THEORY OF MAN.
Let the question now be raised—What is man? The answer will have much to do with the remedial system which I aim to teach. For this reason it is thus early introduced.
My answer to the above question is as follows: Man is a threefold being, composed of a body material, a body electrical, and a spirit rational and indestructible.
Let the elements of this definition be a little amplified:
1. The material body. This is composed of various metals, earths, carbon, phosphorus, and gases. I need not go into a representation of their multiplied and curious combinations to form the many parts of the body complete. But these are the ultimate elements; and a most superb and wonderful structure they here compose. Yet, notwithstanding all the manifest skillfulness of its contrivance, and the power of its accomplishment, and the niceness and beauty of its execution, it were a useless display if unaccompanied with the invisible agents which compose the two other grand constituents of man, to wit: the body electrical and the spirit, or mind. Without these, it would quickly fall into decay, as we see it when deprived of them, and would be resolved into its original elements again. But to our gross material bodies the Creator has added,
2. The body electrical. By this, I mean that which has commonly been termed "nervous influence," "nervous fluid," "nervo-vital fluid," and "nervo-electric fluid." I object, however, to each and all of these designations. They are too restricted and specific. They all seem to imply that it is an agent or influence which appertains especially to the nervous system; whereas the entire organism is under its pervading force. I do not doubt but its chief action is in and through the nervous system; but it also pervades and, as I think, vitalizes the whole body. The nervous system seems to be created as one principal means for its replenishment,[A] and to serve as the medium of its ministrations to the body at large. I choose to term it electro-vital fluid, or electro-vitality. My reasons for so designating it are the following: (1) It is demonstrably electrical in its nature. (2) It appears to be identified, or at least connected immediately, with the vitalization of the body. (3) I wish, by its name, to distinguish it from mental vitality, or the vitality of spirit. Whether, as a peculiar manifestation of the electric principle, it vitalizes by its own nature and action solely, or whether it be charged with another mysterious element—a life-force—and vitalizes by ministering the latter to the material organism, I will not positively affirm. Whichever it be, the name I assign to it seems sufficiently appropriate. But I strongly incline to the theory that this electro-vital principle does itself, by virtue of its own nature, vitalize the system. In other words, I am disposed to think that God makes it the immediate agent of vitalization; having constituted it the vis vitæ of both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms. Nor does this idea, as I conceive, necessarily conflict at all with the doctrine of cell-life, as maintained by the best physiologists of the present day. I also sometimes style this electro-vital element the body electrical, because it is certainly an entity, coëxtensive with and, in greater or less force, wholly pervading the visible, material body.
At this point I will take the liberty to introduce, although somewhat digressively, a few thoughts on the DISTINCTIONS OF VITALITY OR LIFE.
There are, as I suppose, the following several kinds of life: (1) Spirit life; (2) Moral life; (3) Electric life.
(1.) There is spirit life. And here are to be made several subdivisions.
[1.] Uncreated spirit life. This is the life of God. Of the nature of the Divine Essence we know nothing; yet that God is a real, living entity, we do know. My own conviction is that the divine essence and the divine life are identical; that God, a spirit, is necessary, infinite, conscious Vitality—the voluntary Originator of all existencies besides himself. But as to what is the essential nature of this vitality—this eternal spirit-life—we can have no conception, only that this life is God.