b. The psychode is a substance peculiar to the organism, capable of extending beyond the limits of the visible organism under certain special conditions. The modifications it receives necessarily act upon other inert bodies. The will acts upon the psychode, and thus mediately, upon the bodies that the sphere of this substance embraces.
c. The psychode is a universal substance which is conditioned in its action on other inert bodies by the structure of living organisms, or by a certain state of inorganic bodies—a state determined by the influence of living organisms in certain special conditions.
d. The psychode is a peculiar state of matter, a state habitually produced within the sphere of the organism, but which may also be produced beyond its limits under the influence of a certain state of the organism,—an influence comparable to that of magnets in the phenomena of diamagnetism.
Thury proposes the adjective ecteneic (from ἐκτένεια, extension) to describe that special state of the organism in which the mind can, in some measure, extend the habitual limits of its action, and he styles "ecteneic force" that which is developed in this state.
The first hypothesis (he adds) would not be at all adapted to explain the phenomena with which we are concerned. But the three others give rise to three different explanations, in which (he assures us) the greater part of the phenomena investigated will be comprised.
Explanations based upon the Intervention of Spirits.—M. de Gasparin has shown the error of all these explanations:
1. By theological considerations.
2. By the very just remark that we should not resort to explanations which introduce spirits into the problem until other interpretations have been proved to be entirely insufficient.
3. Finally, by physical considerations.
Looking at the question here solely from the general physical point of view, I do not follow M. de Gasparin (says Thury) in his exploitation of theological explanations. As to the second, I will only call attention to the suggestion that the sufficiency of explanations purely physical should strictly apply only to the Valleyres experiments, where, in truth, nothing gives evidence of the intervention of wills other than the human will.