says: "The ether is accepted by science as a
reality, and as a medium for light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc.
The nervous system is certainly comparable to an electric battery with
connecting wires. Communications of thought and feeling without the
mediation of sense-perceptions as commonly understood, is now
established. Inanimate objects exert, now and then, 'strange
influences.' People certainly carry with them a personal atmosphere. The
representation of the condition of these facts by a psychic field,
compared to the magnetic or electric field, becomes, therefore, if not
plausible, at least convenient. As such a 'field' exists surrounding the
sun, so may a 'field' be assumed as surrounding each human individual.
'We have already strong grounds for believing that we live in a medium
which conveys to-and-fro movements to us from the sun, and that these
movements are electro-magnetic, and that all the transformation of light
and heat, and indeed the phenomena of life, are due to the electrical
energy which comes to us across the vacuum which exists between us and
the sun--a vacuum which is pervaded by the ether, which is a fit medium
for the transmission of electro-magnetic waves.' By means, then, of a
similar theory applied to mind and brain and body, we may find
reasonable explanations of many otherwise insoluble mysteries of life,
and, which is of more importance, deduce certain suggestions for the
practical regulation of life in the greatest individual interest."

The Brain-Battery.

The same writer says: "All states of body and mind involve constant
molecular and chemical change. The suggestion arises that the brain,
with its millions of cells and its inconceivable changes in substance,
may be regarded as a transmitting and receiving battery. The brain being
a kind of battery, and the nerves being conductors of released stored-up
energy to different parts of the body, by a kind of action similar to
the actions of electricity and magnetism, it is suggested that, either
by means of the ether, or of some still finer form of matter, discharges
of brain energy may be conducted beyond the limits of the body. If the
nerve-track corresponds to wires, this refined medium may correspond to
the ether-field supposed to be employed in wireless telegraphy. As
electrical movements are conducted without wires, or other visible
media, so may brain-discharges be conveyed beyond the mechanism of the
battery, without the i