enomena, on the other?

"When we wish to study the electrical charge contained in any body,
we obtain exactitude only when we succeed in transferring this
charge to another body; we may then study the nature of the charge
under varying circumstances, and establish the influence of the two
charges upon one another. It is only in this way that
experimentation becomes truly fertile. Should we not apply the same
laws to the phenomena of the nervous system, and institute a
similar mode of experiment for the nervous energies? Under what
conditions can we conceive this transference?

"The most natural supposition seems to be that it would occur, if
at all, in labile organizations; in those subjects which, according
to Janet (_Les Nevroses_, p. 339), possess an excessively unstable
personality; and whose psychic life is characterized by great
suggestibility, by instability, and a certain peculiar mobility.
Such individuals are also characterized by the great facility with
which the functions vary and react upon one another. Binswanger has
said that the nervous system of these individuals is characterized
by the variability of the dynamic cortical functions; that is to
say, by the fact that the nervous segments of their cerebral cortex
present a _melange_ of greater or lesser irritability...."[18]

Professor Alrutz goes on to say that, guided by this idea, he
constructed an instrument designed to test his theory--based in part,
but not wholly, upon the earlier instruments employed by Hare, Crookes,
etc., to test the same thing. As is well known, these experimenters
spent much time in their investigations--both of them coming to the
conclusion, after years of patient research, that physical apparatus
could be definitely influenced and moved by the will of certain persons,
when exercised in the direction of their movement, and without
sufficient contact to account for the observed facts. Crookes'
experiments, in particular, are very conclusive in this direction--his
apparatus being very similar to that designed by Professor Alrutz. He
employed a board, one end of which was attached to a spring balance,
while the other end of the board rested upon a solid table. The subject
placed his hands upon the board, and a definite pressure was registered
by the balance--far more than could be obtained in any normal manner.
These experiments