wer of its
accomplishment, and the niceness and beauty of its execution, it were a
useless display if unaccompanied with the invisible agents which compose
the two other grand constituents of man, to wit: the body electrical and
the spirit, or mind. Without these, it would quickly fall into decay, as
we see it when deprived of them, and would be resolved into its original
elements again. But to our gross material bodies the Creator has added,

2. _The body electrical._ By this, I mean that which has commonly been
termed "nervous influence," "nervous fluid," "nervo-vital fluid," and
"nervo-electric fluid." I object, however, to each and all of these
designations. They are too restricted and specific. They all seem to
imply that it is an agent or influence which appertains especially to
the _nervous_ system; whereas the entire organism is under its pervading
force. I do not doubt but its chief action is in and through the nervous
system; but it also pervades and, as I think, vitalizes the whole body.
The nervous system seems to be created as one principal means for its
replenishment,[A] and to serve as the medium of its ministrations to the
body at large. I choose to term it _electro-vital fluid_, or
_electro-vitality_. My reasons for so designating it are the following:
(1) It is demonstrably electrical in its nature. (2) It appears to be
identified, or at least connected immediately, with the vitalization of
the body. (3) I wish, by its name, to distinguish it from _mental_
vitality, or the vitality of _spirit_. Whether, as a peculiar
manifestation of the electric principle, it vitalizes by its own nature
and action solely, or whether it be _charged_ with another mysterious
element--a _life-force_--and vitalizes by ministering the latter to the
material organism, I will not positively affirm. Whichever it be, the
name I assign to it seems sufficiently appropriate. But I strongly
incline to the theory that this electro-vital principle does itself, by
virtue of its own nature, vitalize the system. In other words, I am
disposed to think that God makes it the _immediate_ agent of
vitalization; having constituted it the _vis vitae_ of both the animal
and the vegetable kingdoms. Nor does this idea, as I conceive,
necessarily conflict at all with the doctrine of _cell-life_, as
maintained by the best physiologists of the present day. I also
sometimes style this electro-vital element the _body electrical_,
because it is certain