2695. The muscle contracts upon application only of a stimulus.
2696. Every stimulus induces motion only as a result of polar excitation. Every stimulus polarizes; for even the gentlest contact is like the friction, and produces electrical antagonism. It therefore amounts to the same, whatever stimuli, whether mechanical, chemical, or spiritual, have been applied to the muscle. One acts like the other.
2697. If no motion supervene upon, or is even suppressed by, the contact of a body, the nature of the body must then be indifferencing.
2698. Relaxing, laming, life-destroying matters, are indifferencing, or cause a suppression of the poles.
2699. Overcharging principles, e. g. lightning or strong electric sparks may also produce relaxation. These destroy the function of the fibres, and act therefore worse than the in differencing matters.
3. Functions of the Nervous System.
2700. The function of the point-substance is also that of the nervous system, for this is only the point-substance, fashioned and arranged into stalk and branches.
2701. But even on this account the nervous tension proceeds only according to a determinate line, while before it penetrated through the whole mass.
2702. The nervous tension takes place in a nervous system only between a special organ and the nervous centre.
2703. In itself the nervous system is an Indifference, and such then are all the organs upon which it acts, when regarded in reference to this operation; they might, through other functions, be polar.