorial and 
nervous powers, a more particular consideration of the former is necessary. 
THE following points we have seen are made out from the phenomena of every 
day’s experience, that the organs of the sensorial power and the nerves of sensation, 
in which of course are included the nerves of the organs of the external senses, are 
distinct organs ; the former being the immediate organs of those powers, the latter 
the organs which excite them. 
We have just seen reason to believe that the influence conveyed by the nerves which 
excite the muscles and maintain the secreting and assimilating functions and the due 
temperature of the animal body, is a power which operates in inanimate nature ; 
because, on the one hand, we have found such a power capable of all the functions of 
the nervous influence, properly so called ; and, on the other, that this influence is 
capable of existing in other textures than those to which it belongs in the living 
animal, proving that it is not a vital power properly so called. 
Are the properties of the influence conveyed by the nerves of sensation the same 
* See my Inquiry into the Laws of the Vital Functions, Part III., and my Treatise on Indigestion, 7th Edition. 
