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Updated: May 18, 2025
A unit of electrical or magnetic force equals many of the force of gravity; a number of electrical units are required to make one of chemical force; and chemico-vital or “metabolic” force is still higher; whereas thought regarded as a form of force must be vastly beyond this again.
In our limited knowledge of the relation of forces therefore, a scientific man is rash to deny that the chemico-vital forces set loose by an earnest prayer may affect the operation of natural laws outside the body as they confessedly do in it. Experience alone can decide such a question, and I for one, from theory and from observation, believe in the material efficacy of prayer.
We can even conceive that the fermentative character may belong to every organized form, to every animal or vegetable cell, on the sole condition that the chemico-vital acts of assimilation and excretion must be capable of taking place in that cell for a brief period, longer or shorter it may be, without necessity for recourse to supplies of atmospheric oxygen; in other words, the cell must be able to derive its needful heat from the decomposition of some body which yields a surplus of heat in the process.
Carbonic acid is among the gases most hostile to man, but he drinks it in soda-water or Champagne with impunity. So we cannot explain how a poison will act, if introduced into the body in the diluted form in which Nature offers it, and there subjected to the complicated chemico-vital processes which constitute life.
By a chemico-vital process, nitrogen builds up and is incorporated in the tissues. Nitrogen, again, is one of the resulting components of the change of tissue. This element forms a large part of the effete particles which are rejected on accumulation from such change or waste.
To the scientific apprehension, man’s volitions and his prayers are states of emotion, inseparably connected in their manifestations with changes in his cerebral structure, with relative elevation of temperature, and with the elimination of oxygen and phosphorus, in other words with chemico-vital phenomena and the transformation of force.
Breathing is a mechanical, or a mechanico-vital, act; the mechanical principle involved is the same as that involved in the working of a bellows, but the oxidation of the blood when the air enters the lungs is a chemical act, or a chemico-vital act. The air gives up a part of its oxygen, which goes into the arterial circulation, and its place is taken by carbonic-acid gas and watery vapor.
But the sum of the physical forces thus evolved is not the measure of the results of intellectual action. These differ from other forms of force in being incommensurate with extension. They cannot be appraised in units of quantity, but in quality only. The chemico-vital forces by which a thought rises into consciousness bear not the slightest relation to the value of the thought itself.
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