The materializations which produce forms - at first nebulous, then hands, and then the entire phantoms - are related to the processes of evolution realized by nature.

If there is something true in the theories previously advanced - in the polyzoism of Durand de Gros, animism, transmission of images, and movements at a distance, etc. - there is no longer room for surprise that thought may exercise a plastic action on exteriorized animic substance. Our organic relations are telepathic phenomena; the so-called nervous currents are psychic currents. As to seances of materialization, I am certain that ultimate experiments will convince us that the thought of the audience is like a motive center of excitation, as capable of provoking systematic inhibition as of contributing to the creation of plastic forms.

Materialization may be understood, then, as a sphere of momentarily exteriorized power, reinforced by organic molecules, upon which the will acts. * * * ♦

Telepathy, acting in the organic sphere, adapts itself admirably to our physiological knowledge if we replace the purely conventional idea of the action of nervous currents for that of volition.

This would be far more comprehensible, for I acknowledge that to speak of excitation of a nerve does not make its movement clear to me. You may call a certain center "excito-motor," but that does not confer upon it any activity. On the contrary, a volition transmitted by telepathy is an action that may be put in the same category as the facts previously observed. The organs and the brain itself being necessarily strangers to telepathic perception, the phenomena presuppose the intermediary of psychic agents, not as yet known to physics. The nervous current is only an hypothesis, but psychical transmission is an empirical truth which it is no longer possible to disregard. We may even experiment with it anatomically. We may isolate from the brain the so-called nervous currents, and thereby note the subordinate currents which continue to act in a more restricted region. Thus, for example, we know that the sensitive and motive fibers emerge from the spinal column. We might believe that these fibers are simple conductors which live with the life of the brain, to which they are united. But this is not true. It astonishes many physiologists, but these groups of nerves have their own life. From an ancient discovery, which has been verified by Claude Bernard, we find that if these groups of sensitive nerves are cut below the ganglion, which is near the point of contact, the nerve dies, or at least it seems to die, because it no longer gives signs of sensitivenes. But if the severance is made higher up, and the ganglion remains attached to the nerve, it lives. This is equivalent to saying that the ganglion occupies the place of the head and is the conscious center of the excitation, which is manifested by sensibility and movement. In other words, a group of nerves related to the brain, through the spinal column, obeys the suggestions of the brain. It no longer obeys when the communication has been cut. Deprived of its normal relation, it is thrown back on its independence, the excitation which it should transmit to the brain stops with itself. But if we excite, beyond it, the end of the nerve still adhering to the marrow, the brain receives the sensation, on condition that the nerve in question is in the centripetal current, is a sensitive nerve. And the sensation, in this case, is analogous to the sensation which, in the same manner, would be sent by peripheric contact. But if it is a motive nerve, of centrifugal functions, the brain will receive no impression. We may then act on the part detached from the trunk and immediately the whole nervous mass will respond as a sensitive animal. The consciousness of touch is in the nerve, which perceives by itself and which manifests itself by movement.

This then, is the manifestation of the soul in the secondary centers. The absence of reaction, however, is not a proof of insensibility. The will has a power of inhibition upon the nervous centers, without which it would be impossible to coordinate our movements. This power no longer exists from the moment that the nerve is deprived of its normal connection with the brain. Here I quote from the text of Mathias Duval:1

"An animal in its physiological state may experience an intense excitation without making the slightest movement. After the cutting of the spine, the slightest touch to that part of the body which has been deprived of nerves by the posterior segment of the spine, will suffice to produce energetic movement in the corresponding members."

Let us recall, again, the intensity of the somnambulistic dream, analogous to the intensity of these physical movements, of a member detached from its principal center. In both cases this must result from a similar cause, the absence of a restraining power. This power, which is called the faculty of inhibition and which seeems inexplicable to the physiologists, because it does not answer to any of the theories of vital chemistry, is explained very easily by the animic theory, which accepts the idea of a psychic force and a will. A cell may, indeed, receive the suggestion to remain impassive under excitation. Mucius Scevola held his hand motionless over the brazier, an act made possible by that psychic force which dominates our organs the motive souls execute only those of our suggestions which they fully understand. From the moment a cell obeys the idea of movement, it may equally well obey the idea of resistance to the movement. It has been proved that the brain does not act dynamically upon the organs, but that each functional mechanism has within itself its own will, and that the psychic conductor acts in whatsoever is left of its organic domain, even after the removal of the brain. It is a fact which we cannot bring too strongly into evidence that, with man himself, the cerebral hemispheres have no other functions than those of will and of perception. The wish, transmitted tele-pathically to the motive organs, excites them: but these, in turn, act spontaneously, using their own dynamic force. In a word, physiological unity, a central consciousness merely sends a suggestion and the organs act spontaneously.

1 Physiologie, Mathias Duval, p. 70.