leep. It is placed into a peculiar, receptive condition, in
which this "recharging" process takes place. Our energy is derived
through sleep, and not from food. Food merely replaces broken-down
tissue (and, if you will, the animal heat) but never supplies or creates
its vital energy. This depends upon its nervous mechanism, and upon
sleep, and not upon the muscular system and chemical combustion. What
differentiates the steam-engine from the human organism is the fact that
one needs sleep while the other does not (in other words, one is living
and vital, and the other is not), yet, in spite of this obvious
difference--which is so great that it really destroys all the
analogy--physiologists have continued to disregard it, and to treat the
human body as a mere machine--such as a steam-engine--which requires no
sleep, and derives its energy solely by combustion! To my mind, this is
one of the most curious paradoxes of modern science.

To place the theory in as clear a light as possible, then, it is this:
Food supplies or replaces broken-down tissue (and heat) to the body; but
not vitality, or the power of life, which comes only from rest and
sleep. No matter how much food we may eat and perfectly oxidise, there
comes a time, nevertheless, when we must go to bed, and not to the
dining-room, to recuperate our strength and energies. During sleep,
vital energy flows into us (our nervous systems), and all animals need
sleep--this fact differentiating them, at once, from any form of
mechanical engine. Life, vital energy, is not due, as is universally
thought, to chemical combustion, but to vital replenishment. No energy
is _created_ within the body; it is merely _transmitted_. The body, in
fact, acts as a means of transmission--as a sort of "organic burning
glass" which transmits and focuses the sun's rays on one focal point.
And just as any crack, or blur, or clouding, or other accident to the
burning glass would interfere with its power and capacity from
transmitting the rays, so, any accident or disease or pathological state
of the organism would interfere with or altogether prevent the passage
or flow through it, of the life or vital energy. "The more perfect, the
better these conditions, the greater the influx of vital force, and vice
versa. We must see that all the electrodes and avenues and channels are
bright and clear, so that there shall be as little hindrance as possible
to either the inflow of energy in the form of po