Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science

The living being, by the fact of its being such, has new and hitherto undetermined relations. It has escaped from the hold of the forces in part from the common lot of matter, and a new horizon uplifts before it. New and mysterious forces intrude, the sum of which we call vital energy. Well we know that here the material scientist will smile or sneer, for he has already settled the question in his own mind and that of his confreres, that there is nothing beyond the properties of matter. The animal body is composed of definite quantities of carbon, hydrogen, lime, iron, etc., and the conflict of atoms, the combustion of carbon by the oxygen of the air, the burning of phosphorus in the nerves, is the activity evolved which is called life. In the higher animals, especially in man, this life force derived from burning elements is changed to thought, and the quantity of thought depends on the activity of the process.

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