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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. certain initiates of the higher order and imparted by them to their immediate disciples, could not be utilized by their remoter followers of a less developed spirituality. It might also be that the power cannot be exercised in certain cases at all, as in decapitation, where the continuity of the system is completly severed once for all. From a short paragraph which appeared in the “Practical Medicine” for March 1908, it appears that, at least, in one class of cases the modern Science of Electricity has succeeded in demonstrating the possibility of the restoration of the dead to life. The original paragraph runs thus :
“The current number of the Electrical Magazine' publishes an illustrated account of the work of French scientists in the use of the electric current as an anæsthetic. Not only is it proved that a particular degree and form of electric shock will produce total insensibility to pain,' says the Electrical Magazine,' and ensure certain recovery without any deleterious after-effects, but the remarkable fact was observed that electrocuted' animals can be restored to life by the rhythmical application of electric currents. It has been proved beyond doubt that respiration and heart beatings-life itself-can be definitely and permanently reinstituted in a body from which, by accepted medical evidence, life had departed."
This is a startling revelation of the power of electricity, and, if true, opens out a vast field for future scientific investigation. Perhaps it would necessitate a thorough overhauling and remodelling of our modern views of life and death.
There seems to be the same relation between the soul and the physical body as that between a central spring and the fields to be irrigated by it. This will be clear on a little reflection. The physical beginning of the individual organism may be taken to be the fertilized
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