yond dispute, of which there is ample evidence in many
instances, especially of women who by a sad fatality are doomed to let
unappreciated feelings evaporate in the air, or some superabundant power
run to waste.

In support of his definitions, Lambert propounded a variety of problems
to be solved, challenges flung out to science, though he proposed to
seek the solution for himself. He inquired, for instance, whether the
element that constitutes electricity does not enter as a base into the
specific fluid whence our Ideas and Volitions proceed? Whether the
hair, which loses its color, turns white, falls out, or disappears, in
proportion to the decay or crystallization of our thoughts, may not be
in fact a capillary system, either absorbent or diffusive, and wholly
electrical? Whether the fluid phenomena of the Will, a matter generated
within us, and spontaneously reacting under the impress of conditions
as yet unobserved, were at all more extraordinary than those of the
invisible and intangible fluid produced by a voltaic pile, and applied
to the nervous system of a dead man? Whether the formation of Ideas and
their constant diffusion was less incomprehensible than evaporation of
the atoms, imperceptible indeed, but so violent in their effects, that
are given off from a grain of musk without any loss of weight. Whether,
granting that the function of the skin is purely protective, absorbent,
excretive, and tactile, the circulation of the blood and all its
mechanism would not correspond with the transsubstantiation of our Will,
as the circulation of the nerve fluid corresponds to that of the Mind?
Finally, whether the more or less rapid affluence of these two real
substances may not be the result of a certain perfection or imperfection
of organs whose conditions require investigation in every manifestation?

Having set forth these principles, he proposed to class the phenomena of
human life in two series of distinct results, demanding, with the ardent
insistency of conviction, a special analysis for each. In fact, having
observed in almost every type of created thing two separate motions,
he assumed, nay, he asserted, their existence in our human nature, and
designated this vital antithesis Action and Reaction.

"A desire," he said, "is a fact completely accomplished in our will
before it is accomplished externally."

Hence the sum-total of our Volitions and our Ideas constitutes Action,
and the sum-total of our extern