rth a sound like the rending of mountains or the
detonations of earthquakes!

Electricity is the soul of matter. If Whitman's paradox is true, that
the soul and body are one, in the same sense the scientific paradox is
true: that matter and electricity are one, and both are doubtless a
phase of the universal ether--a reality which can be described only in
terms of the negation of matter. In a flash of lightning we see pure
disembodied energy--probably that which is the main-spring of the
universe. Modern science is more and more inclined to find the
explanation of all vital phenomena in electrical stress and change. We
know that an electric current will bring about chemical changes
otherwise impracticable. Nerve force, if not a form of electricity, is
probably inseparable from it. Chemical changes equivalent to the
combustion of fuel and the corresponding amount of available energy
released have not yet been achieved outside of the living body without
great loss. The living body makes a short cut from fuel to energy, and
this avoids the wasteful process of the engine. What part electricity
plays in this process is, of course, only conjectural.

II

Our daily lives go on for the most part in two worlds, the world of
mechanical transposition and the world of chemical transformations, but
we are usually conscious only of the former. This is the visible,
palpable world of motion and change that rushes and roars around us in
the winds, the storms, the floods, the moving and falling bodies, and
the whole panorama of our material civilization; the latter is the
world of silent, invisible, unsleeping, and all-potent chemical
reactions that take place all about us and is confined to the atoms and
molecules of matter, as the former is confined to its visible
aggregates.

Mechanical forces and chemical affinities rule our physical lives, and
indirectly our psychic lives as well. When we come into the world and
draw our first breath, mechanics and chemistry start us on our career.
Breathing is a mechanical, or a mechanico-vital, act; the mechanical
principle involved is the same as that involved in the working of a
bellows, but the oxidation of the blood when the air enters the lungs is
a chemical act, or a chemico-vital act. The air gives up a part of its
oxygen, which goes into the arterial circulation, and its place is taken
by carbonic-acid gas and watery vapor. The oxygen feeds and keeps going
the flame of life, as lite